Machine Learning for Human Behaviour Analysis

Fixed Term Appointment for up to 18 months

The preferred starting date for this post is April 2012

Salary in the range: £31,300 - £39,920 per annum

The Department of Computing is a leading department of Computer Science among UK Universities. It has consistently been awarded the highest research rating (5*) in Research Assessment Exercises (RAE), coming 2nd in the 2008 RAE, and was rated as "Excellent" in the previous national assessment of teaching quality.

An opportunity has arisen for a Research Associate (post-doctoral) for the prestigious European Research Council Starting Grant funded project on human naturalistic behaviour analysis. The purpose of the project is to attempt to build automated tools for machine understanding of human interactive behaviour in naturalistic contexts. The envisioned technology will be based on findings in cognitive sciences and it will represent a set of visual and audiovisual spatiotemporal methods for automatic analysis of human spontaneous (as opposed to posed and exaggerated) patterns of behavioural cues including continuous analysis of affective, social and deceptive behaviour.

The applicant will be responsible for audiovisual continuous analysis and interpretation of human behaviour. More specifically, the aim is to design and develop effective and efficient statistical signal processing and machine learning algorithms (e.g., dynamic Bayesian networks and spatio-temporal graphical models) for multimodal analysis and interpretation of human behaviour that can take into account non-linear correlations between multimodal cues (facial expressions, head and body gestures, and various vocalizations) in space and time.

To apply you will need to have a strong computing or engineering background. You should have proven knowledge and track record in one or more of the following areas: Statistical Machine Learning and/or Statistical Signal Processing with emphasis to graphical and statistical models for speech and/or image processing/computer vision, Multimodal Data Fusion, Vision and/or Audio Human Behaviour Analysis (in particular facial expression recognition and vocal outbursts analysis). You will have a PhD degree (or equivalent) in an area pertinent to the subject area, i.e., Computing or Engineering.

Preference will be given to applicants with a proven research record and publications in the relevant areas. All applicants must be fluent in English. 

You will be part of the Intelligent Behaviour Understanding (i-BUG) Group, Visual Information Processing Research Section, within the Computing Department and based at the South Kensington campus. For further information on the group and related projects see: http://ibug.doc.ic.ac.uk/~maja/