Postdoc
Department:
Location: Evanston, IL
Salary:
Original Posting Web Page:
Keywords: AI, Algorithms, analogy, Graphics, HPC, Information Science, Networks, qualitative reasoning, sketch understanding
Posted on: Wednesday, August 19th, 2009
Job Details:
The Qualitative Reasoning Group at Northwestern University is looking for one or more postdoctoral students to help with our projects in the following areas:
- Intelligent Tutoring Systems. Spatial reasoning and learning is central in many areas of science education. Unfortunately, today’s intelligent tutoring systems tend to avoid spatial topics. We are trying to change this, by creating a platform for sketch-based educational software. CogSketch is an open-domain sketch understanding system, with built-in visual, spatial, and conceptual reasoning facilities. Its representations and reasoning facilities are being developed in collaboration with cognitive psychologists and learning scientists to ensure both cognitive fidelity and pedagogical relevance. We are working with educators in engineering design and geosciences as initial classroom experiments.
- Companions Cognitive Architecture. We have developed a new cognitive architecture, Companions, where analogical processing is a core operation. Companions have successfully been used to solve everyday physical reasoning problems using sketches, how to solve AP-style physics problems, how to play games, and learn intuitive physics from comic strips ad simplified English. We are expanding Companion abilities to include nature language dialogue, and using it to build a 2nd generation learning by reading system.
- Learning military tactics. We are building a sketch-based war game for capturing data from human experts, and using Companions to learn tactical plans and models from such observations.
- Self-modeling and metacognition. We are exploring how to make systems that learn and maintain models of themselves, in order to tune, debug, and improve their performance. We are exploring both practical and psychological approaches, using the Companions architecture.
The ideal candidate will have a strong background in one or more of these areas: Intelligent tutoring systems, natural language understanding/dialogue, qualitative reasoning, large-scale conceptual knowledge representation. Solid Lisp programming skills are also desirable.
If you are interested, please email your vitae to Ken Forbus (EMAIL OBFUSCATED), with the subject line “QRG Postdoc”. Positions are subject to availability of funding, with start date in September/October 2009. Northwestern University is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer and encourages applications from women and minorities.
Application Deadline:
Contact Information:
Send questions about this position to: Ken Forbus
E-Mail: EMAIL OBFUSCATED
Application Deadline: October 1, 2009
