PhD Studentship in Language Technology, Monash University, Australia

The User Modeling and Natural Language (UMNL) Group at Monash University has been granted an ARC Linkage Grant for a project entitled "Sentiment detection from opinion surveys -- the quest for customer and employee satisfaction".  This project has a Melbourne-based industry partner, GAPbuster Worldwide, who is a leading provider of customer experience management solutions. The project will address current challenges in automatic sentiment detection, including determining whether discourse is subjective, and if so, its topic, polarity, intensity and usefulness. Sentiment detection is used for discriminating fact from opinion in information gathering applications, and extracting prevalent opinions about items. The aim of the project is to develop computational mechanisms that detect sentiment from texts, and summarize the sentiment expressed in multiple texts. The developed techniques will be applied to textual feedback provided by customers and employees about different aspects of service industries. The PhD student will focus on novel techniques for detecting polarity, intensity and usefulness, using Machine Learning techniques such as classification, bootstrapping and data compression.  This is an excellent opportunity to work on a project with strong practical as well as theoretical merits, while closely interacting with a commercial organization.

Successful candidates will have a 1st class honours degree in Computer Science, Statistics or equivalent, or a Masters degree with a major research component, an exceptional academic record, excellent programming skills, strong written and verbal communications skills, and an ability to work in a team environment.

The studentship is available for Australian citizens and permanent residents and New Zealand citizens, for a period of 3 years, earning ,627 per annum. The studentship must be taken up by March 31, 2009 at the latest. For further information and applications please contact Prof Ingrid Zukerman by email at Ingrid.Zukerman@infotech.monash.edu.au.

Deadline for application is October 31, 2008.