Logic List Mailing Archive

PhD student position in "Recognizing Trust in Natural Language", Dundee (Scotland), Deadline: 31 Oct 2014

PhD student in "Recognizing Trust in Natural Language" project, Dundee, SCOTLAND
http://www.arg-tech.org/index.php/epsrc14-phd/

PhD project ?Recognizing Trust in Natural Language?

Applications are invited for a PhD studentship in the EPSRC DTP-funded 
project ?Recognizing Trust in Natural Language? in the areas of computer 
models of argument, natural language processing and big data. Processing 
and evaluation of trust in speaker?s credibility is crucial for many 
different sectors of industry such as e.g. reviews that provide the main 
source of information for users of online shopping networks such as Amazon 
and eBay, and travel sites as TripAdvisor. The goal of the project is to 
build a prototype of a system for semi-automatic identification and 
exploration through big maps of arguments linked to the credibility of 
their providers.

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Important dates
Application deadline: 31 Oct 2014, you can apply by sending a CV with a covering letter to Dr.
Katarzyna Budzynska (k.budzynska (at) dundee.ac.uk)
Interview for selected candidates: Nov 2014 (exact date will be given by individual
invitations)
Starting date of the project: 1 Dec 2014 or as soon as possible thereafter
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1. Main Goal
Trust in the speaker?s character, his credibility or ethos, is one of the most important and
influential elements of real-life practice ? from everyday communication, social debates,
news, reviews for online sellers or travel sites, legal discourse to human intelligence.
Being able to properly evaluate an information source is crucial for deciding whether or
not we should believe news report provided by a journalist or a blogger, or whether or not
we should convict a suspect on a basis of a given witness testimony.

The goal of the project is to understand how people express trust in natural language and to
apply methods and techniques of computational linguistics and natural language processing to
argument mining, i.e. to extracting of trust and credibility from resources of natural
language texts. The project?s output will be a prototype of a system for semi-automatic
processing of trust and exploring through big maps of arguments linked to the credibility
of their providers.

The workplan assumes that the project will first develop an annotated corpus applying the
Inference Anchoring Theory standard and then provide a demonstrator of Ethos Mining tool for
semi-automated extraction of arguments supporting and attacking ethos. We will also work on
integrating the tool with other ARG-tech?s tools for argument mapping, navigation and
exploration.

2. Links with Industry
Processing and evaluation of trust in speaker?s credibility is crucial for many different
sectors of industry. For example, reviews provide the main source of information for users
of online shopping networks such as Amazon and eBay, and travel sites as TripAdvisor. Yet
analysing and structuring vast amounts of specialized data can be a very expensive task
in terms of time and effort. The main technological challenge is to enable processing big
datasets in a more structured and semi-automatic way. This project will be run in parallel
and in a close cooperation with a research assistant who will start at the same time on a
TSB-funded project ?Argument Analytics? which involves an industrial partner.

3. Prospects for Further Career Path
Different funding bodies are starting to recognise the potential and importance of innovation
and development in the area of big data. The Scottish Funding Council (SFC) has just funded
?Big data? innovation centre setting to add over 300 jobs and £150m to Scottish economy
(read here). Both EPSRC and EU (H2020) are investing a large amounts of funds for the calls
addressing the area of big data:

Big Data creates numerous opportunities for driving research and development (?) [RCUK]
recognises the enormous potential of Big Data for the UK economy with a total sum of £189
million to invest in its exploitation.
UK Research Councils on Big Data; available at here

Worldwide Big Data technology and services are expected to grow from €2.4 billion in 2010
to €12.7 billion in 2015. The challenge is to strengthen Europe?s position as provider of
products and services based on digital content and data.
EU Council Decision Establishing the Specific Programme Implementing HORIZON 2020.

4. Environment and Support
The studentship will be held in the Centre for Argument Technology, ARG-tech, in the School
of Computing at the University of Dundee. The research will be supervised by Dr. Katarzyna
Budzynska, and held in close cooperation with Prof. Chris Reed and a research assistant who
will start at the same time on a TSB-funded project ?Argument Analytics? (involving an
industrial partner), as well as with our collaborators in France, Germany, Poland and
Switzerland.

ARG-tech has built a reputation on balancing high quality theoretical research with robust
and reliable software engineering. Its software is in use in thousands of schools, colleges
and universities in over 60 countries around the world. The group of ARG-tech is working
with users and major players in domains such as law, mediation, government, media and
education, and the tools we are building are regularly demonstrated to groups within these
domains.

The student will be working in close cooperation with the international network of our
collaborators in IRIT Toulouse (discourse processing and opinion mining, computational
linguistics); University of Potsdam (discourse generation and speech act theory, computational
linguistics); Polish National Academy of Sciences at Warsaw (logic and philosophy of
communication); and Università della Svizzera italiana in Lugano (pragmatics of financial
communication, communication studies).

At the most recent RAE, the research of the School of Computing in Dundee was rated fourth
in Scotland, with two thirds of its research rated world leading or internationally excellent
(4* or 3*). Dundee has been ranked amongst the top places in the world for scientists to work
(The Scientist), has one of the lowest costs of living in the UK, and has been voted one of
the best universities in the UK for student experience.

5. Requirements and Conditions
The candidate should have at least bachelor degree, preferably in linguistics, computational
linguistics, computer science, artificial intelligence or related areas. Programming
experience would be an advantage. According to EPSRC regulations, an applicant has to be
current UK resident student. Interest in communication and natural language in either
computational, linguistic or philosophical settings would be beneficial.

The starting date of the project will be 1st Dec 2014 or as soon as possible thereafter and
will run for 3.5 years.

Stipendary payments are at EPSRC levels (13,863 GBP for academic year 2014/15; tax-free).
Applicants should meet the EPSRC?s eligibility requirements (see www.epsrc.ac.uk).

6. Application
Applicants should send a CV with a covering letter to Dr. Katarzyna Budzynska, School of
Computing, University of Dundee, Dundee DD1 4HN, or by email to k.budzynska (at) dundee.ac.uk

The closing date for applications is 31 Oct 2014.