AAA Data Science Postdoctoral researcher in Analysis of Images and Text for Marketing

Informatics Institute (UvA) & Amsterdam Business School (UvA)

Amsterdam Data Science, an initiative of the University of Amsterdam (UvA), VU University Amsterdam (VU), Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA), and Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) is looking for 14 researchers at the postdoctoral/PhD level. These positions are funded by the Amsterdam Academic Alliance (AAA), a joint initiative of the UvA and VU aimed at intensifying collaboration with each other and knowledge institutions in the region, to cement Amsterdam's position as a hub of academic excellence. These positions are partially co-funded by CWI, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences of the UvA, HvA, ORTEC, Spinoza fund of Prof. Vossen, and VUmc.

Amsterdam Data Science provides a network in which some 300 Amsterdam based scientists exchange Data Science knowledge and forge partnerships within and outside the academic community. This comprises the foundations of data science and data science for the life sciences, social analytics, business analytics, and digital humanities.

This advertisement concerns one of the 14 positions. This postdoctoral researcher position is with Prof. Worring of the Informatics Institute of the Faculty of Science of UvA, with research groups in text and image analysis which are among the world leaders in their respective fields, and with Prof. Van Dolen of the Amsterdam Business School of the Faculty of Economics and Business of UvA, where high-tech technology and business knowledge are brought together in advanced business analytics solutions.

Project description

Social media is reshaping the marketing landscape. Where marketing has always been primarily a one directional channel where companies are broadcasting via various media, social media has created a reverse channel in which potential clients are expressing explicit as well as implicit opinions on brands and products through posts containing both images and text. To be able to steer and benefit from such opinions, insight is needed in the role brands play when social media users express themselves and broadcast to others. How do consumers use brands to self-present and which brand-related posts become popular and which not? In this project we aim to find measures to quantify the relevance of the brand in the social media post, the emotion the user has about the brand, and how those two variables affect the virality of the post and hence the quantitative impact on marketing.

The above questions will be attacked from two sides:

1. the marketing/business perspective and
2. the data science perspective.

The postdoc position described here concerns the data science perspective, the business perspective will be covered by researchers of the Amsterdam Business School.

Tasks

The candidate should:

• perform research on the analysis methodologies needed to measure content based marketing parameters at unprecedented scales, in particular the use and development of innovative computer vision techniques for analysing the content of images and the combination with advanced text analysis techniques to understand the image content in its social context;
• contribute to education in data science at bachelor and/or master level at the Informatics Institute and at the Amsterdam Business School;
• play an active role in connecting business analytics and data science in the context of Amsterdam Data Science.

Requirements

The candidate should have:

• a proven scientific research record with publications in leading journals and conferences in computer vision or multimedia;
• a PhD in a field relevant to the position e.g. Computer Science or Artificial Intelligence;
• excellent writing skills in English;
• good communication skills;
• affinity with applications in business analytics.

Further information

• Prof. Marcel Worring, Informatics Institute and Amsterdam Business School
  T: +31 (0)20 525 7521

Appointment

The appointment will be on a temporary basis for a period of three years. Based on a full-time appointment (38 hours per week) the gross monthly salary will range from €2,476 to €3,908 (scale 10) depending on expertise and previous experience. The salary is supplemented with a holiday allowance of 8% and an end-of-year bonus of 8.3%. The Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities is applicable.

Job application

Applications may only be submitted via application-science@uva.nl. To process your application immediately, please quote vacancy number 15-115 and the position you are applying for in the subject-line. Applications must include a detailed curriculum vitae, a motivation letter explaining why you are the right candidate, list of projects you have worked on with brief descriptions of your contributions and the names and contact addresses of two academic references from which information about the candidate can be obtained. All these should be grouped in one PDF attachment.

Applications will be accepted until 10 May 2015.

No agencies please