Postdoctoral Researcher/Project Researcher in Natural Language Processing

The University of Eastern Finland is inviting applications for a Postdoctoral Researcher/Project Researcher position in Natural Language Processing. The position will be hosted by the School of Computing at the University of Eastern Finland’s Faculty of Science, Forestry and Technology on the Joensuu campus. The position will start on 1 January 2025, or as agreed.

Please find more information below and submit your application by 28 October 2024.

Role and salary

We are looking for a highly motivated and talented Postdoctoral Researcher/Project Researcher to join a pioneering project that combines machine learning methods with legal research. The Postdoctoral Researcher/Project Researcher will work as part of the INTEL project (Web page), funded by the prestigious European Research Council. Based on close collaboration with the UEF school of Computing and the UEF Law School, the INTEL project will develop the general doctrine of energy law. The Postdoctoral Researcher/Project Researcher will work closely with Associate Professor Kaisa Huhta, Associate Professor Mohammed Saqr and Dr Sonsoles López Pernas.

The Postdoctoral Researcher/Project Researcher's role in the project is to conduct natural language processing and network analysis of legal documents in collaboration with other team members.

The duties of the Postdoctoral Researcher/Project Researcher include:

• Data Management: Preparing, curating and pre-processing textual datasets for analysis.
• Natural Language Processing & Analysis: Conducting NLP and analysis of legal documents in collaboration with the project team.
• Research and Publishing: Participating in key project missions and contributing to publishing activities.
• Collaboration: Working closely with legal researchers and other team members to advance project goals.

In this position, you will have the opportunity to work with a vibrant and internationally recognized team of researchers with lots of opportunities to learn, grow and advance your skillset. We also offer the opportunity for international collaboration as part of a research team.

The Postdoctoral Researcher/Project Researcher position will be filled for a 2-year term starting on 1 January 2025, or as agreed. The position is filled for a fixed term due to it being a fixed-term project position. A probationary period is applied to new members of the staff.

The salary of the position is determined in accordance with the salary system for Finnish universities. The salary comprises two components: a job-related salary element and a personal salary element. In this position, the job-related salary element is EUR 3,213 /month, based on level 5 of the job requirement level chart for teaching and research staff. The personal salary element is a maximum of 50% of the above-mentioned sum. Depending on the personal salary element, the salary will be approximately EUR 3,730-3,925 /month at the beginning of the employment.

Our requirements and expectations

Requirements

• The person to be appointed as Postdoctoral Researcher or as Project Researcher is expected to hold a doctoral degree in a relevant discipline, such as Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics, Computer Science, or a closely related discipline.

If the person to be appointed received their doctoral degree less than five years ago at the time of accepting the position (a net period of time, which does not include parental leaves, military service etc.), the position is filled as a Postdoctoral Researcher. If the person to be appointed received their doctoral degree more than five years ago, the position will be filled as a Project Researcher.

Students in the final stages of a doctoral degree may also apply provided that they complete their doctoral degree and deliver a copy of their degree certificate to the faculty by 30 November 2024.

• A good research background with publications in NLP or related fields.
• Proficiency in NLP techniques, e.g., text preprocessing, parsing, named entity recognition, part-of-speech tagging, and topic modelling techniques like LDA and LSA.
• Proficiency in English for both writing and general communication purposes.

The following will be considered an advantage:

• Strong proficiency in Python or R, and experience with specialized NLP libraries, for instance, NLTK, spaCy, and Hugging Face Transformers, as well as deep learning frameworks like TensorFlow or PyTorch, or their counterparts in R.
• Ability to retrieve large textual datasets, and expertise in data cleaning, filtering, normalization, and transformation of unstructured text data.
• Experience in network analysis, block modelling (preferably temporal network analysis), or an interest in further developing competencies in relevant research methods.
• Competence in managing cloud-based servers (e.g., OpenStack) to support research infrastructure and computational tasks. Knowledge of SQL or NoSQL databases and ability to handle and process large-scale corpora efficiently.
• Familiarity with transformer models (e.g., BERT, GPT series, RoBERTa) and their fine-tuning.
• Experience with processing data obtained via Optical Character Recognition (OCR), including handling OCR errors, text extraction from images or scanned documents, and familiarity with OCR tools like Tesseract or OpenCV.
• Experience or an interest in working as part of a collaborative, interdisciplinary team.

