Cardiff seeks PhD student on indexing LODLAM data/providing a conversational interface: Deadline 1 February 2017

[Jodi Schneider]

PhD funding for Cardiff University. Deadline 1 February 2017

Project is on indexing Linked Open Data related to the BBC Research & Education Space (digital collections of museums, libraries and broadcasters)

https://www.findaphd.com/search/ProjectDetails.aspx?PJID=80453&LID=263

Source email below the project description, they call this "Innovative approaches to open-source data indexing using argumentation and belief revision"

Project Description

The collection and indexing of linked open data are crucial steps towards managing and exploiting the wealth of information on today’s Web. The aim of this project is to explore innovative ways for performing these functions, using Acropolis—the central part of BBC RES (Research & Education Space) project—as the main case study, thanks to a freshly started collaboration with BBC Wales (principal contact, Iain Tweedale ).  

BBC RES indexes and organises the digital collections of museums, libraries and broadcasters to make their content more discoverable and usable. A central component is the aggregator, which examines the collected data, looking for instances where the same entity is described in more than one place (semantic alignment), and then aggregates and stores that information.  

The project’s outcomes are twofold.  

On the one hand, we aim at improving the aggregator by automating the semantic alignment, that currently is specified manually. The automatic version of such a semantic alignment will be defeasible, i.e., the system will go beyond logical inference in applying rules-of-thumb (traditionally probabilistic) to make inferences. These are usually employed when information is incomplete. Another source of incoherence for ontologies is inconsistency, i.e., when we get several facts that cannot be true simultaneously. Two well-known frameworks for addressing incoherence in knowledge bases are argumentation and belief revision. The former uses the generation of arguments and counter-arguments for or against a given conclusion. The latter provides operators for preserving consistency upon receipt of new information. This project will investigate the use of both approaches, giving rise to two alternative systems. After the implementation there will be an evaluation phase, consisting of experiments with end users.  

On the other hand, we aim at exploiting the system’s user interface for receiving feedback via a conversational interface. The data created during this feedback will then provide the training data to be fed into a machine learning algorithm to improve the system over time.  

Funding Notes

Cardiff University funding of full UK/EU tuition fees (£4,121 per annum in 2016/17) and doctoral stipend matching UK Research Council National Minimum (£14,296 per annum in 2016/17). A successful overseas applicant would be required to pay the difference between UK/EU tuition fees (as above) and international tuition fees (£18,250 per annum in 2016/17). Applicants for a studentship must have obtained, or be about to obtain, a 2.1 degree or higher or a masters degree in a relevant subject.  
More information: View Website

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Federico Cerutti <Ceru...@cardiff.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, Dec 14, 2016 at 3:59 AM
Subject: [ARGTHRY] Two PhD positions in argumentation and belief revision at Cardiff University. Deadline 1 February 2017
To: ARG...@yorku.ca


Dear Colleague,

Please feel free to forward this message to anyone who might be
interested.

We invite applications for two fully funded (UK/EU fees + stipend) PhD
studentships on:

      * Argumentation in Crime and Security Domain: Argument Mining and
        Natural Language Interfaces to Automated Reasoning
        https://www.findaphd.com/search/ProjectDetails.aspx?PJID=80399&LID=263

        Informal inquiries can be made to Dr. Cerutti
        (Ceru...@cardiff.ac.uk).


      * Innovative approaches to open-source data indexing using
        argumentation and belief revision
        https://www.findaphd.com/search/ProjectDetails.aspx?PJID=80453&LID=263

        Informal inquiries can be made to Dr. Booth
        (Boo...@cardiff.ac.uk) or Dr. Cerutti (Ceru...@cardiff.ac.uk).



Deadline for applying is on 1st February2017 .

Regards,

Federico.

__________________________________________________________
We also have a Facebook page which is somewhat more tolerant of discussion and asides. Do come and join: https://www.facebook.com/groups/argthry/

[Ethan Gruber]

I hate to come off as rude and combative on this list, but that job description, and all of its inherent technical complexities, would command a salary of no less than $60,000 per year (likely up to $80-90,000 some places) + benefits at an American university. But this complicated job is intended for a PhD student whose £4K tuition is waived + £14K stipend? Furthermore, a non-UK/EU PhD student is basically a slave who receives no compensation whatsoever? I cannot hold my tongue and sit idly while student labor is abused in this way.

Ethan

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