Logic List Mailing Archive

PhD student position on generating English explanations of logical formulas, Utrecht (The Netherlands), Deadline: 14 Feb 2020

The Natural Language Processing group at Utrecht University?s Information 
and Computing Sciences department is looking for a junior researcher who 
wants to take up a PhD position to develop algorithms for explaining the 
meaning of formulas of Mathematical Logic in ordinary language. This 
four-year position comprises 85-90% research time and 10-15% teaching 
time, thus presenting an excellent opportunity to develop an academic 
profile as a researcher and teacher:

https://www.uu.nl/staff/CJvanDeemter/Research

To investigate how Natural Language Generation (NLG) techniques can be 
employed to explain logical formulas to non-experts, the candidate will 
investigate computational techniques for simplifying logical formulas and 
"translating" these into optimally intelligible NL text, then empirically 
evaluating the usefulness of the resulting text for users.

A key task is to make a logic formula optimally intelligible by exploiting 
particular strengths of Natural Language. But Natural Language has 
weaknesses as well: an important challenge is to minimize textual 
ambiguities (e.g., when a sentence can be parsed in a number of different 
ways). The project will focus on First-Order Predicate Logic in the first 
instance, and on producing explanations in English; work on other logics 
and other natural languages (e.g., Chinese, Dutch) will be welcome.

The proposed research combines aspects of computational logic, 
linguistics, and experimental psychology. Since only few people master all 
relevant research areas, the precise focus of this PhD project will be 
chosen in discussion with the successful candidate. The supervisory team 
will include Kees van Deemter (of Utrecht University) and Jordi Levy (of 
CSIC?s Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence in Barcelona). This 
PhDship will include three secondmends, two at the Research Institute for 
Artificial Intelligence in Barcelona, and one at ARRIA NLG Limited in 
Aberdeen.

This PhD project has received funding from the European Union?s Horizon 
2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sk?odowska-Curie 
grant agreement No 860621; the candidate must not have resided or carried 
out her/his main activity (work, studies, etc.) in the country of the 
recruiting beneficiary (host institution) for more than 12 months in the 3 
years immediately before the recruitment date? unless as part of a 
procedure for obtaining refugee status under the Geneva Convention.

The deadline for applications is 14 Feb 2020.

Please do not hesitate forwarding this advert to potentially interested 
people.

Further information: https://www.uu.nl/staff/CJvanDeemter/Research

Enquiries: Kees van Deemter at 
c.j.vandeemter@uu.nl<mailto:c.j.vandeemter@uu.nl>
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