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<p>Hello,</p>
<p>There is a Post-doctoral position open at Sorbonne University in
the ISIR lab on modeling group of virtual coaches. <br>
</p>
<p>Location: ISIR - Sorbonne University, Jussieu, Paris</p>
<p>Starting data: Now</p>
<p>Ending date: 31 September 2020<br>
</p>
<p>Stipend; according to curriculum</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Application: <span lang="EN-US"> send a CV and
names of reference to<span style="mso-spacerun:yes"> </span><a
href="mailto:catherine.pelachaud@upmc.fr">catherine.pelachaud@upmc.fr</a></span></p>
<span lang="EN-US"></span>
<p>Topic:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:center" align="center"><b
style="mso-bidi-font-weight:
normal"><span lang="EN-US">Modeling Virtual Coaches</span></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align:justify"><span lang="EN-US">The
European
Horizon-2020 project Council of Coaches aims to develop a tool
in which virtual
embodied coaches form a team of experts that can discuss amongst
themselves and
with the user how the user could improve his healthy lifestyle
behaviors. The
project combines state of the art 3D Virtual Avatars with
language and
reasoning technology and applies this to the area of lifestyle
and behavior
change coaching.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The goal of research is to
design,
implement and evaluate user interaction with the team of virtual
agents, the
council of coaches (Home Interface) and one-on-one interaction
with a single
coach (Mobile Interface). In particular it focuses on</span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpFirst"
style="margin-left:38.25pt;mso-add-space:
auto;text-indent:-18.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span
style="mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri;mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-latin"
lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">1.<span
style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span><span lang="EN-US">Modelling coaches with
their
own specific agenda and behaviour style aiming at creating
unique social
relationships with users. </span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpMiddle"
style="margin-left:38.25pt;mso-add-space:
auto;text-indent:-18.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span
style="mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri;mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-latin"
lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">2.<span
style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span><span lang="EN-US">Adapting virtual
coaches’
behavior to ensure that user maintains her involvement in the
relationship with
the coaches. </span></p>
<p class="MsoListParagraphCxSpLast"
style="margin-left:38.25pt;mso-add-space:
auto;text-indent:-18.0pt;mso-list:l0 level1 lfo1"><span
style="mso-bidi-font-family:Calibri;mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-latin"
lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-list:Ignore">3.<span
style="font:7.0pt "Times New Roman"">
</span></span></span><span lang="EN-US">Integrating a
backchannel model
to ensure dynamic turn-taking and user’s engagement.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">Specific attention will be
given to the
development of virtual coaches with a wide variety of
behavioural
characteristics and personality traits. Several studies have
shown how low
level features such as behaviour expressivity and high level
characteristic
(e.g. personality traits ) affect user’s involvement in their
interaction with
the virtual characters and impact his performances (McRorie et
al., 2011)
(Paiva et al., 2017)). The behavioural model will be based on
data analysis
from corpora collected within the project using machine learning
approach.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US">The work in this research
will make use of
and build upon the GRETA/VIB platform developed at UPMC (Pecune
et al., 2014)
for multimodal behaviour generation and for visualizing virtual
coaches. </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-US"><br>
</span></p>
<br>
<span lang="EN-US"> </span>
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