Large-scale information extraction from unstructured textual resources.

Knowledge Media Institute (KMi) - http://kmi.open.ac.uk/
Stipend: £14,553 per year net plus fee bursary, Ref: 9668
Based in Milton Keynes

The Knowledge Media Institute (KMi) is a leading research centre associated with the Open University. Research in KMi focuses on web & data science, natural language processing, artificial intelligence and their applications to solve real-world problems. KMi offers students an intellectually challenging environment with exceptional research and computer facilities.

We are currently offering a fully-funded PhD studentship commencing October 2017. Applications are invited from UK, EU and international students for full-time, 3-year study on the PhD topic: Large-scale information extraction from unstructured textual resources.

The student is expected to work with millions of research papers extracting useful information from their text, such as names of scientific methods, statistical tests performed, tables, graphs + captions, basic metadata (title, affiliation, abstract, author names), conclusion sentences, innovation sentences, methodology sentences, algorithm descriptions, etc., from their text to assist in knowledge discovery & information retrieval. This work is commercially funded and has many practical applications. It is expected the applicant will focus on developing new information extraction methods making use of supervised and semi-supervised machine learning.

Requirements
• Good knowledge of NLP, text-mining, information extraction or information retrieval
• Understanding of machine learning fundamentals
• Excellent programming and especially prototyping skills
• Ability to process large datasets
• Understanding of the research lifecycle (ability to state hypotheses, design new methods, implement prototypes, evaluate methods, interpret results, adapt methods, etc.)
• Prior experience of data analysis and machine learning

We strongly recommend that you contact Dr. Petr Knoth [Email Address Removed] to discuss your interest prior to writing your research proposal.

Deadline: Applicants will be interviewed as soon as possible after they formally apply. The studentships are available until they are filled and expected to start on 1st October 2017.