Open Positions at The Information Retrieval Facility

Senior Scientific Officer and Post-Doctoral Fellow

The Information Retrieval Facility (IRF) is an international not-for-profit institution (Austrian Verein) based in Vienna. The IRF is dedicated to the promotion and facilitation of research on large scale information retrieval and the initial primary focus is on patent retrieval. An SGI Altix 4700 super computing facility located in Vienna is operated by the IRF. This currently has 80 standard CPU cores, 4 RC100 FPGAs, around 300 gigabytes of main memory. Standard IR packages like Lemur/Indri and Terrier are available as well as a corpus of 2.6 million patent documents and many other test collections.

The IRF is taking a leading role in the new TREC Chemistry and CLEF IP tracks for 2009. There are world leading collaborative research projects with Universities of Glasgow, Sheffield, Nijmegen, Amsterdam, UMass Amherst and many more in the pipe.line. Austrian Government funding has been obtained, and the first EU funding has been committed.

Matrixware and its investors have generously supported the in its initial phase (over €1M to date and more than €3.5M committed for 2009). Staffing at the facility will grow to 17 people (independent of grant income) during 2009. In the longer term the facility will be supported through a wider range of private industrial support, and public funding from Austrian sources, the EU and elsewhere. The IRF is controlled by a Scientific Board constisting of distinguished scientist in information retrieval which is chaired by Keith van Rijsbergen. The vice chair is Yves Chiaramella. (See http://www.ir-facility.org/the_irf/people/scientific_board ).

Vienna is situated in the heart of the Europe, right on the Danube River and within an hours of exceptional hiking and skiing in the Alps. This beautiful city is one of Europe’s cultural and historic gems. The home of Mozart and Strauss, the city continues to have a vibrant classical and more modern music scene, as well as truely exceptional art galleries and architecture. The IRF is located in central Vienna, close to the Opera and the Museum Quarter in a district renowned for its lively student restaurants and bars around the Vienna Technical University.

The IRF is seeking to appoint the following scientific staff :

Senior Scientific Officer to lead the scientific programme of the IRF under the direction of the Chief Scientific Officer. You will be an experienced researcher seeking to develop and lead your own research programmes within the strategic direction of the IRF. You will have a strong scientific publication record and have a growing international reputation in Information Retrieval. You will look forward to working collaboratively with leading researchers from the IRF Scientific Board and the broader academic community. Key parts of the role include the ability to attract funding, both public and industrial, to lead, develop and motivate more junior members of staff, and the capability to work collaboratively with multi-cultural, geographically dispersed teams from leading academic institutions and industry.

Post Doctoral Research Fellow : you will have recently completed (or be about to be awarded) a Ph.D. in Information Retrieval, Text Mining, Machine Learning, Information Visualization, large scale applications of the semantic web or a related discipline. You will be looking for the opportunity to futher develop your research skills working in a new institution in collaboration with leading academics and industry, both from information systems and the users of patent search systems. You will look forward to leading and developing funded projects for new and exciting technologies for information retreival.

All the posts will be based at the IRF’s offices in Vienna. The Senior Scientific Officer and Post Doctoral Research Fellow posts will both involve substantial amounts of international travel.

Salaries will be competitive and based on experience and qualifications.

To apply send a full CV (including a list of publication where relevant) and a letter outlining your reasons for wanting the post to jobs@ir-facility.org. John Tait, the Chief Scientific Officer of the IRF (john.tait@ir-facility.org), will be happy to receive requests for further information or detailed discussions.

Closing Date : 28 November 2008