[iva] PhD position in Conversational systems and Social robotics, KTH, Sweden

[Gabriel Skantze]

PhD position in Conversational systems and Social robotics, KTH, Sweden

KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm has grown to become one
of Europe’s leading technical and engineering universities, as well as
a key centre of intellectual talent and innovation. We are Sweden’s
largest technical research and learning institution and home to
students, researchers and faculty from around the world.

We are looking for a doctoral student that will work on situated
spoken interaction between humans and robots, under the supervision of
Assoc. Prof. Gabriel Skantze, at the Department of Speech Music and
Hearing. A central research question will be how social robots should
adapt their conversational behavior to the users' level of attention,
understanding and engagement. This means that the robot must be able
to monitor gaze and feedback behaviour from the user, and then for
example adjust the pace of information delivery, in real time. The
work will involve implementation of components for conversational
systems, collecting data and doing experiments with users interacting
with the system, and using this data to build models of the users'
behaviours.

Applicants should have a Master degree (or similar) in a subject
relevant for the research, such as computer science, language
technology, or cognitive science. Applicants are expected to have good
skills in programming, and knowledge in either experimental methods
and statistics, or machine learning. Applicants must be strongly
motivated for doctoral studies, possess the ability to work
independently and perform critical analysis, and possess good levels
of cooperative and communicative abilities. Good command of English,
in writing and speaking, is a prerequisite for presenting research
results in international periodicals and at conferences. We also
expect applicants to have a deep interest in spoken language
interaction between humans and between humans and machines.

The position is mainly a research position for 4-5 years, with a small
fraction of departmental duties (e.g. teaching). The starting date is
open for discussion, though ideally we would like the successful
candidate to start as soon as possible.

For more information, see:
https://www.kth.se/en/om/work-at-kth/lediga-jobb/what:job/jobID:178626/where:4/