City : Hamilton

Category : Other

Industry : Education

Employer : McMaster University

Postdoctoral Fellowship
Studying Natural Language Understanding

Overview

Dr. Christian Brodbeck from the Department of Computing and Software (CAS) at the Faculty of Engineering is recruiting one (1) postdoctoral researcher for a research project on natural language understanding in a cognitive architecture, in a collaboration with Adderbee Research, at McMaster University

Adderbee has developed a cognitive architecture, built on symbolic computation and continuous learning as a core mode of operation. The collaborative development project between McMaster and Adderbee aims to improve natural language understanding through the application of cognitive and linguistic principles.

We are searching for applicants who are interested in cognitive architectures and natural language processing. The research fellow will work as a part of a team bridging academia and industry. The goal of the position is to assist in systematically evaluating and improve conversational language understanding, as well as extend reasoning skills to novel semantic/knowledge domains.

About the Department

McMaster’s department of Computing and Software is one of the top departments for Computer Science and Software Engineering in Canada. We have 40+ faculty members with expertise in computer systems, software engineering, theoretical computer science, security, privacy, machine learning, data analytics, scientific computing, and bioinformatics. The department mentors over 1,800 undergraduate students in three programs: computer science, software engineering, and mechatronics engineering. It also mentors more than 180 graduate students in master’s and doctoral programs.

Qualifications

The candidate must have and/or demonstrate the following skillset:

• Recently completed their Ph.D. in Computational Linguistics, Cognitive Science, Psychology of Learning, Linguistic Theory, or a related field
• Experience and interests in cognitive architectures, Natural Language Processing, and Natural Language Understanding
• A record of conference presentations and/or peer-reviewed publications as first author in these areas
• Familiarity with computational methods
• Strong coding skills (ideally including some Java experience)

Duration and Funding

The term of the fellowship is initially for 12 months, with the possibility of renewal depending on funding. Selection will be based upon the candidate's research potential and fit with the research group in the Department of CAS at the Faculty of Engineering. We prefer the start date of the Postdoctoral Fellowship to be February 1, 2026.

The successful applicant will be placed on a hybrid work arrangement, as agreed upon with the faculty supervisor. The annual minimum salary for this appointment is $60,000.00 CAD/year, with benefits, provided in accordance with McMaster University guidelines, and commensurate with experience. The normal hours of work are 35 hours per week.