Department of Engineering

Positions exist for two Research Assistants/Associates in Spoken Language Processing in the Department of Engineering. The roles are associated with the Automated Language Teaching and Assessment (ALTA) Institute, Cambridge University. Using techniques from Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing, ALTA's primary objective is to develop technology to enhance the experience of language learning and to develop cutting-edge approaches to automated assessment that will benefit learners and teachers worldwide. It is funded and works closely with Cambridge Assessment English.

The research will continue an on-going project assessing and giving feedback for learning spoken English as an additional language. The project is developing systems to allow high performance, interpretable assessment of a candidate's English proficiency over a range of assessment modes. These systems will provide informative feedback to candidates, integrated with language learning material.

The key responsibilities and duties are to design and develop appropriate methodologies to address the above research objectives. This will involve planning and managing their own research activity and liaising with colleagues in the Speech Research Group at Cambridge and with the partner groups in ALTA and Cambridge Assessment English.

The skills, qualifications and experience required to perform the role are a very good first degree in engineering, computer science or a closely related field and have obtained or be close to obtaining a PhD degree in an area related to speech technology, or equivalent experience. It is expected that candidates will have a good knowledge of speech software tools such as Kaldi, and/or general deep-learning tools such as pyTorch, and/or tools for spoken language assessment/CALL. Good knowledge of Python and C/C++ is desirable.

http://www.jobs.cam.ac.uk/job/27188/