Opening of the Contest for Award of Three Research Grants - Reference ECI4.0_BI2 (# of pos: 3)

The Research Center for Information Sciences, Technology and Architecture (ISTAR-Iscte) is launching a call for 3 (three) undergraduate research fellowships, hereafter referred to as Research Fellowships, for the ECI4.0 Smart Commercial Spaces research project and in the research area related to Computer Science, Data Science or related areas.

This grant is under the FCT Research Grant Regulations (RBI) and the Research Grant Holder Statute (EBI).

The grant will be funded through the ECI4.0 project, incentive system for research and technological development (SI I&DT), notice No. 17/SI/2019, projects in co-promotion.

Link to the portuguese version of this job offer: https://istar.iscte-iul.pt/portfolio-posts/aviso-de-abertura-do-concurso...

1. SUBMISSION OF APPLICATION

The contest is open between 00:00 on Friday, July 22 and 17:00 (Lisbon time) on Monday, August 22 2022.

The applications and supporting documents for the application foreseen in this Contest must be submitted by e-mail sent/submitted to [email protected] .

2. TYPE AND DURATION OF THE SCHOLARSHIP

The research grant is intended to finance the carrying out of the research activities described below by the grant recipients

The research activities will take place at the Centro de Investigação em Ciências da Informação, Tecnologias e Arquitetura, which will be the host institution for the fellows, located at Edifício II do Iscte, Avenida das Forças Armadas, 1649-026 Lisboa, and may partially, and by common agreement, be done by telecommuting.

The duration of the fellowship is six (6) months, starting in January 2023.

3. SCHOLARSHIP RECIPIENTS

The research grant is intended for candidates enrolled at a Portuguese higher education institution in a master's degree course. This registration must be made by the time the grant is contracted.

4. ADMISSIBILITY

4.1 Candidate Admissibility Requirements

You can apply to this contest:

• Nationals or citizens of other European Union member states;
• Third State Citizens;
• Stateless;
• Citizens benefiting from political refugee status

4.2 Application Admissibility Requirements.

It is essential, under penalty of not being admitted to the Contest, to attach the following documents to the application:

• Detailed curriculum vitae of the candidate;
• Motivation Letter indicating the type of scholarship you want to apply for (300 word limit);
• Degree certificates in Computer Science, Data Science, or other areas relevant to the project. The certificate must have an explicit undergraduate average in grades from 0 to 20, or, if in another scale, proof must be attached of: scale used at the University in question, minimum passing grade at the University in question;
• If possible, the candidate should also send information, even if in an informal format, about course notes, either in the bachelor's or master's degree, if applicable.
• Write the application and all the documents associated with it, including the letters of motivation and recommendation, in Portuguese or in English;
• Since the work to be performed involves programming, the candidate should evidence his/her proficiency in programming in the CV or cover letter, in particular knowledge of python, and provide evidence of extra training to support claims about his/her experience.

5. OBJECTIVES AND WORK PLAN

The ability to detect and recognize complex human activities enables the construction of several important applications.

Traditional surveillance systems in public places such as airports, subway stations, and commercial areas only provide information to be used as a security mechanism. Most existing solutions record data that is only accessed after an abnormal event has occurred.

At the same time, several economic sectors are undergoing transformation processes, driven not only by technological developments, but also by increasing consumer demands. The retail sector is one of the main sectors affected by these digital transformation phenomena.

It is in this context that the ECI4.0 - Intelligent Commercial Spaces project arises, which aims to develop and validate a first prototype of a multimodal platform for intelligent analysis of human behavior patterns in commercial areas through the use of computer vision techniques, sensor fusion and machine learning in order to advance the application of Ambient Intelligence to specialized retail commercial spaces. These spaces can be found in large shopping malls or in airports.

Each of the jobs to be done has the following objectives:

• Determine the current performance of customer tracking systems in multi-camera environments;
• Matching paths with temporal labels between these, attitudes or behaviors of the customer;
• Determine from the poses attitudes or behaviors of the client;
• Detect complex actions as a combination of simple customer actions.

All work will follow the following sequence of tasks, iterating as necessary:

• Literature review
• Implementation of the experimental base
• Model creation and evaluation
• Writing up the conclusions of the study for publication

6. EVALUATION CRITERIA AND BONUSES

6.1 Evaluation Criteria

Applications deemed admissible will be scored on a continuous scale from 0 to 100 on each of the following evaluation criteria:

• Criterion A - Candidate's merit, with a weight of 60%: This includes the candidate's undergraduate grades and the evaluation of the candidate's track record, as well as grades in subjects considered particularly relevant to the project.
• Criterion B - Motivation of the student for the training plan through a motivation letter, with the weight of 10%.
• Criterion C - Interview, with the weight of 30% (only the 8 best candidates who meet all the conditions for admission will be interviewed, and for the others the interview score will be 0 points).

