Wageningen University and Research centre has a mission: "To explore the potential of nature to improve the quality of life”. Wageningen UR is a research institution that focuses on the domain ‘healthy food and living conditions.' We do not just develop top-quality expertise; we also help translate our knowledge into practice worldwide. That is why we do fundamental and applied research all over the world. And finally, we also train professionals who, in the near and distant future, will discover breakthroughs in science and technology. At Centre for Development Innovation, part of Wageningen UR, we provide a number of inspiring courses with a high impact. As we know that many participants face financial constraints in attending courses, we draw your attention to the possibilities of fellowships. In the next two months there is an opportunity to get an fellowship for a number of courses (see below). As it takes time to complete the application file, we advise you to start as soon as possible if you want to apply for an fellowship. Innovation and change Read more   The Innovation Change programme lies at the heart of the Centre for Development Innovation’s mandate. We enable people and organisations to be strategic in the face of complexity. We do this by helping to create the understanding and skills needed to work together, innovate, deal with differences, and bring about positive change. Innovation Change is our core expertise and is embedded in all our programmes. Courses in this theme: Décentralisation en milieu rural et gouvernance locale Facilitating multi-stakeholder processes and social learning Planification, suivi evaluation participatifs Ecosystem governance Read more   In this programme theme we aim for an integrated perspective on improving the management of natural resources. We make use of ecosystem management thinking as well as analysing and finding ways to improve the governance of natural resources. We do this by: • applying an ecosystems approach to natural resources management; • promoting transparent and democratic multiple stakeholders decision-making; • promoting the principles of learning and adaptive management; • skilful facilitation of complex change processes; • demonstrating how biodiversity conservation, sustainable development and poverty reduction can be combined. Courses in this theme: Climate change governance Governance of landscapes forests and people Ecosystem approach to fisheries Adaptive management of natural resources Landscape leadership Adaptive agriculture Read more   CDI’s Adaptive Agriculture programme works with partners in agri-food production systems to deal with challenges this world is facing: feeding the growing world population, adapting to climate change, producing and processing food in a sustainable manner, dealing with emerging diseases, and countering the natural resource decline. Our crop and livestock systems need to change if we are to produce and distribute more and safer products with fewer resources and less waste. Tackling such multi-dimensional challenges requires cooperation between the different stakeholders in agricultural production systems. We help public, private and civil society actors to join hands to realise technical, strategic, and institutional alternatives. Courses in this theme: Lost harvest and wasted food Plant genetic resources and seeds Sustainable markets Read more   In many countries, the agricultural sector accounts for up to 80% of employment, and up to 90% of the rural population is entirely dependent on the sector for their livelihoods. Agriculture contributes substantially to GDP and, as a supplier of raw materials, to manufacturing value added. The Sustainable Markets programme supports market-led initiatives in agriculture so they become real drivers for pro-poor rural economic development. We deploy our knowledge and expertise about partnership mechanisms and market development, thus contributing to robust business models for change. Courses in this theme: Organised farmers as partners in agribusiness Local economic development Promoting entrepreneurship and agribusiness development Inclusive agribusiness (new Course) Food and nutrition security Read more   The Food and nutrition security programme focuses on food security and nutrition improvement in contexts ranging from the global to the local and individual level. We view food and nutrition security in a multi-dimensional and integrated way, and bring together dimensions of production and productivity increases, access to markets with ultimately consumption of nutritious foods and the utilisation of nutrients by the human body. The strength of our programme is that we combine content related expertise on food and nutrition security with process oriented activities such as policy advise, programme design, capacity development and institutional development and change. Monitoring and evaluation specifically oriented at the food and nutrition security situation of targeted population groups is an explicit element of our activities. The Food and nutrition security programme programme regards a  well-nourished and healthy population as an essential contribution to the development of a community or a nation. Course in this theme HIV/AIDS and food and nutrition security Agriculture nutrition linkages

Centre for Development Innovation Droevendaalsesteeg 1 6708 BP  WAGENINGEN

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There is now an open PhD position in the Department of Civil Engineering that will be coupled with an externally financed research project entitled “A methodology to determine optimal water distribution network work programs (WATERWORKS)”.

PhD Position in the maintenance planning of a water distribution network

The objective of this work is to develop a methodology to be used to determine optimal work programs for a global drinking water system, including treatment plants, storage tanks, pumping stations, and the distribution network. This methodology will have the potential to be used by water network managers to take into consideration the many factors that are required in making decisions both now and in the future, along with the uncertainty associated with these factors, as to when, where and how to intervene on the network. It will include the development of standardized processes for the collection and administration of data and information.The project will be conducted in the Institute of Construction and Infrastructure Management under the direction of Prof. Dr. Bryan T. Adey, and will involve regular interaction with the manager of the water distribution network.

