Spoken Language Technologies with a September 2025 start hosted in the School
of Computer Science, University of Sheffield, UK
<https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/cs>.
We are seeking two candidates to each work on an interdisciplinary SLT
research project covering both fields of speech and language research on
one of the following topics:
– *Accessible Democracy:* UK Houses of Parliament and cross-party Select
Committees are at the core of UK democracy. Making the proceedings of these
bodies accessible to citizens and journalists is key to holding politicians
accountable. This research aims to develop technologies to provide access
to the rich linguistic and paralinguistic information in parliamentary
audio recordings. Helping journalists to identify newsworthy events is one
of the example objectives, alongside more standard tasks such as search,
creating alerts or summarisation.
– *Analytics of conversations:* Spoken conversations are complex and
difficult to understand for AI systems. While the words spoken are of
obvious importance, paralinguistic information often plays an essential
role for a satisfactory and efficient exchange. In practice only goal
oriented metrics are used to assess the quality of an exchange, which are
not helpful to describe a wide range of conversations such as interviews,
story telling or even examinations. Modelling of the participants’
knowledge and state as well as paralinguistic signalling and perception
should be used to research novel methods to interpret and understand
conversations.
– *Evolving communication in embodied agents:* Spoken and written
language have developed in the course of human evolution and can be viewed
as key species-wide adaptations that have enabled us to better survive on
our planet. Modelling the development of language in artificial agents with
sensory apparatus that are embedded in a physical environment is an
exciting research methodology that promises both deeper understanding of
human languages and their origins, as well as insights into how to build
more effective autonomous agents. This research will build on the state of
the art in this area.
Home and International students are eligible to apply. Regardless of fees
status (Home or International), all fees will be paid (in addition to an
enhanced stipend and a research and training support grant to cover
research expenses and conference attendance).
The deadline for applications is *13 April 2025*.
For more information, please visit our website:
https://slt-cdt.sheffield.ac.uk/apply