[iva] Postdoc: Declarative modelling of narrative worlds - Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

Willem-Paul Brinkman - EWI W.P.Brinkman at tudelft.nl
Mon Feb 6 16:20:33 CET 2017


Engels -- Faculty/department Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science
Level PhD degree
Maximum employment Maximum of 38 hours per week (1 FTE)
Duration of contract ~18 months (starting as soon as possible)
Salary scale €2532 to €3997 per month gross
 
Job description
This position is integrated in the 'Virtual eCoaching and Storytelling technology for post-traumatic stress disorder treatment' project, which studies how effective an online guided self-therapy system could be for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) patients.
This research focuses on methods for enabling patients to easily re-create a personal experience within a suiting virtual environment. This project aims at investigating how declarative and procedural modelling methods can automate the generation of such narrative worlds, and how such methods could involve PTSD patients in casting their storytelling process for therapeutic purposes.
The generic methods developed will help users create a virtual world that supports enacting an input story. A proof-of-concept system based on such mixed-initiative methods will be developed, enabling authors to customize their own narrative world version for a given story they like. This system will combine new techniques with in-house algorithms and systems, e.g. procedural methods, constraints solvers, and graphical libraries.
The candidate will investigate (1) how the use of rich object semantics can steer the creation of a narrative world; (2) how to create and interpret a story's plan, and to materialize it in a narrative world layout; and (3) how to make procedural techniques accessible to non-technical users.

Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science
The Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS) is known worldwide for its high academic quality and the social relevance of its research programmes. The faculty’s excellent facilities accentuate its international position in teaching and research. The faculty offers an interdisciplinary setting for its 500 employees, 350 PhD students and 1700 undergraduates. Together they work on a broad range of technical innovations in the fields of sustainable energy, telecommunications, microelectronics, embedded systems, computer and software engineering, interactive multimedia and applied mathematics.
The Department of Intelligent Systems (INSY) conceptualises computer science methodologies to sense, abstract, learn, reason, elicit and adapt data and their meaning in ways that respect human values in order to increase human effectiveness, well-being and social innovation. The department's core activities are research and education in computer science theory, algorithms and solutions for useful information processing systems (e.g. robotics), new products (e.g. Internet services), and science.
The project will be mainly performed within the Computer Graphics and Visualisation Group, which has more than 30 years of experience in research in a wide range of topics in computer graphics, visualisation, game technology, augmented/virtual reality, and geometric modelling.


Requirements
You have a university PhD degree in computer science, human-computer interaction or a related area, with excellent grades. Experience with computer graphics and other game technologies is a plus. You have excellent programming skills in languages such as C#, C++ and Python, and have a passion for game technology, computational storytelling and (serious) gaming. You have excellent communication skills, and a good mastery of both spoken and written English. You have a creative mind and are an excellent player in a multi-disciplinary team, spanning areas such as human-computer interaction, computer graphics, serious gaming, and clinical psychology.

Conditions of employment
TU Delft offers an attractive benefits package, including a flexible work week, and the option of assembling a customised compensation and benefits package (the 'IKA'). Salary and benefits are in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities. 

Information and application
For more information about this position, please contact Rafael Bidarra, phone: +31 (0)15-2784564, e-mail: r.bidarra at tudelft.nl. To apply, please send a detailed CV together with a letter of motivation, two references and a list of Master courses attended along with the corresponding passing grades. Please e-mail your application before Februari 24, 2017 to Ms. A. J. Prummel, Hr-eemcs at tudelft.nl.
When applying for this position, please refer to vacancy number EWI2016-52.



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