PhD position in intelligent interactive systems with a focus on social robotics
Division of Visual Information and Interaction,
Department of Information Technology
Uppsala University, Sweden
Application deadline: November 21, 2014
Uppsala University is an international research university focused on the development of science and education. Our most important assets are all the individuals who with their curiosity and their dedication makes Uppsala University one of Sweden’s most exciting work places. Uppsala University has 41.000 students, 6,500 employees and a turnover of SEK 5,900 million.
The Division of Visual Information and Interaction The Division of Visual Information and Interaction of the Department of Information Technology is making a strategic initiative towards building a new research strand concerned with the study of intelligent interactive systems, with a specific focus on natural interaction with social artefacts such as embodied virtual agents and, especially, robots.
This domain concerns bringing together multidisciplinary expertise to address new challenges in the area of social robotics, including mutual human-robot co-adaptation, multimodal multiparty natural interaction with social robots, multimodal human affect and social behaviour recognition, multimodal expression generation, robot learning from users, behaviour personalisation, effects of embodiment (physical robot versus embodied virtual agent) and other fundamental aspects of human-robot interaction (HRI).
The focus of the PhD position will be the study of multimodal bi-directional interaction with social robots and embodied agents.
The student will be part of the Division of Visual Information and Interaction of the Department of Information Technology. There are approximately 275 employees at the department, including 110 teachers and 120 PhD students, and more than 3000 students are registered for one or more courses every year. For more information, see http://www.it.uu.se/research/vi2 and www.it.uu.se.
Qualifications: The candidate must have a MSc degree in computer science or related areas relevant to the PhD topics. Good programming skills are required. The PhD is highly interdisciplinary and requires an understanding and/or interest in psychology and social sciences.
The position is for at most five years, and includes department duties (mainly teaching) at a level of at most 20%, as well as course participation. You will be expected to be able to teach in Swedish or English, and good English communication skills, both spoken and written, are required.
Rules governing PhD candidates are set out in the Higher Education Ordinance Chapter 5, § § 1-7, and in the Uppsala University’s rules and guidelines, at http://regler.uu.se/Rules_and_regulations_in_English/.
The department is striving to achieve a more equal gender balance and female candidates are particularly invited to apply.
The application should include a description of your research interests, reasons for applying for this PhD position with us and past experience, a CV, copies of exams, degrees and grades, relevant publications, a copy of your MSc thesis and other relevant documents. Candidates are encouraged to provide letter(s) of recommendation and contact information to reference persons. We would also like to know the earliest possible date for starting. In order to apply, please follow the instructions at this link: http://www.uu.se/en/join-us/jobs-detail-page/?positionId=46224
Please note that applications can only be accepted via the web interface provided at this link.
Further information about the position can be provided by Dr. Ginevra Castellano, ginevra.castellano@it.uu.se, +46 18 471 3463, who will be the PhD supervisor, and Prof. Ingela Nyström, ingela.nystrom@it.uu.se, +46 70 1679045.
You are welcome to submit your application no later than November 21, 2014. UFV-PA 2014/3172.