Your benefits

You will have access to the university’s staff benefits, including

• opportunity for flexible multi-location work
• extensive occupational health care 
• broad selection of staff training
• staff discount on lunch in our campus restaurants, as well as on a range of other services 
• affordable sports services and tax-free bike benefit 

Please read more in the Work at UEF section on our website.  

You will have an opportunity to work in an interesting, meaningful and diverse role as part of our international, creative, participatory and inclusive academic community.    

Enjoy your life in Finland! Known for its cleanliness, welfare know-how, modern technology and superb education system, Finland is an exotic and safe country to work in. Please visit the Life in Finland section on our website to learn more.    

How to apply? 

Submit your application by using our electronic application form by 28 October 2024 by 24:00 (midnight) Finnish time (UTC+2).

Please note that you must include the following appendices in your application:

• A CV (Template for CV, TENK web page), but also other styles will be accepted
• A list of publications (Instructions, Research Council of Finland web page)
• Copies of your academic degree certificates / diplomas, and copies of certificates / diplomas relating to your language proficiency, if not indicated in the academic degree certificates/diplomas
• A free-form application containing a presentation of the applicant’s research interests and orientation as well as previous research merits (up to three pages)
• Other documents to demonstrate the applicant’s merits for the position

If your diploma is not in English, Finnish or Swedish, an official English translation must be provided. All translations must be issued either by the awarding educational institution or an authorised translator. Each page of the official translation must bear the translator’s stamp and/or signature. Official translations must be accurate translations of the original documents. Translations made by the applicants themselves are not accepted.

Questions?

For further information, please contact Associate Professor Kaisa Huhta, kaisa.huhta@uef.fi, tel. +358294455370 and Associate Professor Mohammed Saqr, mohammed.saqr@uef.fi, tel. +358294453442.

For further information on the application process, please contact HR Specialist Iiris Korhonen, iiris.korhonen@uef.fi, tel. +358 50 325 9472.

Haemme tutkijatohtoria/projektitutkijaa Itä-Suomen yliopiston INTEL-tutkimusprojektiin. Tehtävä sijoittuu luonnontieteiden, metsätieteiden ja tekniikan tiedekuntaan tietojenkäsittelytieteen laitokselle Joensuun kampukselle. Tehtävä alkaa 1.1.2025 (tai sopimuksen mukaan) ja se täytetään kahden vuoden määräajaksi. Tässä tehtävässä tehtäväkohtainen palkanosa on vaativuustasoluokittelussa tasolla 5. Lisäksi maksetaan henkilökohtaiseen suoriutumiseen perustuvaa palkanosaa, joka on 6-50 % tehtäväkohtaisesta palkanosasta. Tehtävässä edellytetään hyvää englannin kielen taitoa.

Lue tarkemmat tiedot tehtävästä ja hakuohjeet yllä olevasta englanninkielisestä ilmoituksesta. Jätäthän hakemuksesi englanniksi. Hakuaika tehtävään päättyy 28.10.2024.

The Faculty of Science, Forestry and Technology operates on the Kuopio and Joensuu campuses of the University of Eastern Finland. The mission of the faculty is to carry out internationally recognised scientific research and to offer research-education in the fields of natural sciences, forestry and technology. The faculty invests in all of the strategic research areas of the university. The faculty’s environments for research and learning are international, modern and multidisciplinary. The faculty has approximately 2,650 Bachelor’s and Master’s degree students and some 440 postgraduate students. The number of staff amounts to 650.

The University of Eastern Finland (UEF) is the most multidisciplinary university in Finland. Our university employs approximately 3,200 employees, and our community includes approximately 16,000 degree students and 16,000 adult education students. Our campuses are located in Joensuu and Kuopio. We represent the world’s cutting edge of research in many fields and produce research-based knowledge, which is made openly available to benefit everyone. Learn more about our university at www.uef.fi/en. Read also about UEF as a working community and employer and the career stories of our employees.