Open Ph.D. and Post-Doc Positions Available at ASCL in Sophia-Antipolis, FRANCE

Open Research Positions

Ph.D. and Post-Doctorate

at ASCL in Sophia-Antipolis, France

Affective Computing is a newly emerging, fast growing interdisciplinary field of Computing which studies how to give computers the ability to recognize, express, synthesize and model emotions. The European Network of Excellence HUMAINE (http://www.emotion-research.net/) was created by the European Commission in 2004 to launch an interdisciplinary research program on the topic of emotions in human-computer interaction.

The European Commission has also recently placed Cognitive Systems research among one of its priorities from 2003 to 2008 (http://www.cordis.lu/ist/workprogramme/fp6_workprogramme.htm).  Its objectives are to give more “cognition” to computing systems and to build physically instantiated or embodied systems that can perceive, understand, learn from experience and develop through individual or social interaction with their environment[1].

Multiple Ph.D. positions with assistantships are available in the Affective Social Computing Laboratory (http://eurecom.fr/~lisetti) at Institut Eurecom starting in September for three years.  These positions are sponsored in part by research grants with industrial partners such as France Télécom R&D, ST Microéléctronics, or by ITEA (Information Technology for European Advancement) and with strong collaboration with the CEA (Centre d’Energie Atomique) et Phillips.  Contacts and collaborations with these various research centers will be part of the training experience and diverse topics are possible (from multimodal interfaces to agent architectures, prototyped on various forms of embodiement).

The ideal candidate will have a Master (or equivalent) in Computer Science (Ph.D for the the post-doctoral fellowship) with knowledge of (or at least interest in) psychological theories of emotion.  Interested candidates are invited to send a letter of motivation, curriculum vitae, and three references (preferably by email) to: