France : PhD Scholarship in Computer Science

PhD Scholarship in Computer Science / Economy at IRIT and GREMAQ, Toulouse, France

Description:
We invite, applications for an interdisciplinary 3 years PhD position in computer science and economics. The projects title is: “Epistemic states, Trust and responsibility of economical agents: from theoretical aspects to experimental studies”

Project description:
Recently computer scientists’ interest in more and more complex systems has lead to an increased use of multi-agent approaches. Multi-agent analysis allows the investigation of the interaction of autonomous agents able to make decisions and to execute the necessary actions. The characterization of these agents is done with help of a number of theoretical models, among which modal (in particular epistemic) logics. This implies that the systems and their agents are described in terms of their knowledge, beliefs, goals and intentions.

The concept of trust has been recently studied at the same time in the domain of multi-agent systems as concerning interactions of economic agents. The interaction of economic agents has been traditionally studied concerning monetary profits for the involved actors. However, today it is widely believed that decisions in economic interactions are influenced by beliefs, trust and emotions.

The objective of this research project is to study situations requiring responsibility and trust with experimental economic paradigms. We will evaluate how and when responsibility will lead to trust when interactions are repeated. The resulting states will be formally characterized by using epistemological concepts of trust and responsibility.

The ideal candidate for this position should have training in either computer science or economics, with knowledge in at least one of the areas of formal logic, game theory, simulations.

The position will be co-supervised by Andreas Herzig (IRIT, Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse) and Astrid Hopfensitz (GREMAQ, Université des Sciences Sociales, Toulouse). Both institutions are world renowned research institutions in their discipline and the candidate will have the opportunity to participate and interact with researchers from both fields. Monthly salary will be according to French standards (gross salary 1650 Euros, i.e. 1360 Euros of taxable income (with approximately 10% income tax to be subtracted)). Research language in Toulouse is English however some basic knowledge of French is an advantage.

For further questions please contact:

Andreas Herzig, http://www.irit.fr/~Andreas.Herzig

or Astrid Hopfensitz, http://hopfensitz.googlepages.com

Application Deadline: August 18, 2009

Contact:
Hopfensitz, Astrid
Toulouse School of Economics (GREMAQ)
astrid.hopfensitz[ at ]univ-tlse1.fr

FRANCE: Scholarship in Applied Mathematics and Scientific Computing

PhD Scholarship in Applied Mathematics and Scientific Computing, FEMTO-ST, Besançon, FRANCE

Applications are invited for a three year PhD scholarship in the FEMTO-ST Institute (see www.femto-st.fr) at Besançon FRANCE.

This PhD project will form part of a wider project which aims to develop new mathematical tools and a general software dedicated to Arrays of Microsystems. Arrays of Microsystems have been developed and continue their expansion in a number of scientific and technical fields. The research of the project will focus on deriving general multi-scale multi-physical models able to cover large classes of such systems. The multi-scale mathematical methods will be rooted in recently developed techniques by our group or collaborators. Part of mathematical modeling will be done in collaboration with a Laboratory of Mathematics.

The scholarship is valued at about €1.000 net per month for three years. It will be available from 1 October 2009. Application to a room on the campus is possible for low rate. Applicants should have a good undergraduate degree and, preferably, a master’s qualification in Applied Mathematics, Computational Mathematics or Mechanics, or comparable postgraduate work experience.

Closing date for applications: July 15th, 2009.

Please email a CV and letter outlining your areas of research interest, along with names and contact details of two referees who can comment on your academic suitability to Dr Michel Lenczner (michel.lenczner@utbm.fr).

