Postdoc Position on Multimedia Analysis

Are you passionate about developing cutting-edge AI techniques to enhance interaction and communication across multiple modalities, such as text, pictures, audio, and video? Join the large scale HAICu project to help unlock the potential of cultural digital archives through multimodal use, providing richer context and a more comprehensive analysis of current complex issues in society. If this fits your expertise and interests, the Interaction Division of Utrecht University is seeking you!

Your job

We are looking for a postdoctoral researcher to work within the multi-partner HAICu NWA-ORC project. This project is implemented by an ambitious consortium including many universities, knowledge institutions, archives, foundations, cultural institutions and business partners in the Netherlands. It aims to use improved access to digital heritage to tutor the Digital Citizen in the use of big data. It brings together AI researchers and Digital Humanities scholars to seek solutions to the problem of inadequate data-mining tools we have, aiming to derive information from the continuous stream of data about the present and the past. This will help citizens and other regular users, heritage curators and journalists who are interested in tapping heritage collections, as well as civic organizations and authorities interested in improving civic participation.

The research in this postdoctoral position focuses on text and image feature learning for news ecosystems, analysing the complex multidimensional feature space of visual information to support data-driven journalism. This includes experiments for accountability, transparency, inclusiveness, and misinformation. The key technology is multimodal deep learning, and its extensions for these additional targets. In particular, we have a large collection of newspaper articles dealing with migration-related topics, and we are investigating how text and image analysis can provide insights into such a corpus.

Research will include testing, validation and evaluation on large scale and interoperable collections, in cooperation with the societal partners in the project, including the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, the National Archive, and the National Library of the Netherlands. The research will take place in collaboration with the HAICu fieldlab ‘Deep Journalism’, which develops functionality for searching for items about a similar topic from different archives and with various modalities to support news journalists.

As a postdoc in this project, you will conduct research in close collaboration with a multidisciplinary research team. This position offers you the opportunity to further develop your academic skills and contribute to groundbreaking research. Next to that it provides a unique opportunity to network with an extensive scientific and cultural network of people in the Netherlands, and to seek answers to societal problems jointly with a great team of top scholars.

Your qualities

We are looking for a talented postdoc candidate, with a keen interest in academic and professional development, who meets the following requirements:

• a PhD degree in computer science or artificial intelligence;
• demonstrable machine learning skills;
• curiosity about societal issues and how AI can be employed for the benefit of the public;
• strong teamwork skills, as collaboration with other researchers and stakeholders is key to the project’s success;
• comfortable in doing multidisciplinary research and interacting with important stakeholders and eager to conduct innovative and thorough research;
• fluency in written and spoken English.

Our offer

• a position for 18 months (0.8 -1.0 FTE);
• a gross monthly salary, depending on qualifications and experience, between € 3.706 and €5.760 in the case of full-time employment (salary scale 10 under the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities (CAO NU));
• 8% holiday pay and 8.3% year-end bonus;
• a pension scheme, partially paid parental leave and flexible terms of employment based on the CAO NU.

In addition to the terms of employment laid down in the CAO NU, Utrecht University also offers a range of its own schemes for employees. This includes arrangements for professional development, various types of leave, and options for sports and cultural activities. You can also tailor your employment conditions through our Terms of Employment Options Model. In this way, we encourage you to keep investing in your personal and professional development. For more information, please visit Working at Utrecht University.

About us

A better future for everyone. This ambition motivates our scientists in executing their leading research and inspiring teaching. At Utrecht University, the various disciplines collaborate intensively towards major strategic themes. Our focus is on Dynamics of Youth, Institutions for Open Societies, Life Sciences and Pathways to Sustainability. Sharing science, shaping tomorrow.

Working at the Faculty of Science means bringing together inspiring people across disciplines and with a variety of perspectives and backgrounds. The Faculty has six departments: Biology, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Information & Computing Sciences, Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics. Together, we work on excellent research and inspiring education. We do so, driven by curiosity and supported by outstanding infrastructure. Visit us on LinkedIn and discover how you can become part of our community.

The Interaction Division is part of the Department of Information and Computing Sciences . It develops novel techniques to research technology-mediated communication and interaction between people, and communication and interaction between systems and people (users). The technologies for interaction make use of various modalities, in particular visual, auditory, and haptic modes, as well as combinations of these. Three research groups in the division are collaborating in this project: the Multimedia group (Professor Remco Veltkamp), the Music Information Computing group (Professor Anja Volk) and the Social and Affective Computing group (Professor Albert Salah).

More information

For more information, please contact Professor Remco Veltkamp at R.C.Veltkamp@uu.nl.

Do you have a question about the application procedure? Please send an email to science.recruitment@uu.nl.

Apply now

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To apply, please send your curriculum vitae, including a letter of motivation, via the ‘apply now’ button.

If you are enthusiastic about this position, just apply via the 'Apply now' button. Please enclose:

• your letter of motivation;
• your curriculum vitae;
• the names, telephone numbers, and email addresses of at least two references.

If this specific opportunity isn’t for you, but you know someone else who may be interested, please forward this vacancy to them.

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