2 Post-Doc opportunities in CompSocSci

[Markus Strohmaier]

Dear colleagues,

I would like to point you to two exciting positions at the new chair for
computational social sciences and humanities at RWTH Aachen. Review of
applications will begin July 10th.

I'd be available for any questions you might have.

with best regards,
Markus

*2 Post-Doc opportunities (2 years) in Social Data Science*

at RWTH Aachen University, Gemrany
Prof. Markus Strohmaier
Chair of Computational Social Sciences and Humanities

Our profile
The Chair of Computational Social Sciences and Humanities contributes
essentially to the development of RWTH Aachen University as an
integrated interdisciplinary university of tech- nology by building
bridges between the Department of Computer Science and the Humanities
and Social Sciences.

At the chair, the potential and challenges of computational methods and
big data in social science contexts are explored and analysed via
practical experiments, computational models and studies, and empirical
observations. At the same time, we analyse the impact of an increasing
digitalisation (web, smartphones, etc.) and the influence of algorithms
on social systems.
The main fields of research at present are:

i) Measurements of digital societies: how can the state of a social
system be inferred from its digital footprint (from social media, from
ubiquitous sensors, etc.) How can different biases in the digital
footprint be recognized and measured?
ii) Algorithms: which influence do algorithms have on digitalized social
systems (cf. filter bubble); do algorithms contribute to polarization,
discrimination, inequality etc. in a digitalized society? What kind of
bias do algorithms produce?
iii) Machine learning methods for big data: which methods need to be
developed in the social sciences and humanities to analyse large
noise-afflicted data sets? Which forms of validation are suitable and
which ones need to be redesigned? How do these methods scale and degrade
with ill-defined problems?
iv) Designing socio-technical systems: how can knowledge and theories
from social sciences and humanities be placed in the development of
socio-technical systems? How can social sciences and humanities
perspectives contribute to the scientific questions in computer science?

Your profile

You hold a PhD/doctoral degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics
or related subjects. Ideally, you have knowledge in the areas of Machine
Learning, Knowledge Discovery, Information Retrieval, Data/Text Mining
and expertise in data-based interdisciplinary projects in the area of
Web Science, Computational Social Science, Digital Humanities, Complex
Sytems/Network Science or Social Media Analytics. Your previous
scientific work has been accepted in renowned conferences and/or
journals relevant for your field.
You have responsible leadership skills, you are motivated, a good
team-player and have strong communication skills. You have fluent
proficiency in oral and written English.

Your responsibilities

You will carry out research and teaching activities, including the
conception and execution of courses and research projects. Publications
in competitive journals and conferences are expected. An interest in
pursuing a Habilitation is advantageous.

Please send your applications via email to

Prof. Dr. Markus Strohmaier
markus.s...@rwth-aachen.de