Further information on this project can be obtained by contacting:
Professor Michel Lenczner
FEMTO-ST
26, Chemin de l’épitaphe
25030 Besançon
phone: +33 (0) 81 40 28 27
email: michel.lenczner@utbm.fr

Paris, France : Two PhD Positions in Computer Science

Two PhD Positions in Computer Science / Document Image Analysis at ESIEE Paris, France

Further to the acceptance of a project funded by the French Ministry of Industry, ESIEE Paris seeks applicants for two PhDs in the field of Computer Science and Document Image Analysis (DIA). For an overview of the activities of the Department, please visit:

http://www.esiee.fr/en/research/a2si.php

The overall goal of the project is to improve an existing document analysis system, which is able to convert various type of documents, most of them originating from the French heritage and assuming various physical forms (books, microfilms, postcards, civil deeds, etc.). The novelty of the PhD comes from the proposed methodology, which suggests processing images directly in grey levels rather than in their binarized version.

Strong knowledges in image analysis and processing, as well as the technical mastery of a programming language (such as C++ or Java) are a must. Additional knowledges in mathematical morphology for the first position, and experience with an environment such as Matlab or R, or further knowledges on statistical classification/recognition methods (SVM, neural networks, bayesian networks, …) for the second position would be additional assets.

Interested applicants should be either French-speaking or fluent in english. Resumes, possibly including a publication or a manuscript, and motivation letters should be sent by e-mail only to:

l.najman@esiee.fr for position 1
x.hilaire@esiee.fr for position 2

Duration : 36 months
Salary : 39 k€ per annum.
Expected starting date : November 2008.

Position 1 : Document image enhancement using topological and morphological filters in simplicial complexes
The aim of the PhD is to improve the quality of the document images by rectifying as much as possible the various consequences of noise, which appear either at pixel level (white noise, locally low contrast, blotting effect of the paper), or at character level (ink default, paper defect, broken characters). Page level defects other than white noise (e.g., rotation, uneven feeding of paper when using roll scanners), however, need not be addressed.

We propose to design a morphological and topological filtering method that operates within the framework of greylevel simplicial complexes. Our idea is to process images at subpixel level only, and to refrain from binarizing it. When processing printed text, the method aims to provide an image with characters as close as possible to the ground truth (without it be possible, however, to formally state its performance, since the commercial OCR FineReader will be used as a black box in the real processing chain). When coping with handwritten text, the method shall compute, word by word, a filtered skeleton of these words that will be used as input to feed an HCR.

In both cases, formal performances of the filtering method will be established based on the specifications of a public OCR and HCR, and proped up with experimental validations using FineReader and DocumentReader in the framework of the project.

Position 2 : Contextual segmentation of document images using greylevel texture analysis
Document page segmentation is to automatically recognize and extract its various components (text and text blocks, mathematical formulas, halftones, captions, …).

Numerous segmentation methods are available in the literature. The usual taxonomy grossly fits them into three families : top-down methods (one starts from an entire page, then recursively split it until a criterion is satisfied on each region), bottom-up methods (the opposite approach), and hybrid methods. The latter family obviously gathers methods that take advantage of both top-down and bottom-up strategies, but also those which rely on texture analysis (Gabor analysis, co-occurrence, HTD, edge histograms, etc.).

One critic that may be addressed to almost all of the existing methods is their inability to process any image but binary ones, as most of them generally need to separate the background from the foreground of the document very early. The aim of the PhD is to design a texture-based method, which would improve over the existing ones in three different manners :

1. By using greylevel texture descriptors : the additional information conveyed by greylevels should result in a significant accuracy of the descriptors, and thereafter in that of the segmentation itself. It would even be desirable to define or use color whenever color is available.

2. By contextualizing the segmentation : although heterogeneous, the document corpus remains rather well identified. Our idea is then to introduce document models that could not only permit to modify the probability laws that a pixel belongs to a class given the document and the corpus, but also to give an a posteriori explanation of these laws taken jointly. Bayesian networks, in particular, could constitute an appealing framework to solve this problem.

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3. By explicitly modelizing and explaining noise : it is highly desirable that the segmentation method modelize noise as a class of its own, and be able to explain it. Such an approach has already been proposed in the literature, for instance for distinguishing between handwritten and printed text on binary images by Zheng et al., and exhibited interesting results. Significant improvements are to be expected by a similar approach extended in grey levels.

