2018-01045 - Postdoctoral Researcher - Theoretical aspects of
private machine learning for speech processing M/F

Renewable contract : Oui

Level of qualifications required : PhD or equivalent

Fonction : Post-Doctoral Research Visit

About the research centre or Inria department

The Inria Lille - Nord Europe Research Centre was founded in 2008 and
employs a staff of 360, including 300 scientists working in sixteen
research teams. Recognised for its outstanding contribution to the
socio-economic development of the Nord - Pas-de-Calais Region, the
Inria Lille - Nord Europe Research Centre undertakes research in the
field of computer science in collaboration with a range of academic,
institutional and industrial partners.  The strategy of the Centre is
to develop an internationally renowned centre of excellence with a
significant impact on the City of Lille and its surrounding area. It
works to achieve this by pursuing a range of ambitious research
projects in such fields of computer science as the intelligence of
data and adaptive software systems. Building on the synergies between
research and industry, Inria is a major contributor to skills and
technology transfer in the field of computer science.

Context

Inria Lille is seeking a postdoctoral researcher for a new European
(H2020 ICT) collaborative project called COMPRISE. The successful
candidate will be part of the Magnet team, which gathers 15
researchers (faculty, postdocs, PhD students) in the field of machine
learning, with focus on learning from graph-structured data as well as
decentralized and privacy-friendly algorithms. The team is very
international and English is the working language.  COMPRISE is a
3-year Research and Innovation Action (RIA) aiming at new
cost-effective, multilingual, privacy-driven voice interaction
technology. This will be achieved through research advances in
privacy-driven machine learning, personalized training, automatic data
labeling, and tighter integration of speech and dialog processing with
machine translation. The technology will be based on existing software
toolkits (Kaldi speech-to-text, Platon dialog processing, Tilde
text-to-speech), as well as new software resulting from these research
efforts.  The consortium includes academic and industrial partners in
France (Inria, Netfective Technology ), Germany (Ascora, Saarland
University), Latvia (Tilde), and Spain (Rooter).

Assignment

The postdoctoral researcher will work on the design and the validation
of privacy-friendly speech-to-text based on machine learning
techniques. He/she will address the following research questions:

- how to design private speech-to-text training algorithms with formal
  guarantees;

- how to define privacy and data protection for speech signals and
  speech-to-text tasks;

- how to formally characterize the amount of noise and the
  utility-privacy trade-off.

This research has an important machine learning component, mainly
focusing on the underlying statistical theory, which will strengthen
the existing research lines.

The research and experimentation will be conducted in the Magnet team
at Inria Lille, in tight collaboration with the Multispeech team at
Inria Nancy and in connection with Saarland University and
Rooter. Depending on his/her desires and aspirations, the successful
candidate will have the opportunity to join Multispeech for extended
periods of time, in order to benefit from the complementary scientific
environments offered by the two teams.

This contract is for 2 years and may be renewed up to 2 more years.

Main activities

- Study privacy models (such as differential privacy, pufferfish
privacy) and their applicability in the context of the project's
architecture and requirements
- Design privacy-friendly training algorithms
- Implement algorithms in a library compliant with the other
developments of the consortium
- Assess privacy/confidentiality of information
- Validate the proposed solutions
- Coordinate with the two other postdoctoral researchers to be recruited
by Inria as part of this project, who will be working on personalized
training and automatic data labeling

Additional activities

- Publish, report, and disseminate results
- Coordinate with related efforts in the team / communitySkills

Two alternative profiles are welcome, either:

- Strong background in mathematics, machine learning, statistics and
algorithms 

or

- Strong experience with implementation and experimentation,
  distributed systems, speech processing.

Excellent English writing and speaking skills are required in any case.

Benefits package

-Subsidised catering service
-Sports facilities

General Information
Theme/Domain : Data and Knowledge Representation and Processing
Town/city : Villeneuve d'Ascq
Inria Center : CRI Lille - Nord Europe
Starting date : 2019-01-01
Duration of contract : 2 years
Deadline to apply : 2018-10-19
Contacts
Inria Team : MAGNET
Recruiter :
Tommasi Marc / marc.tommasi@inria.fr

About Inria

Inria, the French National Institute for computer science and applied
mathematics, promotes "scientific excellence for technology transfer
and society". Graduates from the world's top universities, Inria's
2,700 employees rise to the challenges of digital sciences.  With its
open, agile model, Inria is able to explore original approaches with
its partners in industry and academia and provide an efficient
response to the multidisciplinary and application challenges of the
digital transformation. Inria is the source of many innovations that
add value and create jobs.

Conditions for application

Defence Security :

This position is likely to be situated in a restricted area (ZRR), as
defined in Decree No. 2011-1425 relating to the protection of national
scientific and technical potential (PPST).Authorisation to enter an
area is granted by the director of the unit, following a favourable
Ministerial decision, as defined in the decree of 3 July 2012 relating
to the PPST. An unfavourable Ministerial decision in respect of a
position situated in a ZRR would result in the cancellation of the
appointment.

Recruitment Policy :

As part of its diversity policy, all Inria positions are accessible
to people with disabilities.

Apply online:
https://jobs.inria.fr/public/classic/en/offres/2018-01045