For the purpose of the scholarship decision, the candidates will be ordered according to the weighted average of the classification obtained in each of the 3 (three) criteria, translated by the following formula:

Final Classification = (0,6 x A) + (0,10 x B) + (0,30 x C)

For tie-breaking purposes, candidates will be ranked on the basis of the marks awarded for each of the evaluation criteria in the following order of precedence: criterion A, criterion C, criterion B.

Applicants whose application is evaluated with a final score of 50 points or less are not eligible for a scholarship.

The jury reserves the right not to award the scholarship if no candidate matches the desired profile.

The present call may be closed until the homologation of the final list of candidates, and is valid for 6 (six) months for these Research Grants.

7. EVALUATION

The candidate evaluation panel consists of the following:

• Doctor Luís Nunes, Associate Professor at Iscte (President of the jury);
• Doctor Patrícia Arriaga, Assistant Professor at Iscte (effective member);
• Doctor Tomás Brandão, Assistant Professor at Iscte (effective member);

The evaluation panel will evaluate the applications according to the evaluation criteria in this Call for Proposals, weighing the elements of appreciation.

All panel members, including the chair, are committed to a set of responsibilities essential to the evaluation process, such as the duties of impartiality, declaration of any potential conflict of interest, and confidentiality. At all times during the evaluation process, confidentiality is fully protected and ensured in order to guarantee the independence of all opinions produced.

Minutes will be produced of the evaluation panel meetings and will be the responsibility of all its members.

8. DISSEMINATION OF RESULTS

The results of the evaluation are communicated via e-mail to the e-mail address used by the candidate to send the application/indicated in the application.

9. DEADLINES AND PROCEDURES FOR PRIOR HEARING, COMPLAINT AND APPEAL

After notification of the provisional list of evaluation results, the candidates have a period of 10 working days to, if they wish, make their comments known for a prior hearing of interested parties, under the terms of articles 121 and following of the Administrative Procedure Code.

10. SCHOLARSHIP REQUIREMENTS

The research grant contract is concluded in accordance with the indications of the funding program and the applicable regulations, namely those of ISCTE and FCT.

Applicants must present the following documents when formalizing the contract:

11. FINANCING

Payment of the grant will begin upon return by the applicant of the duly signed grant contract, as well as all documentation stipulated in the FCT Research Grant Regulations.

12. SCHOLARSHIP COMPONENTS

The grant holder will receive a monthly maintenance allowance in accordance with the table in Annex I of the RBI (https://www.fct.pt/apoios/bolsas/valores ), amounting to EUR 875.98. The scholarship may also include other components under the terms of article 18 of the RBI and the values set out in its Annex II.

All fellows are covered by personal accident insurance for research activities.

All grant recipients who are not covered by any social protection scheme may ensure the exercise of their right to social security by joining the voluntary social insurance scheme, under the terms of the Social Security Contributions Code, with Iscte paying the costs resulting from the contributions under the terms and within the limits set forth in article 10 of the EBI.

13. SCHOLARSHIP PAYMENT

Payments due to the grantee are made by bank transfer to the account identified by the grantee.

14. INFORMATION AND PUBLICITY ON FINANCING GRANTED

In all R&D activities directly or indirectly funded by the grant, namely in all communications, publications and scientific creations, as well as theses, carried out with the support provided by the grant, the mention of financial support from the funding entity should be expressed. To this end, the documents relating to these actions should include the graphic elements required by the funding entity.

The dissemination of research results funded under the RBI must comply with open access rules for data, publications and other research results in force in the European Union.

15. NON-DISCRIMINATION AND EQUAL ACCESS POLICY

The European Union promotes a policy of non-discrimination and equal access, whereby no applicant shall be privileged, favoured, prejudiced, or deprived of any right or exempted from any duty on any ground such as ancestry, age, gender, sexual orientation, marital status, family situation, economic situation, education, origin or social condition, genetic heritage, reduced capacity to work, disability, chronic illness, nationality, ethnic origin or race, territory of origin, language, religion, political or ideological beliefs, or trade union membership.

16. APPLICABLE LAWS AND REGULATIONS

The Call is governed by this Opening Notice, by the FCT Research Grant Regulations, approved by Regulation No. 950/2019 , published in the II Series of the DR of December 16, 2019, by the Research Grant Holder Statute approved by Law No. 40/2004, of August 18, as amended, by Grant Agreement 101049306 and by other applicable national and EU legislation ( https://www.fct.pt/apoios/bolsas/regulamento.phtml.pt ).

17. ADDITIONAL REMARKS

The Contract template can be found here: https://www.fct.pt/apoios/Minuta_Contrato_Bolsa.docx .

Your Final Report must comply with RBI, Art. 24.

This report must be submitted to the funding agency by the end of the contract, in a 2-3 page format, after attaching the opinion statement of the supervisor(s). The final report should include the following: