[visionlist] [Jobs] Early Stage Researchers (ERS) - EU-Marie Sklodowska-Curie ETN COBRA (COnversational BRAins) - DEADLINE EXTENDED!

[Alessandro D'Ausilio]

Two Early Stage Researcher (ESR) positions (EU Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions) to be hosted in the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT). 
The successful applicants are expected to register for PhD at the University of Ferrara, in Translational Neurosciences and Neurotechnologies. 
The COBRA H2020 project (G.A. N. 859588), an EU Innovative Training Network of MSCA involving 9 partners, will train a group of 15 researchers that will be the next generation of researchers to accurately characterise and model the linguistic, cognitive and brain mechanisms deployed by human speakers in conversational interactions with human interlocutors as well as artificial dialog systems.

ERS2 
Objectives: When people are engaged in meaningful social interaction, they automatically and implicitly adjust their speech, vocal patterns and gestures to accommodate to others. Although these processes have extensively been explored at the behavioral level, very little is known about their neural underpinnings. Prior investigations have shown that suppression of alpha oscillations, overlaying sensorimotor regions, are a possible marker of action-perception coupling during non-speech (Tognoli & Kelso, 2015) and speech based (Mukherjee et al., 2019) interactive tasks. The project, by running dual-EEG recordings, will investigate if behavioral speech alignment translates into identifiable brain oscillatory markers. Key objectives are (i) to develop and validate metrics to quantify phonetic accommodation during natural speech interactions and (ii) to identify electrophysiological markers of between-speaker convergence.
Expected results: 
-	A computational pipeline, based on deep-learning methods, to extract phonetic accommodation patterns of speakers engaged in a meaningful social interaction; 
-	A significant contribution to the field of hyper-scanning by exploring the neurophysiological correlates of phonetic convergence during conversations.

Based in Ferrara, Italy
Full-time three-year contract, starting September 2020
PhD enrolment at: University of Ferrara
Main supervisor’s institution: Italian Institute of Technology
Main supervisor: Prof. Alessandro D’Ausilio, Prof. Luciano Fadiga

Secondments: 
-	AMU (Aix-Marseille Universitè, France): making-up of linguistic material in both Italian and French, contribution to design of experimental set-up and to phonetic analyses (5,5 months); 
-	HU-ZAS (Humboldt-Universität, Germany): Assessment of a repertoire of metrics for measuring phonetic convergence in conversational speech (5 months).

Contact: alessandro.dausilio at iit.it

ERS10
Objectives: For adults, mastering the segmental and supra-segmental aspects of a second language (L2) is particularly challenging. Although we know that such a capability is partially maintained during adulthood, we do not know yet how to facilitate effective and long-lasting L2 learning. This project is based on the hypothesis that when people engage in meaningful social interactions, they automatically and implicitly align at multiple levels (Pickering, Garrod, 2013), including the phonetic (Mukherjee et al., 2019) and the facial expression ones. ESR10 will tackle the fundamental scientific question of speech alignment in L2 and whether it drives long-lasting improvements in L2 skills. Key objectives are (i) to investigate the dynamics of alignment in L2 (English) and (ii) to quantify improvements when participants are engaged in a conversation with native speakers.
Expected results: 
-	Validation of a set of game-like tools to quantify L2 speech and facial movements alignment; 
-	Exhaustive investigation of alignment in L2, its relation with L2 proficiency before training and long term retention of L2 improvements.

Based in Ferrara, Italy
Full-time three-year contract, starting September 2020
PhD enrolment at: University of Ferrara
Main supervisor’s institution: Italian Institute of Technology
Main supervisor: Prof. Alessandro D’Ausilio, Prof. Luciano Fadiga

Secondments: 
-	IISAS (Slovak Academy of Sciences, Slovakia): training on methods for analyzing acoustic-prosodic alignment in dialogues (5 months); 
-	DAVI (DAVI, France): training on how to explore facial movement alignment in L2 (5,5 months).

Contact: alessandro.dausilio at iit.it 


THE APPLICATION IS DONE VIA THE COBRA WEBPAGE: https://www.cobra-network.eu/

DEADLINE EXTENDED: APRIL 15th 2020


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