Scholarships for Master and PhD Students in France

2009 / 2010 Eiffel Programme Scholarships for Master and PhD Students, France

The French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs launched the Eiffel excellence scholarship programme in January 1999 to support French centres of higher education in their international outreach initiatives, in a context of mounting competition among developed countries to attract elite students from overseas. In 2005, the scheme was extended with the Eiffel Doctorate programme, addressing high-calibre PhD students.

For greater clarity, the French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs is now introducing a single application procedure for its Eiffel Scholarship and Eiffel Doctorate Scholarship programmes.

The new Eiffel programme thus covers two types of course:

• Master’s postgraduate degree course
• Ten-month co-tutored or co-managed component (preferably second or third year) of PhD course

The objectives of the Eiffel excellence programme run by the French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs remain unchanged, the first being to offer French higher-education opportunities for future
public- and private-sector decision-makers in three priority areas: science; economics & management; and law & political science.

Contact
Égide - Programme Eiffel
28 rue de la Grange-aux-Belles
75010 Paris
(see the map)
Tél. : + 33 1 40 40 59 30
Télécopie : + 33 1 40 40 59 24
Mél. : eiffel@egide.asso.fr

Deadline: 9 january 2009

For further information, please consult Call for Applications.

PhD Scholarships in Innovation and Market Selection, France:

PhD Scholarship Innovation and Market Selection: an Evolutionary Approach

CNRS-GREDEG, University of Nice - Sophia Antipolis, and Department for Research on Innovation and Competition (OFCE) - SciencesPo (France)

Description of the Subject: Aggregate productivity growth is the outcome of incumbent firms adopting new and superior techniques and (or) entering firms replacing exiting firms with better technologies. This research project will concern market selection mechanisms by characterising innovation as a process of selection (or acquisition) of more productive technologies within firms and a process of selection of firms itself. It will analyse both what happens inside the firms and what happens between firms on the market when firms are engaged in innovative or imitative processes. The first part of the research will be devoted to making a survey of empirical and theoretical analyses of industrial dynamics, which should focus on the relation between innovation and competition. The second part of the research will build a theoretical model of industrial dynamics in order to analyse rivalry and competition among heterogeneous firms. It will determine the market conditions that allow firms to capture productivity gains from past investments. These market conditions are critical to haracterising the dynamic equilibrium, similar to a so-called natural market structure. The third and last part will consist in developing an empirical analysis of the determinants of firms’ entry and exit, using French census data. In its conclusion, this research will address critical issues concerning the objectives and channels of industrial policies defined as policies that support development of firms and innovation

Requirements: The successful candidate must be familiar with basic economic modelling and econometrics (master level). Knowledge of English is required. Proficiency in English and the willingness to learn French are appreciated.

This is a PhD public scholarship for three years, starting from September 2008 onwards, with an annual pay of 16,000 Euros before income tax. The candidate will be hosted at CNRS/GREDEG and OFCE/DRIC. GREDEG (CNRS and University of Nice Sophia Antipolis) is a research group in industrial economics. OFCE-DRIC (www.ofce.sciences-po.fr/index-uk.htm) is a department of the research centre in economics of Sciences-Po Paris, a leading French higher education institution. The Department for Research on Innovation and Competition (OFCE-DRIC), in association with the GREDEG, studies a broad set of topics related to structural change, innovation and trade. It has a strong emphasis on empirical approaches:
(i) for the analysis of economic performances of firms and countries engaged in innovation processes or concerned with the entry in new markets; (ii) for the evaluation of public policies (competition and
regulation policies, but also fiscal and banking ones). Its researchers combine a good grasp of economic theory with various econometric methods applied to firm and plant level datasets.

Supervisor: Jean-Luc Gaffard Professor of Economics, University of Nice Sophia Antipolis and CNRS-GREDEG, Head of the Department for Research on Innovation and Competition (OFCE Centre de Recherche en Economie de Sciences-Po)

Location: CNRS-GREDEG / University of Nice Sophia Antipolis and OFCE Department for Research on Innovation and Competition, 250 Avenue Albert Einstein, 06560 Valbonne, France.

