[game_edu] Job: Post-doctoral researcher in NLG in Narrative

[R. Michael Young]

The Liquid Narrative group at North Carolina State University is seeking a postdoctoral researcher to collaborate on a large-scale narrative generation project. The goal of this project is to build computational tools for the use of narrative in sense-making tasks. Research thrusts include the creation of formalisms for representing story and discourse knowledge and the development of narrative generation algorithms able to create multiple narrative discourses from a given story, adapt these discourses to an audience, and elicit different effects such as surprise or suspense. This project aims at creating a large-scale narrative-generation system that can extract story data from various sources (e.g., video game logs) and create narratives in and across several media such as text, animated movies or maps.

The postdoctoral researcher will contribute to the design and development of narrative generation and summarization technologies, focusing on the microplanning aspect of text generation. In particular, he or she will extend an existing narrative discourse generation prototype that outputs basic sentences using the SimpleNLG library. Our aim is to update this architecture by integrating an NLG system such as FUF/Surge, KPML or RealPro. To improve the quality of the generated text, the postdoctoral researcher will work on topics such as: aggregation, generation of referring expressions, discourse markers insertion, lexical choice and/or other aspects of realization that are specific to narrative as a genre.

He/she may also participate in research efforts on the automated generation of multimedia presentations involving text, video and maps. He/she is expected to collaborate in performing scientific evaluations of the systems, and in writing academic research papers.

Requirements:

The applicant must hold a PhD degree, preferably in the area of computational linguistics or natural language generation. He/she should have:
* Experience with developing NLG systems
* Excellent software-design and problem-solving skills
* Good programming skills
* Excellent written and oral communication skills

Experience in the following areas would be a plus:
* Automated discourse planning technologies
* Dialogue generation


Position details:

This is a full-time position. 
Expected to start is April 1, 2015 and the initial funding for the position runs through December 31, 2015.  The position may be extendable depending on availability of funds.

Interested candidates should view the official Human Resources posting and submit applications through the NC State University HR web page at http://jobs.ncsu.edu/postings/40524.

NC State University is an equal opportunity and affirmative action employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, national origin, religion, sex, gender identity, age, sexual orientation, genetic information, status as an individual with a disability, or status as a protected veteran.  Individuals with disabilities requiring disability-related accommodations in the application and interview process, please call 919-515-3148.