Job Vacancy: University of Sheffield, Research Associate

Research Associate in Natural Speech Technology

Speech and Hearing, The University of Sheffield, UK
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We invite applications for a position as Research Associate in the Speech and Hearing (spandH) research group at Sheffield University to work on novel algorithms with application to automatic speech recognition, and possibly to speaker identification or language recognition. The successful applicant will work in the context of several projects, most notably the EPSRC programme on Natural Speech Technology (www.natural-speech-technology.org), and the project DocuMeet (www.documeet.eu) which is funded by the European Union. These projects involve collaboration with outstanding partners from academia and industry on topics such as canonical acoustic modelling, noise robustness or speaker adaptation. SpandH is working on technology that is capable of performing well in diverse natural situations. This involves research on media archive processing, meeting and interview recognition, as well as lecture processing. The challenges in these areas are manifold: diverse backgrounds, conversational speech - potentially heavily accented, cross talk, non-speech noise, or complex acoustic environments.

By joining our group you are expected to work on improving autoamtic speech recognition by development of fundamental algorithms and techniques in the context of large-scale, state-of-the-art recognition systems. Work conducted here should significantly advance research on one ore more of the above challenges.

Applicants should have a track record of work on speech technologies including speech recognition, and have had exposure to modern machine learning techniques. Ideally, such a track record is demonstrated by publications in international journals and conferences. The successful candidate will be required to hold a PhD in the field; work on the project will require publication of results, travelling to conferences and visiting of project partners. The successful candidate will join SpandH, and in particular the subgroup on machine intelligence for natural interfaces (mini). SpandH is amongst the largest speech research groups in the UK, with extensive infrastructure and a vibrant research environment. The mini subgroup is led by Prof. Hain, currently has 20 members, which form a very interactive research community. The group is amongst other things well known for speech recognition and classification. For any question or further information regarding this post please contact Prof. Hain ().

Job Reference Number: UOS008078
Contract Type: Fixed-term until 30 April 2016
Salary: Grade 7 £28,972 to £36,661 per annum
Closing Date: 15 March 2014

http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AIF729/research-associate-in-natural-speech-technology/