The independent research group on Diversity-Aware NLP Intelligent
Systems (DANIS) headed by Dr. Agnieszka Faleńska [1] invites
applications for a *PhD position*. The group is a part of the project
Reflecting Intelligent Systems for Diversity, Demography, and Democracy
(IRIS3D) [2] funded by the Ministry of Science, Research and the Arts of
the State of Baden-Württemberg [3]. It is located at the Institute for
Natural Language Processing (IMS) [4] at the University of Stuttgart,
Germany [5].
*Project*
The immense influence of NLP systems on human lives raises increasing
concerns about the possible harm these tools can cause. Harmful
behaviors of such systems are regarded as symptoms of their bias, i.e.,
the systematic preference or discrimination against certain groups of
users. NLP tools are commonly trained on textual corpora that display
such biases already at the level of their authors. For example,
Wikipedia, which is one of the most commonly used sources of training
data, is created by a predominantly white and male group of editors.
Such a lack of diversity among authors can lessen the impact of data
from minorities and, as a consequence, result in NLP models that reflect
the underlying demographic imbalances. DANIS contributes to the
discourse of fairness in AI by facilitating the design of NLP
intelligent systems that can recognize inputs from underrepresented
groups of users and strengthen their role in the training processes.
*Position*
The successful candidate will work on topics ranging from (i)
recognition of textual phenomena that identify distinctive demographic
groups, (ii) analysis techniques to investigate the influence of
particular training signals on neural NLP models, and (iii)
incorporating the knowledge of biases into a standard NLP methodology.
The position is available for four years, starting in December 2022 or
soon thereafter. The salary is according to the German university pay
scale (TV-L 13 100%, approx. 50k EUR per year before taxes, see [6] for
details). The PhD candidate will benefit from the support structures
offered by the Graduate Academy of the University of Stuttgart (GRADUS)
[7] and IRIS [8]. Moreover, they will have the chance to collaborate
with other IRIS3D projects as well as the interdisciplinary research
group E-DELIB (Powering up e-deliberation: towards AI-supported
moderation) [9] and the Emmy Noether research group MisT (Computational
Models of Misunderstanding) [13].
*Candidate's Profile*
* Master’s degree in computational linguistics, computer science,
computational social science, or related fields
* knowledge of natural language processing (NLP) / computational
linguistics (CL)
* strong programming skills
* advanced knowledge of machine learning methods, experience in deep
learning is a plus
* excellent communication skills and interest in interdisciplinary work
* proficiency in English (knowledge of German is not required)
*How to Apply?*
To apply, please send as a single PDF document:
* a brief motivation letter including your research interests
* a CV including a list of publications (if applicable) and contact
information of one to two references
Applications should be sent to Agnieszka Faleńska (agnieszka.falenska at
ims.uni-stuttgart.de). Applications submitted before October 21, 2022
will receive full consideration. The position will remain open until
filled, so do not hesitate to get in touch when you find this opening
after October 21st. The (online) interviews will take place at the
beginning of November.
The University of Stuttgart aims to achieve equal opportunities for men
and women in university studies and science and to increase the number
of women in academia [12].Therefore, people of all genders are equally
encouraged to apply. Applications of severely disabled candidates with
equivalent qualifications will be given priority.
*About IRIS and IRIS3D*
The IRIS3D project is embedded in the Cyber Valley ecosystem [10]. It
consists of three independent research groups contributing to the
reflection on the societal impacts of intelligent systems. The project
is a part of the Interchange Forum for Reflecting on Intelligent Systems
(IRIS). IRIS provides a platform to stimulate critical reflection on the
foundations, mechanisms, implications, and effects of intelligent
systems in research, teaching, and society.
*About Stuttgart and the University of Stuttgart*
The University of Stuttgart is a technically oriented university in
Germany. It is especially known for engineering and related topics, with
its computer science department being ranked highly, both nationally and
internationally. The Institute for Natural Language Processing, which is
part of the Faculty of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering, is
one of the largest academic research institutes for natural language
processing in Germany, with three full professors, an assistant
professor, three senior lecturers, and a staff of more than thirty
researchers. Its activities range from computational corpus linguistics
to semantic processing, deep learning, machine translation,
psycholinguistics, and phonetics, and hosts several projects funded by
the European Commission (EC), the German Research Foundation (DFG), and
various foundations. The institute manages dedicated BSc and MSc
programs in Computational Linguistics.
The city of Stuttgart [11] is the capital of the state of
Baden-Württemberg in southwest Germany. It is a lively and international
city, known for its strong economy and rich culture. With Germany's
high-speed train system, it is well-connected to many other interesting
places, for instance, Munich and Cologne (~2.5 hours), Paris (~3.5
hours), Berlin (~5.5 hours), Strasbourg (<1.5 hours), and Lake of
Constance (~2.5 hours).
*Links*
[1] www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de/en/institute/team/Falenska
[2] www.iris.uni-stuttgart.de/research/iris3d
[3] mwk.baden-wuerttemberg.de/de/startseite
[4] www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de
[5] www.uni-stuttgart.de
[6] oeffentlicher-dienst.info/c/t/rechner/tv-l/west?id=tv-l-2015
[7]
www.student.uni-stuttgart.de/en/uni-a-to-z/Graduate-Academy-of-the-University-of-Stuttgart-GRADUS
[8] www.iris.uni-stuttgart.de
[9] www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de/en/institute/researchgroups/edelib
[10] cyber-valley.de
[11] www.stuttgart-tourist.de/en
[12]
www.uni-stuttgart.de/en/university/organization/management/staff-positions/gender-equality-office
[13] www.ims.uni-stuttgart.de/en/institute/researchgroups/mist
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