Project Researcher position (fixed-term) for the period of 1 January 2020 – 31 December 2020.

The University of Turku is a world-class multidisciplinary research university offering interesting challenges and a unique vantage point to national and international research and education.

The School of Languages and Translation Studies (SLT) is an international teaching and research centre that trains various types of experts in languages, cultures and communication, such as teachers, translators, language experts and researchers. The SLT have a long tradition in compiling specialized digital linguistic corpora, and these corpora already have a dedicated base of domestic and international users who represent various special fields.

The Digilang project (2018–2021) focuses on the further development of these digital databases and corpora and aims to improve their usability, accessibility and visibility by collecting them under the brand new Digilang Portal, which will become a permanent and integral part of the research infrastructure of the SLT. This, in turn, will help strengthen the brand of the University of Turku and the SLT as a developer of digital linguistic corpora. The LOG corpus is one of the subprojects of the Digilang project. The LOG corpus focuses on the cognitive and genetic processes of writing and translation, based on a corpus of log files.

We are seeking a computer scientist or a highly motivated and experienced computational linguist to join the research group LOG-corpus (Department of Language and Translations studies), as a Project Researcher. Project Researcher duties include, at first, the understanding of the nature of the data and its context, then the development/building of a program in order to convert the raw data (log) into a more intuitive representation according to state-of-the-art methods, mainly a graph representation. It then consists of the building of programs to manipulate efficiently the data and its various representations to help researchers from the linguistic and didactic fields better understand writing and translation processes.

The position starts on January 1st, 2020at the earliest (or as agreed). The position is  fixed-term for 10 to 12 months

Qualification Requirements

Qualification requirements for the Project Researcher position are stated in the Rules of Procedure of the University of Turku. A Project Researcher is required to have at least an applicable master’s degree.

A suitable candidate has:

• A master’s degree in Computer Science or related fields
• Algorithmics experience
• Fluency in C++
• Ability to work both in a team and independently
• Willingness to learn new and multidisciplinary skills as needed
• Good communication and interpersonal skills
• Good scientific writing skills
• Fluent in English or French language

We also appreciate the following:

• Experience with complex networks analysis and visualization
• Experience with statistical data analysis

Salary

The salary is in accordance with the University salary system for teaching and research personnel levels 2 – 4, where the work-specific salary component is between 2,033.29 – 2,535.20 euros/month. The component based on personal performance adds a minimum of 6 % and a maximum of 50 % to the base salary.

There will be a trial period of six months.

Why Join Us?

We are a team of scientists with a solid track record of successful mentoring, inter-institutional international collaborations in multi-disciplinary research ranging from computer science to computational linguistics. Our collaborators for this project come from several international universities (e.g. Canada, Finland, France) allowing for excellent networking opportunities

How to Apply

Applications must be submitted via the University of Turku’s electronic application form by 24 November 2019 at 11.59 p.m. at the latest. A link to the application system is available at the beginning of this announcement (‘Apply for the job’) and on the website www.utu.fi/career. The application should be written in English and include a motivation letter (one page), CV (max 2 pages), copies of relevant degree certificates, and contact information of 1–2 referees.

Applicants will receive invitations to the interview starting from 2.12.2019. Interviews will be conducted in person or via Skype.

The decision will be made within one week following the interviews.

For further information about the position, please contact Dr. Christophe Leblay (christophe.leblay@utu.fi). Inquiries about the recruitment process should be directed to HR Specialist Maija Österlund (maija.osterlund@utu.fi).