Logic List Mailing Archive

Six PhD student positions in ITN ESSENCE (Evolution of Shared Semantics in Computational Environments), Edinburgh/Trento/Barcelona/Madrid (Scotland/Italy/Spain)

SIX PRE-DOCTORAL FELLOWSHIPS (Edinburgh/Trento/Barcelona/Madrid)

The ESSENCE (Evolution of Shared SEmaNtics in Computational Environments, 
www.essence-network.eu) Marie Curie Initial Training Network is offering 
six Early-Stage Researcher (pre-doctoral) positions, to start in September 
2014.The application deadline for these posts is 24th April 2014.

This is a rare opportunity to be involved in a highly prestigious European 
training network for outstanding applicants in an emergent and important 
research area, led by internationally leading groups in their fields!

ESSENCE conducts research and provides research training in various 
aspects of translating human capabilities for negotiating meaning to open 
computational environments such as the web, multi-robot systems, and 
sensor networks. The network will support 15 pre- and post-doctoral 
fellows who will work toward a set of different research projects within 
this overall theme, ranging from symbol grounding and ontological 
reasoning to game-theoretic models of communication and crowdsourcing.

ESSENCE involves a top-quality consortium of internationally leading 
research institutions which will act as hosts for the following projects 
in the current recruitment round:

Early-Stage Researchers (36 months):
- Dynamic, focussed data matching (School of Informatics, The University of Edinburgh, UK)
- A collaborative platform for domain knowledge construction (Information Engineering and Computer Science, Universit degli Studi di Trento, Italy)
- An entity-centric crowdsourcing pipeline for large-scale up-to-date high quality knowledge (Information Engineering and Computer Science, Universit degli Studi di Trento, Italy)
- Concept Convergence: Argumentation and Agreement on Meaning (IIIA-CSIC, Barcelona, Spain)
- Advanced interaction-situated semantic alignment (IIIA-CSIC, Barcelona, Spain)
- Robust communication and alignment of concept extensions (playence, Madrid, Spain)

Early-Stage Researchers must, at the time of recruitment by the host 
organisation be in the first 4 years (full-time equivalent research 
experience) of their research careers, and not yet have a doctoral degree. 
Research experience is measured from the date when they obtained the 
degree which formally entitled them to embark on a doctorate.

All positions are very competitively remunerated (significantly above the 
respective average national salaries/studentships) and aimed at 
outstanding candidates. Please consult the individual descriptions of 
projects at http://www.essence-network.eu/hiring for detailed salary 
information.

Researchers can be of any nationality, though at the time of recruitment 
by the host organisation, researchers must not have resided or carried out 
their main activity (work, studies, etc) in the country of their host 
organisation for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to 
the reference date. (Short stays such as holidays and/or compulsory 
national service are not taken into account.)

The ESSENCE network aims to attract 40% females among the recruited 
researchers. Female applicants are explicitly encouraged to apply and 
treated preferentially whenever they are equally qualified as other male 
candidates. The ESSENCE network will encourage flexible working hours at 
each host institution and/or the opportunity to work part-time from home 
if necessary. ESSENCE will provide specific support for female researchers 
in terms of targeted training events and dedicated mentoring.

All applicants are asked to pre-apply at 
http://www.essence-network.eu/hiring. Please contact Dr Michael Rovatsos 
(mrovatso@inf.ed.ac.uk) for informal enquiries.