Application: Applications will be received no later than June 30 2008. A master degree is required. To apply send a hard-copy of a cover letter, a full CV, a letter of recommendation, and a scholarly work or a research paper to:

Prof. Jean-Luc Gaffard, OFCE-DRIC, 250 rue Albert Einstein, 06560 Valbonne, France,

e-mail: jeanluc.gaffard@ofce.sciences-po.fr

Deadline: June 30 2008

PhD Positions in Color Content-Aware Image Processing:France

Introduction :
Image retrieval consists in finding among a database of target images those which represent the same scene as this represented by a query image. In this context, the key-point is the extraction of efficient descriptors from the images. Several recent studies have shown that color histograms can be very efficient in this context. However, color histograms do not take into account the spatial arrangement of colors and are very sensitive to illumination changes. Several authors have shown that the spatial organization of colors could significantly improve the performance of the image classifiers. Some spatial descriptors, such as color correlograms, may be used to represent in a global way the spatial arrangement of colors in the image, but they are sensitive to object occlusion and scale variation and are not designed to recognize objects in cluttered scenes. In very recent works, few searchers propose to extract local descriptors such as SIFT or SURF which have been proven to be more robust to local features. The SURF outperform the SIFT and are less time consuming. However, the SURF are not yet designed to work on color images.

Objectives:
The aim of this thesis is to extend the SURF to: (a) color information, (b) interest point detection and (c) local description. The interest points detected by the SURF approach result from the analysis of the intensity function discontinuities. However, it has been shown that, in the context of fast object recognition, the human visual system is attracted by regions characterized by high visual saliency and that these visual attention regions are not necessarily regions characterized by intensity function discontinuities. On the other hand, we propose to detect interest points by exploiting the color visual saliency in the images. Previous works done in our lab. will be used in this context.Furthermore, the SURF descriptors are based on specific local intensity gradients. Since color descriptors are more distinctive than gray level ones, we propose to determine new local color descriptors that are invariant to illumination changes. Previous works done in our lab. will be used in this context.

Candidacy:
We seek strong and motivated candidates. Selection will be based on:

1. Excellence of the candidate: outstanding achievement in the applicant’s Master of Science degree level in imaging science, computer science, or any discipline pertaining to the quantitative description of image processing, provided that the applicant can provide evidence of the necessary previous knowledge (i.e. a base of minimal competencies) particularly in the fields of computer science fundamentals, and image analysis and signal processing fundamentals.

2. Language ability: the candidates must demonstrate sound knowledge of the language (the requirement for competence in English is equivalent to TOEFL with at least 213 points (computer based)/550 points (paper based) or IELTS at grade 6.5. Knowledge of French will be not compulsory, but will be beneficial.

3. Student motivation to undertake the PhD and relevance to his/her professional development (explaining the application, the present situation, the interest in the PhD degree, the intentions after this PhD degree, …).

The application deadline is June 1, 2008

To receive the application form and/or to get more information please contact :
Alain TREMEAU, Alain.Tremeau@univ-st-etienne.fr

France: 100 PhD Positions Available in 2008 at INRIA

INRIA proposes young scientists a PhD in one of its research teams. Priority will be given to candidates with mobility background and to topics pertaining to the Institute’s priority themes.

You have a degree in computer science, automatic control or scientific computing equivalent to the French research master, you are planning to become a researcher in an academic environment, or, after training through research, to join a company or create one ?

Join INRIA for a PhD.
INRIA is at the leading edge of research and its scientific themes are innovative. You can meet there scientists of international stature or work with them. Novel ideas are considered with interest. INRIA maintains special relations with industry and fosters the emergence of startups founded by its research scientists (80 such companies founded in 20 years). At least 80 different nationalities are present at INRIA and activities are regularly organized in order to ease the integration of newcomers. The ambiance is relaxed and everyone can contribute to the social life of the community.

