PHD POSITION: Shaping a personalized child-robot learning experience through conversational interaction

A 4-year full-time Ph.D. student position is available at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (jointly supervised with Utrecht University) on shaping a personalized child-robot learning experience. The focus lies on facilitating a mixed-initiative long-term conversation between the child and the robot. The position is embedded in the 5-year NWA project Dramaturgy for Devices, a collaboration between four universities and many other partners mainly from the creative and robotics sectors in the Netherlands.

Location: AMSTERDAM
FTE: 1 

Job description

The Dramaturgy for Devices project aims at designing sustained relationships with robots and other smart technologies. It will explore the value of the performing arts as a motor for innovation and reflection in a high-tech society and demonstrate how collaboration with the performing arts can be a game changer regarding the development of the behavior of and interaction with robots and other technological agents. Robots are increasingly part of our daily lives, yet they still lack many skills needed for social interaction and communication. Addressing this gap requires innovative approaches, tools and methods for developing interactions with robots in a diversity of social contexts.

The main objective of this PhD-project is to facilitate a sustainable, long-term interaction by means of personalization through a conversational interaction. The focus is on improving the social performance of educational robots for children in the classroom (societal impact) by designing a robot that co-develops with the children who grow and learn at school. Building on previous work that has a narrative educational approach for teaching children math, which largely was based on scripted material, this project will focus on extending the conversational interaction capabilities of robots.

The objectives are to:

• Provide a personalized learning experience, where personalized social interaction reinforces personalized learning with a robot and vice versa, to increase motivation for long-term interaction.
• Design novel methods and tools to create interactive personalized content for conversational interaction, involving creative writers, which is the main focus of the interventions designed.
• Integrate Large Language Model (LLM) capabilities for enabling children to take the initiative in a conversation (i.e. to enable co-regulation) and develop conversation management models for managing the (scope of the) conversation (e.g. facilitating repair, and turns for bringing the conversation back to the conversational topic and scope the robot is able to handle).

Your duties

The candidate will investigate technologies for extending the conversational capabilities (co-regulation, conversation management) of a robot interacting with children in an educational context: The aims of the project will be to develop:

a) novel methods for creating interactive personalized content for conversational interaction, involving creative writer, e.g., through child-centered design, focus groups, qualitative methods;
b) conversational interaction patterns that support co-regulation (e.g. enable children to take the initiative in the conversation) by integrating LLMs into the interaction architecture of an educational robot;
c) conversational management skills for a social robot that enable it to repair and respond to out of genre conversational turns of children interacting with it.

Requirements

• Master degree in Artificial Intelligence, Cognitive Science, or related interdisciplinary fields such as Interaction Technology that combines an understanding of the underlying AI technology and human-centered approaches;
• Comfortable using various programming paradigms (e.g. agent-based, logical-based, and object-oriented programming) and programming languages;
• Willingness to step outside their own discipline to solve complex problems that cut across bodies of knowledge in different fields, and to cooperate with e.g. professional writers;
• A good team spirit and willingness to collaborate across institutions and be actively involved in the larger project consortium;
• Affinity with social robotics.

The candidate will be supervised jointly by Prof. Dr. Koen Hindriks (Social AI group, VU Amsterdam), Dr. Mike Ligthart (Social AI group, VU Amsterdam), and Laura Karreman (Theatre and Performance Studies, UU). The position is embedded in the NWA Dramaturgy for Devices project, hence adaptivity to work in a heterogeneous team and consortium, creativity and interest in multi-disciplinary research are fundamental. The candidate will be mainly based at VU Amsterdam, but will be expected to actively collaborate with the other PhD projects that are part of Dramaturgy for Devices.

What are we offering?

A challenging position in a socially involved organization. The salary will be in accordance with university regulations for academic personnel and amounts €2,770 (PhD) per month during the first year and increases to €3,539 (PhD) per month during the fourth year, based on a full-time employment. The job profile is based on the university job ranking system and is vacant for 1 FTE.

The appointment will initially be for 18 months. After a satisfactory evaluation of the initial appointment, the contract will be extended for a total duration of 4 years.

Additionally, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam offers excellent fringe benefits and various schemes and regulations to promote a good work/life balance, such as:

• a maximum of 41 days of annual leave based on full-time employment,
• 8% holiday allowance and 8.3% end-of-year bonus,
• solid pension scheme (ABP),
• contribution to commuting expenses,
• optional model for designing a personalized benefits package

For information about our excellent fringe benefits of employment, see 

Working at VU
About Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

The ambition of Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam is clear: to contribute to a better world through outstanding education and ground-breaking research. We strive to be a university where personal development and commitment to society play a leading role. A university where people from different disciplines and backgrounds collaborate to achieve innovations and to generate new knowledge. Our teaching and research encompass the entire spectrum of academic endeavor – from the humanities, the social sciences and the natural sciences through to the life sciences and the medical sciences.

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam is home to more than 31,000 students. We employ over 5,000 individuals. The VU campus is easily accessible and located in the heart of Amsterdam’s Zuidas district, a truly inspiring environment for teaching and research.

Diversity
We are an inclusive university community. Diversity is one of our most important values. We believe that engaging in international activities and welcoming students and staff from a wide variety of backgrounds enhances the quality of our education and research. We are always looking for people who can enrich our world with their own unique perspectives and experiences.

The Faculty of Science
Working at the Faculty of Science means working together with students, PhD candidates and scientists who are focused on their discipline, yet also have a broad view of the world. We are proud of the collegial working environment within the faculty, which is characterised by an ambitious and pragmatic attitude with commitment to the bigger picture. At the Faculty of Science, scientists and students work on fundamental and complex social issues for a sustainable and healthy future. From forest fires to big data, from obesity to malnutrition, from genetics to pharmaceuticals and from molecules to the moon: our teaching and research cover the full breadth of the natural sciences. Scientific teaching and research is highly experimental, technical, computational and interdisciplinary in nature. This is why we collaborate extensively with leading research institutes and industry. The faculty has over 11,000 students studying across 40 educational programmes and employs over 1,600 staff spread over 10 scientific departments, making us the largest science faculty in the Netherlands.

About the department, project
The VU Department of Computer Science has approximately 200 staff members, including approximately  110 PhD students. Lecturers form a critical and essential basis for the functioning of the department, providing foundational education that helps determine the future of our students. The position is embedded in the Dramaturgy for Devices project, a 5-year project in which four universities in the Netherlands collaborate (funded by NWO).

Application

Are you interested in this position? Please apply via the application button until

20/01/2024

. Please include in your application a short motivation letter, your CV, and a 1-page statement about your previous research.

Note that this job opening is one of four PhD positions in the Dramaturgy for Devices project (https://performingrobots.sites.uu.nl/ , “News”). In case you apply to more than one, please inform the project leader via email ([email protected] ) of the projects you are applying to.
We strongly encourage female or gender nonbinary individuals, as well as people from marginalized groups or minorities, to apply.

Applications received by e-mail will not be processed.

Vacancy questions
If you have any questions regarding this vacancy, you may contact:

Name: Prof. Dr. Koen Hindriks
Position: Full Professor
E-mail: [email protected]

For more information regarding moving to Amsterdam, and working at VU Amsterdam, please check: https://workingat.vu.nl/international-staff

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