Fellowship position at WIPO (Geneva) in Neural Machine Translation
(12-24 months, Master level)


1. Organizational context

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is a specialized
agency of the United Nations. It is dedicated to developing a balanced
and accessible international Intellectual Property (IP) system. As part
of its mandate, WIPO translates Patent applications and disseminates
information about published patent applications using the PATENTSCOPE
search engine (https://patentscope.wipo.int/). To make this information
available worldwide, WIPO is looking for machine translation (MT)
techniques to help the translation of patents in various languages. Our
"Wipo Translate" tool is publically available at:
https://patentscope.wipo.int/translate. WIPO Translate is also used in
other contexts, e.g. translate conference meetings.

In WIPO Translate, we give preference to machine learning approaches;
we try to create translation models learning from the data. The final
goal is always to provide the best MT in production in term of quality
(quality should be competitive compared to commercial tools),
efficiency (we target quick translations, less than two seconds for one
sentence) and scalability (we train our translation models on world
class data in 12 different languages).

WIPO is looking for a research and development fellow who could work on
improving our WIPO Translate tool focusing on Neural Machine
Translation (NMT).  WIPO Translate is based on open source tools,
relying mainly on NMT tool Marian.

Neural networks being an emerging field, we are looking for a highly
motivated person skilled in Machine learning and Natural Language
Processing (NLP) in general. We focus on applied research: applying the
latest research development into production.

The WIPO Global Databases Division is working in the area of
automatically translating intellectual property documents, mainly
patents (see http://patentscope.wipo.int/translate) but also other
types of documents (WIPO Translate has been used in other international
organizations). WIPO is especially looking for a candidate(s) that
could contribute to keep WIPO's "advantage" in machine translation.


2. Duties and responsibilities

NMT

    -   Knowledge of neural network technologies (deep learning) to
        experiment with the next generation of MT,
    -   Ability to experiment with various techniques for setting the
        best parameters for specific language pairs, specific domains,
        and for combining various input source corpora (mixing
        in-domain small corpus with larger out-of-domain corpus),
        mixing multi languages in a single NMT model etc.

MT-evaluation/benchmarking/quality estimation

    -   Work on specific tools allowing a reliable automatic evaluation
        of NMT models (allow for quality comparison between two MT
        engines)
    -   Use feedback from human evaluation to further improve our
        engines (and our automatic metrics)
    -   Explore and develop tools to provide quality estimation metrics
        associated with NMT output (use human feedback to improve these
        metrics)

MT-integration/ Natural language processing


    -   Work on specific tools allowing a better integration of NMT in
        the user environment (batch translating texts/ documents/ HTML
        page),
    -   Design Graphical User Interface (good knowledge of Java, Jquery
        and/or Web/JSF 2.0 would be an advantage) to improve means for
        accessing the output of machine translation,
    -   Pre- and Post-process texts in different languages to improve
        translation quality (especially for Chinese, Korean, Japanese
        and German), e.g. replacing named entities by placeholders,
        normalizing casing, automatic filtering parallel texts, etc.

Develop methods to collect and clean training data

    -   Especially on parallel patent sentences (e.g.: filter/clean
        Patent titles and abstracts, align full texts using patent
        priority data, etc.), but also on other types of parallel
        documents (aligning/filtering diplomatic documents etc.),
    -   Work on combination of various sources for augmenting training
        data
        -   Use human post editions,
        -   use other corpora,
        -   use synthetic data,
    -   Define a workflow for updating NMT models using newly published
        documents (e.g. incremental training, explore online learning
        algorithms...)

3. Requirements

-   Education
    -   Advanced university degree in Information Technology.

-   Experience
    -   Essential
        -   At least one year of experience in the field of Machine
            Learning (R&D projects or PhD can be considered as
            experience)
    -   Desirable
        -   A specialization in machine learning techniques
        -   Familiar with computational linguistics
        -   Experience in implementing Machine Learning projects and/or
            making significant scientific contribution in Machine
            Learning.

-   Job-related competencies
    -   Essential
        -   A strong knowledge of programming language is required
            (Java and/or Python).
        -   A good knowledge of Unix is required
    -   Desirable
        -   Statistics: automatic document classification approaches
            (Neural Networks, Naive Bayes, SVM, Knn, EM, ANNs, ...)
        -   Web/Internet technologies: Java, Tomcat, JavaScript,
            Jquery, Angular.js, Jsf, CSS, HTML 5...
        -   Scripting languages: bash, Python, Perl
        -   Unix: Ubuntu, Red Hat, configuring Unix remote servers
            (using command line mode)
        -   Experience with version control systems (SVN and/or GIT)
            and deployment strategies (docker, cloud servers, virtual
            machines etc.)
        -   Ability to write user guide, administration documentation
            and reports in English.
        -   Excellent decision-making and problem-solving skills.
        -   A proven background in research (scientific publications)
            will be a strong plus.
        -   Search engines: Lucene / ElasticSearch / Solr
        -   XML technologies
        -   Databases: nosql techniques, Mysql, Oracle...

-   Language skills
    -   Excellent knowledge of written and spoken English or excellent
        knowledge of written and spoken French and good knowledge of
        English.
    -   Knowledge of other official UN languages would be a plus. A
        working knowledge of other official languages of WIPO (German,
        Spanish, French, Portuguese, Russian, Arabic, Chinese, Japanese
        or Korean) would be an advantage.

4. Organizational competencies

    1. Communicating effectively.
    2. Showing team spirit.
    3. Demonstrating integrity.
    4. Valuing diversity.
    5. Producing results.
    6. Showing service orientation.
    7. Seeing the big picture.
    8. Seeking change and innovation.
    9. Developing yourself and others.

5. Terms and conditions

    a)  Term of fellowship: up to 12 months, with the possibility of
        renewable up to an additional 12 months, for a maximum of two
        years.

    b)  Anticipated Start Date:  March 15, 2022

    c)  Location: WIPO Headquarters, Geneva, Switzerland.

    d)  Stipend:  is set in accordance with the level of qualifications
        and experience of the Fellow (stipend starts from 5000
        CHF/month).

    e)  Travel expenses: one economy class ticket (return) from/to the
        Fellow's place of residence by the most direct and economical
        route to/from Geneva. If necessary, WIPO may provide assistance
        in obtaining an entry visa to Switzerland.

    f)  WIPO provides medical and accident insurance coverage during
        the course of the fellowship.

    g)  WIPO will request a "carte de légitimation" for the Fellow,
        which serves as a residence and work permit, from the Permanent
        Mission of Switzerland to the United Nations Office and to the
        other international organizations in Geneva. Family members of
        the Fellow are not eligible for a "carte de legitimation."

    h)  Tax and social security: Fellows shall be solely responsible
        for meeting any taxation and social security obligations that
        may arise directly or indirectly from their contract with WIPO.

Additional information

Fellows are not staff members of WIPO and the position does not lead to
any employment rights and entitlements beyond the terms of the
fellowship.

How do I register my interest?

Expressions of interest, formulated through a brief statement by the
candidate addressing each of the requirements set out above,
accompanied only by a full curriculum vitae (résumé), should be sent by
email to: bruno.pouliquen@wipo.int by February 8, 2022.

Only those candidates who are shortlisted for a written test or an
interview (via videoconference) will be contacted.

Note for PhD students: WIPO cannot provide academic support for
supervising a PhD, a special agreement with a local supervisor can be
obtained.

Bruno Pouliquen