The successful candidate for the PhD position will have a Master’s in civil engineering, environmental engineering or systems engineering and will have a keen interest in the modelling of network behavior, operations research and the management of infrastructure. It is beneficial if the successful candidate has an interest in information management systems. As the manager of the water distribution network is French speaking, the successful candidate must speak French fluently. The ability to speak and work in English or German is beneficial.

For further information please contact Mrs. Anne-Marie Weiersmüller by e-mail weiersmueller@ibi.baug.ethz.ch (no applications) and visit our website www.ibi.baug.ethz.ch.

Applications must include a letter of interest, CV (with list of publications and contact information of two referees)  and grades of all university courses taken and should be sent online with attention to:

ETH Zurich, Mrs. Corina Niescher, Human Resources, CH-8092 Zürich by February 28th, 2015. Screening of applications starts on March 1st, 2015.

link:

https://pub.refline.ch/845721/3714/++publications++/1/index.html

 

** Technische Universität Berlin - Department of Computer Science **


Starting as soon as possible a fully funded research position is available at the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the TU-Berlin.


The DAI-Labor at the Technische Universität Berlin is looking for a doctoral research associate in the areas of semantic service composition, artificial intelligence, smart environments and electric mobility. The candidate will be responsible for including leading a team of students, managing projects, writing project proposals as well as communicating with national and international partners.
Assignment:


•        Research in semantic service composition, adaptive systems, user modelling, and semantic service interconnection


•        Evaluation in the areas of  smart environments, e-mobility services, adaptive and dynamic service compositions


•        Leading and supervision of a team of students


•        Preparation of scientific publications


•        Conceptual design of projects


•        Acquisition and management of third party funded projects


•        Communication with external project partners
Your profile


•        Master degree in computer science or a discipline related to the research area


•        Knowledge in the field of model-based development and model-driven engineering would be appreciated.


•        Experience in project and team management, very good social and effective communication skills


•        Willingness  for independent scientific work


•        Maker and doer, used to take initiative, and a team player


•        Excellent spoken and written English, German is a plus


•        Experience in teaching
We offer


•       Exciting topics and a vibrant environment


•       Excellent state-of-the-art infrastructure with access to new and emerging technologies


•       A smart home environment and living lab for evaluation of results


•       Close collaboration with national and international partners from research institutes, universities and industry


•       Possibility to pursue Phd
About the DAI-Labor
The DAI-Labor and the chair "Agent technologies in business applications and telecommunication" at the Technische Universität Berlin, headed by Prof. Dr. Dr. hc Sahin Albayrak, perform research and development in order to provide solutions for a new generation of systems and services – "smart services and smart systems".
Research at the DAI-Labor is done in competence centers, which address different areas, ranging from investigation of the foundations of distributed systems and machine learning, to enhancing security in networks and interactive systems. The scientific grounding and results of the competence centers are used to develop system solutions in different application centers. The application centers focus on the development of intelligent services and systems to deal with current and future challenges of society. State-of-the-art testbeds allow validating and demonstrating these services in realistic scenarios. Close cooperation with industry partners ensures an approach that is both practical and solution oriented. All of this allows the DAI-Labor to develop technologies within a university environment that meets even the highest industry standards.
For further information regarding this position and our institute, please see our website http://www.dai-labor.de, or contact Johannes Fähndrich at johannes.faehndrich@dai-labor.de<mailto:johannes.faehndrich@dai-labor.de>.
Applications including a CV, a brief description of their research interests, copies of their university degree and/or study transcripts, and a list of publications should be sent to bewerbungNGS@dai-labor.de<mailto:bewerbungNGS@dai-labor.de>, with reference  IV-496/14 no later than February 27th, 2015.
To apply please send you application to: Technische Universität Berlin - Der Präsident - , Fakultät IV, Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik und Quantitative
Methoden, DAI-Labor, Prof. Dr. Dr. Albayrak, Sekr. TEL 14, Ernst-Reuter-Platz 7, 10587 Berlin.


More details can be found here: http://www.personalabteilung.tu-berlin.de/menue/jobs/externe_jobs/
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Apologies for cross-postings.

Master internship and PhD position in Conditional Random Field learning for Sentiment Analysis in Phone Conversations

Telecom ParisTech (http://www.telecom-paristech.fr/eng/)
37 rue Dareau, 75014 Paris - France

Advisors:
Chloé Clavel  (http://clavel.wp.mines-telecom.fr/)
Slim Essid  (http://perso.telecom-paristech.fr/~essid/)

Starting date: Anytime from February to June 2015

Funding: Secured with the Telecom ParisTech Machine Learning for Big Data Chaire (http://machinelearningforbigdata.telecom-paristech.fr)

Keywords: Sentiment Analysis, Opinion Mining, Machine Learning, Conditional Random Fields, Natural Language Processing, Audio and Speech Processing

Applications are invited for a 3 to 6 month master internship to be continued by work towards a PhD for a duration of 36 months. Outstanding candidates will be considered to start the PhD work immediately, without doing the internship.