Survey into the professional integration of doctoral students – class of 2005
This inquiry, focussing on the 277 INRIA doctoral students who completed their thesis in 2005, reveals a particularly positive outlook. On average, 18 months after completion of their thesis, 97% of the doctoral graduates now hold posts that are consistent with their career path: 35% are researchers or research lecturers, 28% are engineers and 23% hold post-doc placements. Discover the full-length version of the survey.

PhD subjects by specialist field:

Communicating system

• Distributed systems and software architecture
• Networks and telecoms
• Embedded systems and mobility
• Architecture and compiling

Cognitive systems

• Statistical modeling and machine learning
• Perception, indexing and communication for images and video
• Multimedia data: interpretation and man-machine interaction
• Image synthesis and virtual reality

Symbolic systems

• Reliability and safety of software
• Algebraic and geometric structures, algorithms
• Management and processing of language and data

Numerical systems

• Control and complex systems
• Grids and high-performance computing
• Optimisation and inverse problems for stochastic or large-scale systems
• Modeling, simulation and numerical analysis Available subjects Biological systems
• Modeling and simulation in biology and medicine

Opening campaign: 3 March, 2008.

• View positions available and apply on-line.
  http://www.talentsplace.com/syndication1/inria/ukdoc
  the list is frequently updated.
• Offers are posted on-line as and when they become available.
  Please consult the list regularly.

End of the campaign : 15 May, 2008.

Via: official announcement

France: Postdoc Position in Besancon on Wavelets for Physics

Location: institut UTINAM (UMR CNRS 6213) Besançon, France
Length: 9 months, starting as soon as possible considering the time needed by the person retained to get all the administrative papers necessary to work in France.
Financial conditions:The credits obtained allow us to warrant a gross salary of 1839 € per month, which in reality means 1508 € per month transferred on the bank account.Requested profile:The applicant should preferentially have with experience in numerical analysis concerning implementation of the fast wavelet transform in fortran. Experience of parallelization and/or knowledge of Green’s function techniques and/or knowledge of the scattering matrix formalism in optics would be a plus, but are not required.
In any case, the person retained must have completed his/her PHD since less than 2 years and NOT be of French nationality! Therefore, the applicants should enclose in their application, considerations allowing assessing the time they would need to get the authorization to work in France.
Summary of the project:Since more than 10 years, we have been carrying theoretical studies concerning carbon nanotubes, first in the framework of the French CNRS research group GDR n°1752, then in the European research group GDR-E n°2756). In parallel, we got interested in applying the fast wavelet transform to speed up our simulations which require resolution of integral equations by Green’s function techniques. The limiting step is most of the time the resolution of large and dense systems of linear equations. The idea was to consider the matrix of the system just as an image and to use the fast wavelet transform and a thresholding process to sparsify it. The resulting sparse system is solved by means of specialized techniques and the solution inverse transformed. This was already part of the subject of Rachel Langlet’s PHD thesis co-supervised by Martin Meyer (Mathematics lab of Besançon) and Michel Devel (UTINAM institute of Besançon), with a great help from Yiwei LI (Xidian University, China) during and after his one-month visit in Besançon in July 2004. Thanks to these efforts we now have several pieces of fortran 90 codes, which implement this algorithm for real matrices (of arbitrary size, not necessarily a power of 2), with various levels of refinement. First experiments indicate that we can indeed use far less memory than with the traditional LAPACK based code and also gain in computation speed.
The goal of this post-doc would be to apply the same technique with complex coefficient matrices and possibly parallelize it. This would allow us to simulate interaction with light of carbon nanotubes or carbonaceous soot, with sizes closer to the actual experimental size of these objects than what we can presently do with the LAPACK based code. Cooperation with experimentalists in these fields is already under way.
Contact person :Please send a CV and e-mail and phone numbers of some past collaborators to:
Dr., Michel DEVELInstitut UTINAM, UMR CNRS 621316 route de GRAY,25030 Besançon CEDEX, FRANCEMichel.devel@univ-fcomte.fr (http://www.utinam.cnrs.fr)