硕士招生 | 马耳他大学招收计算语言学（奖学金资助）硕士

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University of Malta

马耳他大学(Universita ta Malta)是马耳他唯一的的国立大学，它的悠久历史可追溯到1592年。大学本部坐落在Msida，校园宽敞，设施先进，在校生8000多人，其中包括78个国家的800多名外国留学生（有30%的学生在读硕士和博士课程）

Department: Institute of Linguistics and Language Technology

Web Address: https://www.um.edu.mt/linguistics

Level: MA / MSc

Institution/Organization: University of Malta

Specialty Areas: Computational Linguistics

Deep Learning, Computer Vision

Description:

Fully-funded Research Support Officer / PhD Candidate to conduct research on multimodal semantic grounding and model transparency, at the interface between Natural Language Processing and Computer Vision.

This project forms part of the EU-funded NL4XAI Innovative Training Network.

The researcher will work under the supervision of Albert Gatt (https://staff.um.edu.mt/albert.gatt/) at the University of Malta, and the co-supervision of Kees van Deemter (https://www.uu.nl/staff/CJvanDeemter) at the University of Utrecht.

This PhD project falls within the NL4XAI Training Network, which focusses on the challenge of making AI systems intelligible through the use of Natural Language. In this specific project, the focus will be on models -- especially neural models -- which generate language from perceptual (e.g. image or video) input (for example, to answer questions, or generate descriptive or narrative captions). Such systems raise a number of important questions, such as:

(a) to what extent are the choices made by a language model truly grounded in sensory information?

(b) what is the best way to design training data for such models to ensure that perceptual and linguistic modalities are complementary, rather than redundant?

(c) how can the choices made by such models be rendered explicit or intelligible to human users?

These questions will be addressed in a variety of ways, including through techniques to test the sensitivity of neural Vision-Language models, as well as behavioural techniques to evaluate them against human input.

Both Albert Gatt and Kees van Deemter have long-standing track records in research in Natural Language Generation. The successful candidate will be part of the Institute of Linguistics and Language Technology at the University of Malta, working in a group of researchers working on several aspects of NLP, as well as on language from theoretical, experimental and applied perspectives. Successful candidates will also benefit from the training network which is being set up under the European NL4XAI Innovative Training Network (https://nl4xai.eu/).

In the course of their work, the researcher will carry out two three-month secondments to the University of Utrecht, and one three-month secondment to Orange in Lanion, France (with Lina Rohas-Barahona and J. Heinecke).

The NL4XAI project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 860621.

Web Address for Applications: https://nl4xai.eu/vacancies/

Contact Information:

        Dr Albert Gatt

        albert.gatt@um.edu.mt