The Institute of Statistical Mathematics (ISM)
Research Organization of Information and Systems (ROIS)
JOB OPPORTUNITY

Postdoctoral position:
Applicants are invited to apply to the Transdisciplinary Research Integration Center, ISM/ROIS. ISM is one of member institutes of ROIS along with the National Institute of Informatics, the National Institute of Genetics and the National Institute of Polar Research. The ISM mission includes promoting statistical science and developing an innovative methodology for approaching complex problems related to life science, earth science, environmental science and human sciences from the view point of information and systems (http://www.ism.ac.jp/index_e.html). The position will start as soon as possible after 1 April 2007. The postdoctoral researcher will work on the following project “Discovery of Invariants in Multimodal Data” (http://www.ism.ac.jp/~tmatsui/kinou2_p4/index-en.html). The initial contract is one-year long but could be extended up to three years.

Field of work:
Machine learning, kernel machines, computational statistics, Bayesian statistics, or multimodal processing

Project description:
Multimodal data available to us through the Internet and other electronic media are explosively increasing both in number and in variety. To handle such massive data for various purposes, new technologies need to be developed. With this in mind, we have started investigating a new methodology that allows us to discover from multimodal data the information relevant to the purpose at hand (which is referred to as “invariants”). To achieve this goal, we will study several qualitatively different problems from different research areas, in which multimodal data play a central role (e.g., visual/audio/text processing, cognitive science, auditory perception and robotics). The problems are to be tackled with some of the recently developed inductive learning machines including automatic model selection mechanism (e.g., Penalized Logistic Regression Machines and Support Vector Machines). The results will be analyzed in order to establish a new methodology for discovery of invariants, which will be applicable to problems across different areas of study.

Job description:
The successful candidate will support and coordinate our efforts in the area of investigation of methods for discovery of invariants with multimodal data.

Requirements:
Applicants should have a PhD and some knowledge of machine learning and statistics. Applicants must be able to program (C/C++ and Matlab knowledge is an advantage but not requirement) and must also have experience with statistical data analysis.

Payment:
The salary will be in the range of 4,500,000 yen 6,000,000 yen (before tax and insurance).

Application:
Applicants should send their CV, including a list of publications and the names of two potential referees.

Contact:
Prof. Tomoko Matsui
E-mail: tmatsui@ism.ac.jp
Tel: +1 604 822 9662 (until 9 March 2007 (Vancouver, Canada))
+81 3 5421 8769 (from 10 March 2007 (Japan))