[Comp-neuro] Two funded PhD fellowships in Neural Engineering and Cognitive Robotics at Univesrity of Minho (Portugal)

Two funded Early Stage Researcher positions (PhD fellowships)  in

Neural Engineering and Cognitive Robotics are available as part of a  Marie Curie Initial Training Network – ‘Neural Engineering Transformative Technologies (NETT)’

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Living allowance: 33.364 Euro per annum (+ mobility allowance)

 

Applications are invited to work with Dr Wolfram Erlhagen and Dr Estela Bicho on two projects in the area of natural Human-Robot Interactions to underpin the neuronal dynamics approach to HRI developed by the group at the University  of Minho (Portugal). The  humanoid robot ARoS (http://cordis.europa.eu/ictresults/Success_stories.html) will be used to directly test the theoretical results of the two PhD projects. Concrete applications in healthcare and real world service tasks will be developed in close interactions with associated private partners within the NETT consortium.

 

The first position (ESR7) will use an existing dynamic field model of collaborative joint action to analyse and implement state of the art learning and adaptation techniques  from computational neuroscience. A direct goal is to endow ARoS, with the capacity to adapt to different users and to learn new tasks in direct interaction with them

 

The second position (ERS8) will endow the high-degree of freedom robotics arm-hand system with movement capacities that reflect fundamental characteristics of human motion. The main goal is to increase user acceptance by making  the physical interactions with the robot smooth and predictable for the user.

 

The fellowships include the possibility of a secondment to an academic partner institution within the consortium, and an internship at a private partner organization (http://www.neural-engineering.eu/)

 

Applicants should have a first degree in Engineering, Applied Mathematics, Physics or related disciplines.  Preference will be given to candidates with experience in Robotics and/or Computational Neuroscience.  Candidates must be in the first 4 years of their research careers and not been awarded a doctoral degree.   As part of our commitment to promoting diversity we encourage applications from women.  To comply with the Marie Curie Actions rule for mobility, applicants must not have resided, worked or studied in Portugal for more than 12 months in the 3 years prior to Sept 2013. The positions are open to EU nationals.

 

These full-time posts are available from the 1th September 2013 and will be offered on a fixed-term contract for a period of 36 months.

 

Informal enquiries and applications (including a CV, statement of research interests, and the names and full contact details of two referees)  may be addressed to the emails of Dr. W. Erlhagen  wolfram.erlhagen@math.uminho.pt

or Dr E. Bicho  estela.bicho@dei.uminho.pt

 

Closing date: 22 July 2013