In het kort
Opent een externe website.
Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
Waar staat Rijksuniversiteit Groningen voor? Wat vinden ze belangrijk? Ontdek het hier.
Within the Center for Groningen Language and Culture (CGTC) we are looking for a postdoctoral researcher (0.8 FTE, 25 months) on speech technology for Low Saxon varieties. The goal of this postdoctoral position is to investigate how low-resource speech technology can be developed and improved, specifically focusing on the various Dutch Low Saxon varieties. Consequently, this position will entail doing high-quality research into how low-resource varieties can benefit optimally from the most recent language and speech technology advancements and/or developing new approaches for this purpose. The position also entails helping (to supervise) PhD students with the development and improvement of automatic speech recognition (ASR) systems or text-to-speech (TTS) systems, as well as making these available for public use. The implemented technology will be made publicly available and may also be used in the MOI Grunnen | Drenthe project (www.wijzijnmoi.nl). In this project, learning material and an integrative approach is developed for teaching primary school children the regional language. Additional tasks for the successful applicant may involve helping to collect acoustic or textual data for these varieties (e.g., using custom online interfaces, or using our state-of-the-art mobile laboratory SPRAAKLAB), and attempting to acquire external research funding benefiting both the project and personal development. You will also collaborate with several PhDs and a postdoc working specifically on the MOI Grunnen | Drenthe project. You will become a member of both the GroNLP group and Speech Lab Groningen and as such, willingness to help with public engagement activities is also desirable.
Where are you going to work?
You are going to be embedded in the Center for Groningen Language and Culture (and Speech Lab Groningen) within the broader GroNLP research group. Within the Center for Groningen Language and Culture, ample high-performance facilities are available to help you with your research. Specifically, we have access to our own server containing two A100 40GB GPUs, as well as an NVIDIA Grace Hopper system with a single H100 GPU. In addition, we have access to a Temi robot, and access to the mobile laboratory SPRAAKLAB. Funding is available every year to travel to conferences (if a paper can be presented). You will be supervised by Prof.dr. Martijn Wieling and Prof.dr. Malvina Nissim. You are expected to relocate to Groningen or its vicinity for this position.
What are you going to do?
- Conducting independent high-quality research (and publishing) on improving speech technology for low resource varieties, mainly aimed at the varieties of Low Saxon.
- Publishing the research results at the top conferences and publication venues in the field.
- Collaborating with several PhD students and a postdoctoral researcher who focus on developing and improving speech and language technology for low resource languages.
- Helping to collect and organize speech recordings of the varieties for which speech and language technology is developed.
- (Helping to) write external funding applications to further strengthen the research on speech technology for low resource varieties.
- Help with public engagement activities, specifically those aimed at the Low Saxon area.
- Participate in the weekly GroNLP meetings, and the bi-weekly Speech Lab Groningen meetings.
- Potentially help supervising BA or MA theses focusing on this subject.
Who are you?
You are an ambitious researcher with (or close to getting) a PhD in Speech and/or Language Technology, Computational Linguistics, Computer Science or Artificial Intelligence. You have strong publications in journals and the main conferences in the field you obtained your PhD in. You have a demonstrably strong technical profile which is sufficient to conduct the tasks listed below, with experience in applying or developing speech technology, and an interest in or experience in developing speech technology benefiting low-resource varieties.
Specifically, we expect the following:
- You hold a PhD in Speech and/or Language Technology, Computational Linguistics, Computer Science or Artificial Intelligence.
- You have several impactful publications that demonstrate your research skills in the above field/
- You have demonstrable skills in evaluating and/or improving speech technology
- You have experience, or are willing to learn, implementing language technology in a user-accessible way (e.g., via a website, or online application).
- You demonstrate motivation to seek further research funding.
- You are motivated to collaborate with PhD students and another postdoctoral researcher on low-resource speech and language technology.
- Your level of English is sufficient to write academic articles and present your work.
- Motivation to learn (or the ability to already speak) the regional language (courses can be provided) is considered a plus.
