Research scientist position in narrative understanding/generation, Raleigh NC (U.S.A.)

The Liquid Narrative group at NC State University invites applications for an open Research Scientist position in the Department of Computer Science, in the broad area of narrative processing, with specific interests in narrative understanding, modeling and generation. The research group working on this project includes Professors R. Michael Young and David Roberts. We expect the position to start as soon as a qualified candidate is identified but may consider hiring later in the academic year depending upon candidate and project constraints. The grant support will be for an initial year and renewable on an annual basis given adequate progress.

We seek candidates who have research experience in computational models of narrative, planning, machine learning, computational linguistics, intelligent data analytics, video game AI or other areas of artificial intelligence; and a foundation in theoretical models as well as experience in the implementation of these algorithms in significant research systems. Experience with manuscript/grant preparation is also of benefit. Prior pre- or post-doctoral experience in industry or in academic research projects is a strong plus. Project management skills, especially within a research environment, is an advantage.

The goals of the multi-year project are to build a large-scale infrastructure for narrative processing. The long-term work will involve developing computational tools for extracting narrative structure from a range of media (e.g., game logs, film/video, text-based news reports), modeling the space of narratives that account for the media content and supporting generation and interaction tools that allow human users to understand and interact with that narrative space. First year efforts in this project look to build key infrastructure as well as to focus on a pipeline from game play logs to both multi-media summarization and prediction of narrative progression. The Research Scientist may also contribute to efforts to design and build an instrumented multi-player game and/or a general cinematic storytelling tool, both using 3D commercial game engines.

Interested candidates should view the official HR posting and submit applications through the NC State UNiversity HR web pages at: https://jobs.ncsu.edu/postings/28619