Postdoctoral researcher in information technology data mining

A full-time employment for two years with starting date as soon as possible.

The position will be within a KK-Foundation funded project SeMI Self-Monitoring for Innovation: Meta-framework for group-based self-monitoring, which is a “Synergy” project coordinated by Halmstad University with Alfa Laval, EasyServ, HEM, HMS, Sydpumpen and Öresundskraft as industrial partners.

Research focus
New developments in the “internet of things” era require, and at the same time enable, monitoring the operation of complex systems in real-time. The ability to diagnose malfunctions quickly and predict faults, minimizing costs and productivity loss, is important for financial reasons but also to conserve environmental resources. The core research question of the SeMI project is “How to construct self-monitoring systems that use joint-human machine learning to adapt to specific domains, by taking advantage of groups of peers, and ubiquitous streams of data?”

In order to answer this question we propose to develop a general meta-framework that can, based on domain-specific input, create tools for group-based self-monitoring for that particular domain. This meta-framework should be capable of learning from streams of data and detecting deviations in an unsupervised fashion, but interactively exploit available expert knowledge in a joint human-machine learning fashion. The unprecedented amount of data accessible today allows ML to focus on more descriptive and explanatory analysis. Users no longer pose well-formulated, concrete questions, but instead require the system to be capable of highlighting interesting aspects such as deviations, anomalies, relations and co-occurrences. It is almost effortless to generate data, while the cost of analysing it does not change. We will support continuous learning model, where the training and usage are not easily separated, and the system improves its performance all the time, taking advantage of new data as it arrives.

An important aspect of the position is to find connections to other projects within CAISR and on identifying common problems and finding solutions applicable across multiple domains. Some of the projects that the successful candidate will be involved in include: ARISE Analytical Root-cause Identification in data Streams for detection of Emerging quality issues (in collaboration with Volvo Trucks AB); BIDAF Big Data Analytics Framework for a Smart Society (a distributed research environment of Halmstad University, SICS Swedish ICT, Skövde University); PIHH Patient-centred Intelligent Healthcare Halland (in collaboration with Halmstad Hospital); and more.

Principal duties
The selected candidate will become part of the very dynamic and international research environment at the Center for Applied Intelligent Systems Research (CAISR), a part of Halmstad Embedded and Intelligent Systems Research (EIS) at the School of Information Technology. For more information please see: http://caisr.hh.se/

The post of the postdoctoral researcher is a qualifying appointment with the purpose to give the employee a possibility to develop its independence as a researcher and to obtain merits that can lead to a competence for another post with higher eligibility requirements. As a postdoctoral researcher you are expected to be active in the research done within the research environments CAISR and EIS. The teaching load will be at most 20 % of the time working hours. Furthermore, we expect you to take an active part in the continued development of the research environment and that you will take part in applying for research funding from various financiers, both in Sweden and abroad.

Qualification
The position is intended for someone with a recent PhD degree in Information Technology, Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or closely related fields. The research track record should demonstrate excellence in research areas such as machine learning, data mining, and signal processing. Strength in computer programming and/or applied mathematics is very welcome.

Salary
Salary is to be settled by negotiation. The application should include a statement of the salary level requi­red by the candidate.

Application
Applications should be sent via Halmstad University's recruitment system MyNetwork (see link on this page). The last day to apply for the position is 2016-11-30.

The application package shall consist of:

1) a cover letter stating the purpose of the application and a brief statement of why you believe that your goals are well-matched with the goals of this position, together with a description of future research plans

2) an attested CV that includes at least

- a list of previous degrees, dates, and institution, transcripts for higher-education studies until most recent available
- a complete list of publications and a description of previous research and other work experience and links to online copies of the most important publications

 3) contact information for at least three references