Academic/Research

Applications are invited for a 3-year PhD research studentship in the Machine Learning and Biological Computation Group at the University of Bristol. The studentship forms part of an EPSRC-funded project aimed at learning the rules for morphological analysis of synthetic (morphologically complex) languages, including Russian, Turkish and isiZulu. The PhD student will develop a Machine Learning approach in order to efficiently induce morphological rules (or grammars) both for regular and context-free languages, with a particular emphasis on isiZulu, a tonal Bantu language with 10 million speakers in Southern Africa. During the course of the project, the student will have the opportunity to conduct part of the research with our project partners in Pretoria, South Africa. More information about the project is available at

www.cs.bris.ac.uk/Research/MachineLearning/morph/index.html.

This position is available from April 2007. The funding will cover EU tuition fees and an annual stipend, currently GBP 12,300. (The funding will not cover non-EU tuition fees, so candidates from outside the EU must find alternative means to fund the difference between EU and non-EU tuition fees.) The successful candidate has a strong background in artificial intelligence and machine learning and excellent analytical skills. Previous experience with computational linguistics is preferred but not essential. Due to the international context of the project, excellent communication skills in English are required, as well as the ability to work in a team.

Contact:
Applicants should send a full CV, with accompanying letter and name and email address of two referees, to Professor Peter Flach (Peter.Flach@bristol.ac.uk) or Dr. Ksenia Shalonova (ksenia@cs.bris.ac.uk).

Further details regarding the studentship are available on request. The closing date for applications is Friday 9th March 2007.