Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, located in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE), is a private, not-for-profit, independent, graduate-level, research-driven institute developed with the support and cooperation of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The goal of the Institute is to develop, over a period of years, indigenous R&D capacity in Abu Dhabi, addressing issues of importance to the region in critical areas such as: renewable energy, sustainability, environment, water resources and microelectronics. The Institute offers graduate degree programs (MSc & PhD) in science and engineering disciplines with a focus on advanced energy and sustainable technologies (http://www.masdar.ac.ae and web.mit.edu/mit-tdp/www/).
Position: The project on “The Economic Impact of Advanced Technology and Automation on Oil and Gas Sector” is looking for a post-doctoral researcher. The position is available immediately. The initial appointment will be for one year, but may be extendable for another one year depending on the candidate’s performance and other circumstances.
Package: A highly competitive non-taxable salary package (basic salary + housing allowance) as well as annual flight tickets to home country.
Selection criteria: The applicant should meet the following criteria:
- PhD in Data Science, Mathematics, Statistics, or a related discipline in Computer Science from a reputable university (candidates who have submitted their PhD theses are also welcome).
- Familiar with at least one of the following topics: natural language processing, text mining, data mining, information retrieval, machine learning, and data science.
- Good research experience and published at least 3 full research papers (excluding posters) in good international conferences/journals.
- Self-motivated and able to work independently.
- Strong programming skills in at least one of the following languages: C/C++, C#, Java, Python, MATLAB, or R.
How to apply: Interested candidates should send their resume with a recent photo and statement about present/past research (not more than 1 page) to Dr. Wei Lee Woon (email: wwoon[at]masdar.ac.ae) or Dr. Zeyar Aung (email: zaung[at]masdar.ac.ae). Initial screening of applications will begin immediately and the positions will remain open until filled.
About the project: The project is entitled “The Economic Impact of Advanced Technology and Automation on Oil and Gas Sector”. It is a collaborative project between Masdar Institute and MIT and will involve close interaction with senior researchers from both Institutions.
The specific goals of the proposed research are two-fold:
1. Re-examining the job market dynamics in general and more specifically in the Oil and Gas sector in Abu Dhabi. In particular we are interested in determining the extent to which particular jobs are susceptible to automation, and in developing accurate and efficient computational methods for doing so.
2. Quantifying the economic gains and the accompanying socioeconomic effects.
The successful candidate will be required to assist on a number of aspects of the project, particularly:
1. The extraction and analysis of job-related data from online sources such as O*Net and MonsterGulf. Relevant expertise: NLP and information retrieval.
2. Analysis of the jobs’ data using computational methods to determine the level of automation that is possible. Relevant skills: feature extraction and pattern recognition
3. Involvement in the formulation of models and frameworks based on the outputs of the two stages above which can be used for job creation and policy-making and in communicating these to the relevant stakeholders (both within the academic community and without).
Application Deadline : 15 December 2014