Research Fellow in Information Retrieval (Ref C44374)
Institute for Innovation Design & Sustainability

We are seeking to employ a highly motivated research fellow in the field of information retrieval for cutting edge aspects of news and political science, which is funded for an initial period of 18 months. You will be based in the IDEAS Research Institute and School of Computing Science & Digital Media at the Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen.

The proposed research is a continuation of work from a large European (FP7) project, SocialSensor, that focuses on aspects of news, elections, and political engagement. This novel research in information retrieval builds on our work and the interest around the Scottish Referendum that involved a unique collaboration with journalists and colleagues in political science and media journalism. Our algorithms have been ranked as top performing according to benchmarking initiatives. The project will maintain and extend a platform for real-time
indexing and search of text and multimedia information in the social web. The work will also focus on context-aware retrieval, and large data analysis of social media content.

In this post you will develop and maintain algorithms based on text retrieval, techniques, social indexing, and user's context. You will create and implement these in a context aware and real-time multimedia retrieval system. You will be involved in integrating these with the research of project collaborators. The project will build upon current state-of-art multimedia retrieval techniques, collections, relevant open-source initiatives, and evaluation methods.

For informal enquiries, please contact Professor Ayse Goker: a.s.goker@rgu.ac.uk

Salary: £32277-£37394
Position Type: Full-time , Permanent
Closing Date: 02 April 2015
Interviewing Week Commencing: 13 April 2015

A Disclosure will be requested for the successful applicant

Essential:

• PhD already awarded, or recently submitted a PhD thesis for examination, in computing or related discipline that includes information retrieval algorithms and technologies.
• Knowledge of Information retrieval or related area.
• Strong programming skills and use of Java;
• Independent research skills;
• Publication skills.

Desirable:

• Knowledge of social media (highly desirable);
• Knowledge of one or more of the following is also desirable: user-centred IR system design, implementation, and evaluation; context learning; personalization, recommendation.
• Strong publication record;
• Experience of working on research/ innovation projects;
• Experience of applied research in collaboration with other organisations (i.e. Universities/ SMEs/industry/ government);
• Experience in collaborating with partners from industry and other disciplines such as news, media journalism, and political science is highly desirable, as is an awareness of contemporary developments in UK and Scottish politics.
• Experience of developing for Solr, and MongoDb.

Application:

To proceed with the application process, please click the "Apply Through Website" button. You will be redirected to the institution's application page.

There are a restricted number of certificates of sponsorship available in the UK and there is no guarantee that the University would be able to obtain one should the successful candidate require one.

The Digital Technologies theme in the IDEAS Research Institute is recognised as one of the strongest research units across the University with particularly strong performance in knowledge exchange activity. The project is based within the Smart Information Systems Group which has a long standing track record of research in search algorithms and technologies. The recent launch of the Smart Data Technologies Centre enhances this research profile. The Institute also benefits from being co-located with one of the three hubs of the Scottish Government funded Data Lab Innovation Centre (along with Edinburgh and Glasgow). We are also a founding member of SICSA (the Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance). Other relevant research activities/areas with strong links to RGU include OGIC (Oil & Gas Innovation Centre) and Censis (Innovation Centre for Sensor and Imaging Systems), providing a rich platform for interacting with the oil & gas industry in the North Sea and data gathering and analysis activities.

Robert Gordon University is one of the top modern universities in the UK, with a track record of dynamic leadership and a reputation as an innovative and ambitious university. We have an established record of industry engagement, an outstanding record for teaching and learning, and one of the UK’s best graduate employment records with 97.7% of our undergraduates in work or further study within six months.
Collaborators on the research work include: CERTH, Yahoo, Alcatel-Lucent, IBM, Deutsche-Welle, DFKI, JCP, City University London, University of Koblenz, ATC, University of Klagenfurt, and the Scottish Youth Parliament.