Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Post-doc fellow in Computational Linguistics - Portugal

The Institute for Theoretical and Computational Linguistics (ILTEC) is looking for a post-doc fellow for a period of five years, to start before May 2007. The position is part of the Ciência 2008 program of the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT).

The primary task of the candidate is to develop research under the Portal da Língua Portuguesa project, and ideally assume responsibility for the project over time. The Portal is a project to develop and maintain an online resource about the Portuguese language, with a primary focus on lexical information.
The candidate is expected to eventually supervise the lexicographic part of the further development of the lexicographic model behind the MorDebe database, to supervise the team of linguists working on the Portal, and collaborate in the further development of the software behind the web site and its content management system. Apart from that, the candidate is expected to (further) develop his or her own line of research and encouraged to submit projects to national and international project calls.


The MorDebe database is a lexical information system developed at the ILTEC institute. At its core it is a large-scale full-form lexicon, construed with strict lexicographic criteria. It has a modular design, in which additional modules can provide additional types of information for the basic lemma list. The database already contains modules providing information about derivational relations between lemmas, gentile information, proper names, and grammatical characterizations, and more modules are under development. The most significant module under development is a database of phonetic transcription of the standard pronunciation in European Portuguese for all the lemmas in the database. The system is under constant revision, with the maintenance of the existing modules, the improvement of the lexicographic quality of the database, and the development of new modules for the system.
Candidates should have a PhD in the area of linguistics and have at least three years of research experience since the completion of their PhD. Preferably, the candidate should have experience in the area of computational lexicography, with both a strong theoretical background in the area of lexicology and/or morphology, and practical experience in programming. Given that the project concerns lexicographic data of Portuguese, knowledge of the language is important, yet not indispensable.
The candidature should contain an introductory letter detailing the candidate’s expectation with regard to working on this project, and a complete CV.

The position consists of a contract for a fixed period of 5 years, and consists of a full research position with no teaching obligations.
The yearly salary for the position is just over €42.000, equal to that of an assistant professor.

ILTEC is a small research center in Lisbon, Portugal, founded in 1988. It has an autonomous status, but strong ties to the two major universities in Lisbon (Universidade de Lisboa and Universidade Nova de Lisboa). It is located off-campus in the center of the city, and provides a stimulating research environment, both for senior and junior researchers. In the last national evaluation of research centers, the institute got a “very good” (4 out of 5) rating.
The research of ILTEC is divided in three research groups: Language and Linguistic Diversity, Lexicon and Computational Modeling, and Discourse and Literacy. More information about the ILTEC institute can be found on the web site (http://www.iltec.pt).