[agents] Postdoc position in Amsterdam on evolutionary machine learning to enable robot buddies to recognize emotions of childhood cancer patients

[Koen Hindriks - EWI]

Postdoc Position in Amsterdam, The Netherlands

on

Evolutionary Machine Learning to Enable Robot Buddies to Recognize Emotions of Childhood Cancer Patients

http://www.cwi.nl/jobs/postdoc-evolutionary-machine-learning-enable-robot-buddies-recognize-emotions-of-childhood-canc

Description
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Children treated for cancer in a hospital often experience high levels of stress and anxiety. Not only are they faced with a life-threatening disease, they also find themselves in a strange environment, surrounded by doctors, nurses and other medical personnel. Moreover, during various types of treatment, close family may not be in close proximity, e.g., due to exposure risks in case of radiation treatment, or simply because parents cannot guarantee 24/7 presence.
CWI has a position for a postdoc in a recently acquired project that unites and advances the state-of-the-art in automated human-robot interaction design and machine learning to provide children with a humanoid robot companion in the form of a NAO robot that is capable of being there when humans cannot and that can address a child’s distress, pain and fear to minimize medical traumatic stress.
This is of key importance, e.g., to ensure successful, uneventful treatment, to lower risks associated with involving relatives and clinicians (e.g., radiation exposure), and to reduce significant adverse psychological reactions (e.g., post-traumatic stress) to the entire experience.

The focus of this postdoc position is on perception by use of computational intelligence (and signal processing) techniques to transform basic sensor input (i.e., audio- and video feeds) into higher-order knowledge to be processed by the cognitive-affective control architecture. To ensure sufficiently reliable signal input for accurate real-world machine-perception, we will use external sensors of a higher quality than those on the NAO robot, such as high-quality, reliable cameras and (directional) microphones. Furthermore, perception and cognition will be done on a separate, modern computer. The goal of this project is to equip the software platform that controls the NAO robot buddies with three forms of perception: speech recognition, face recognition, and emotion recognition. Especially the latter category is of importance to this project. To this end, novel machine learning methods are to be developed by combining the state of the art in different fields of computational intelligence, especially evolutionary computation and machine learning, in order to be able to recognize a set of emotions, in real time.

This project concerns not only fundamental and innovative research, but also a real-world application as this research will be brought into real-world practice already during the project by having NAO robots interact with children that are being treated at the Academic Medical Center (AMC) pediatric oncology department and the Princes Máxima Center (PMC) for pediatric oncology.

This postdoc position is available within the project titled “Improving Childhood Cancer Care when Parents Cannot be There – Reducing Medical Traumatic Stress in Childhood Cancer Patients by Bonding with a Robot Companion”, funded by STW, KWF, and TKI. This project is a collaboration between 4 academic
partners: the CWI, Delft University of Technology, the Academic Medical Center (AMC), and the Princess Máxima Center for Pediatric Oncology (PMC), and 4 industry partners: ASolutions, Cancer Health Coach, Mediq Apotheken, and Focal Meditech. The appointment of the postdoc in this vacancy position will be at CWI and he/she will be at various locations of project partners on average one day a week (predominantly AMC). The research team includes in total 2 Ph.D.-students and a postdoc and is coached by senior researchers from CWI, TU Delft, AMC, and PMC.

Requirements
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Candidates are required to have a Ph.D. degree in computer science, artificial intelligence, mathematics, physics, or similar areas with relevant experience.
If you are obtaining your Ph.D. degree before March 1, 2017, you are also invited to respond. Applicants are moreover required to have substantial programming skills, including excellent knowledge of at least one of the following programming languages: C, C++, Java (C/C++ highly desired), and are expected to have an excellent command of English. Candidates that additionally have previous experience with programming robot platforms (in particular the NAO
platform) will be preferred.

It is essential that you have a clear interest in working both on fundamental research as well as on applying this research, in collaboration with academic partners and company partners. Candidates should be willing to cooperate with experts across different disciplines (including computer science, medicine, and psychology).

Terms and conditions
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The terms of employment are in accordance with the Dutch Collective Labour Agreement for Research Centres ("CAO-onderzoeksinstellingen"). The gross monthly salary for an employee on a full time basis, depending on relevant work experience, ranges from € 3,355 to € 4,772. The appointment will be for a period of 24 months.

Employees are also entitled to a holiday allowance of 8% of the gross annual salary and a year-end bonus of 8.33%. CWI offers attractive working conditions, including flexible scheduling.

Please visit our website for more information about our terms of employment:

www.cwi.nl/terms-of-employment

Application & Information:
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Applications can be sent before 14 December 2016. To apply, please visit this link:

http://www.cwi.nl/jobs/postdoc-evolutionary-machine-learning-enable-robot-buddies-recognize-emotions-of-childhood-canc

Applications MUST include

1) a motivation letter,
2) a detailed resume, and
3) a list of B.Sc. and M.Sc. grades.

For residents outside the EER-area, a Toefl English language test might be required.

For more information about the vacancy, please contact dr. Peter A.N. Bosman, email peter.bosman at cwi.nl,

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  Dr. Peter A.N. Bosman
  Senior Researcher
  Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI)
  (Centre for Mathematics and Computer Science)
  P.O. Box 94079
  1090 GB Amsterdam
  The Netherlands

  Peter.Bosman at cwi.nl
  http://homepages.cwi.nl/~bosman
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