Topic:
Sentiment analysis and opinion mining have gained an increasing interest with the explosion of textual content conveying users’ opinions (e.g. film reviews, forum debates, tweets). Hence, natural language processing researchers have dedicated a great deal of effort into the development of methods amenable to opinion detection in such texts, though often simplifying the problem to one of classification over the valence (positive vs negative) and intensity axes. As for sentiment analysis in speech signals, there have been hardly any attempts. Further challenges are posed in this case where not only should the special features of spoken language be taken into account, but also prosodic features and the potential errors of automatic speech recognition systems.
The research work planned will focus on the development of sentiment analysis methods in the context of phone conversations. The privileged research direction will consist in exploiting the appraisal theory adapted to the verbal content (as defined by psycho-linguists) in order to create effective computational models of evaluative expressions. In particular, Conditional Random Fields will be considered with feature functions encoding the semantic rules usually used for our task.

IDEAL CANDIDATE:
Master’s student or Master’s degree with background in
-    Machine learning / pattern recognition
-    Speech processing, natural language processing
-    Excellent programming skills (Python, Java, C/C++)
-    Good English level

APPLICATIONS :
To be sent to chloe.clavel@telecom-paristech.fr, slim.essid@telecom-paristech.fr,:
-    Curriculum Vitae
-    Statement of interest (in the body of the email)
-    Academic records
-    List of references

Incomplete applications will not be considered.

The successful candidate will develop models for machine perception and control that are capable of compositional and open-ended learning, and study their biological plausibility.

Nationality: Open to all.
Deadline: 1st March 2015.
Interviews expected: March 2015.
Start Date: Spring 2015.

For more details and a application:
http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AKL097/phd-studentship-in-autonomous-learning/
For queries contact: Dr. Timothy Hospedales t.hospedales@qmul.ac.uk --

** Technische Universität Berlin - Department of Computer Science **


Starting as soon as possible a fully funded research position is available at the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at the TU-Berlin.


The DAI-Labor at the Technische Universität Berlin is looking for a doctoral research associate in the areas of semantic service composition, artificial intelligence, smart environments and electric mobility. The candidate will be responsible for including leading a team of students, managing projects, writing project proposals as well as communicating with national and international partners.
Assignment:


•        Research in semantic service composition, adaptive systems, user modelling, and semantic service interconnection


•        Evaluation in the areas of  smart environments, e-mobility services, adaptive and dynamic service compositions


•        Leading and supervision of a team of students


•        Preparation of scientific publications


•        Conceptual design of projects


•        Acquisition and management of third party funded projects


•        Communication with external project partners
Your profile


•        Master degree in computer science or a discipline related to the research area


•        Knowledge in the field of model-based development and model-driven engineering would be appreciated.


•        Experience in project and team management, very good social and effective communication skills


•        Willingness  for independent scientific work


•        Maker and doer, used to take initiative, and a team player


•        Excellent spoken and written English, German is a plus


•        Experience in teaching
We offer


•       Exciting topics and a vibrant environment


•       Excellent state-of-the-art infrastructure with access to new and emerging technologies


•       A smart home environment and living lab for evaluation of results


•       Close collaboration with national and international partners from research institutes, universities and industry


•       Possibility to pursue Phd
About the DAI-Labor
The DAI-Labor and the chair "Agent technologies in business applications and telecommunication" at the Technische Universität Berlin, headed by Prof. Dr. Dr. hc Sahin Albayrak, perform research and development in order to provide solutions for a new generation of systems and services – "smart services and smart systems".
Research at the DAI-Labor is done in competence centers, which address different areas, ranging from investigation of the foundations of distributed systems and machine learning, to enhancing security in networks and interactive systems. The scientific grounding and results of the competence centers are used to develop system solutions in different application centers. The application centers focus on the development of intelligent services and systems to deal with current and future challenges of society. State-of-the-art testbeds allow validating and demonstrating these services in realistic scenarios. Close cooperation with industry partners ensures an approach that is both practical and solution oriented. All of this allows the DAI-Labor to develop technologies within a university environment that meets even the highest industry standards.
For further information regarding this position and our institute, please see our website http://www.dai-labor.de, or contact Johannes Fähndrich at johannes.faehndrich@dai-labor.dedai-labor.de>.
Applications including a CV, a brief description of their research interests, copies of their university degree and/or study transcripts, and a list of publications should be sent to bewerbungNGS@dai-labor.de<mailto:bewerbungNGS@dai-labor.de>, with reference  IV-496/14 no later than February 27th, 2015.
To apply please send you application to: Technische Universität Berlin - Der Präsident - , Fakultät IV, Institut für Wirtschaftsinformatik und Quantitative
Methoden, DAI-Labor, Prof. Dr. Dr. Albayrak, Sekr. TEL 14, Ernst-Reuter-Platz 7, 10587 Berlin.


More details can be found here: http://www.personalabteilung.tu-berlin.de/menue/jobs/externe_jobs/
_________________________