[visionlist] 3 years Post-doc Position at LOA-ISTC-CNR Trento (Italy)

Fri May 18 13:15:45 GMT 2012

Applications are invited for one three-year Postdoctoral  
Research?Fellowship in the Laboratory for Applied Ontology of the  
Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of the CNR in Trento,  
as part of the Autonomous Province of Trento funded research project  
“VISCOSO - Detection of Crisis in Socio-Material Systems via  
Visual-Cognitive-Social Processes”, directed by dr. Roberta Ferrario  
(http://www.loa.istc.cnr.it/ferrario).

Title of the research: Theoretical and experimental study of the  
influence of the social or cultural background in determining the  
focus of visual attention

Expected Starting date: July 1, 2012

Application deadline: May 25, 2012

Short description of the Project: The project will concentrate on the  
detection of critical situations that happens in the entanglement of  
visual-cognitive-social processes, the process of seeing a scene,  
forming a belief or an expectation and engaging in an interaction. We  
argue that, far from being a linear process, this is rather an  
entanglement, in which vision influences what agents believe, their  
beliefs determine them to interact in a certain way and sustain their  
institutions, the rules they are subject to or their previous  
interactions may let emerge beliefs and expectations, that may  
influence what they see and how they see it, and so on. Moreover, in a  
socio-material system, both humans and technical devices participate  
in and enact such entanglement. Many disciplines, ranging from  
philosophy to cognitive sciences, artificial intelligence and  
sociology, have dealt with such phenomena, often focusing only on a  
part of the entanglement and neglecting the others. The scenario of  
the project is that of designed socio-material systems, intended as  
complex systems embedding human and artificial agents, material and  
institutional artifacts and resources, in which behavior and practices  
are partly constrained by norms. The complexity of such systems makes  
it very hard for them to cope with critical situations, as they emerge  
from the interplay between all participants and cannot be reduced to  
mere technical malfunctioning or to the negligence/malevolence of the  
human actors involved, but should be rather dealt with at a systemic  
level.
The challenge addressed by this project is that of enabling a wider  
and more comprehensive perspective by leveraging on the results of the  
involved disciplines, thus allowing for the implementation of  
socio-material systems that are aware of the criticalities that can  
emerge in the entanglement of visual-cognitive-social processes. An  
ontological model will be built that captures the insights coming from  
different disciplines, reached with their own specific paradigms,  
making use of their own concepts and methodologies. The conceptual  
clarification resulting from the ontological analysis will enable:
- scholars of the various disciplines involved to better understand  
each other, thus enhancing knowledge on their specific field by  
cross-fertilization of studies
- designers of socio-material systems to be more aware of the  
entanglement, thus preventing as much as possible critical situations  
and preparing a systemic
reaction to them
- agents (human and artificial) that participate in the system to  
better prevent, recognize, recover and learn from critical situations,  
and to infer new unexpected critical situations “at run time”, while  
the system evolves, by making it in a sense self-transparent. The  
expected outcome will be a theoretical artifact, but meant to be  
practically used within the system and co-evolving with it, and  
enabling the agents in the system to collectively manage critical  
situations thanks to an enhanced self- transparency.

Short description of the Lab and Research Environment: The Institute  
of Cognitive Sciences and Technology of the National Research Council  
(ISTC-CNR) (http://www.istc.cnr.it/) is the most important research  
institute in Italy in the area of cognitive science, with over 60  
researchers who conduct interdisciplinary research ranging from  
cognitive science to social science, to linguistics, to artificial  
intelligence and knowledge engineering. The institute is headquartered  
in Rome and has two branches in Padova and in Trento.
In Trento, ISTC-CNR is present with the Laboratory for Applied  
Ontology (ISTC-LOA), (http://www.loa.istc.cnr.it/) which was founded  
in January 2003. Its main activities concern the ontological  
foundations of knowledge engineering and conceptual data modeling, and  
more generally the role of semantic technologies in the representation  
of knowledge, access of information, integration of heterogeneous  
information, development of databases, natural language processing,  
multi-agent systems, software engineering, and information systems in  
the broad sense. Headed by Nicola Guarino, the LOA has a well  
established international leadership in this field of research, above  
all thanks to the strongly interdisciplinary approach: using logic as  
unifying instrument, the group has developed a rigorous and original  
methodology for ontological analysis, which rests upon fundaments from  
philosophy, linguistics, and cognitive science. The principal  
applications concern services and organizations, integrated enterprise  
systems, e-Government, dialogue and discourse understanding, and the  
Semantic Web. Current projects are, among others, ICT4Law (Next  
Generation Services for Citizens, Enterprises, Public Administration  
and Policymakers), and TOCAI.IT (Tecnologie Orientate alla Conoscenza  
per Aggregazioni di Imprese su InTernet –Knowledge-based technologies  
of enterprise integration). Among the most well-known results of the  
lab, the OntoClean methodology and the DOLCE foundational ontology.  
The LOA has currently seven researchers, and several students and  
visitors. The LOA’s research infrastructure is that of a well-equipped  
spacious office located in Povo, Trento, in a quiet area excellent for  
concentration during work yet with good public transport connections  
to the city center. Trento is more and more becoming a center of  
excellence for university and research, especially thanks to it  
recently became co-location center of EIT ICT Labs, the KIC (Knowledge  
and Innovation Community) for ICT, initiated by the EIT (European  
Institute of Technology)

http://eit.europa.eu/newsroom-and-media/news-archive/single-view/article/trento-becomes-eit-ict-labs-sixth-co-location.html

Duties and responsibilities: The selected candidate will be involved  
in the phase of analysis of experiments on phenomena of priming,  
change blindness and inattentional blindness, with the aim of studying  
the impact of the social or cultural background of the subjects on the  
appearance of such phenomena. Successively, the candidate will use the  
obtained results to draw some guidelines for the future construction  
of a cognitive model.
The successful candidate will be expected to actively participate in  
the team’s research activities, maintain?an active research agenda and  
regularly publish in major professional journals. The language of  
instruction is English.

Qualifications:PhD by the time of submission.

Preferred Competences: integration of low level visual perception  
processes  with high level recognition mechanisms, of computational  
studies of visual intelligence, studies of phenomena of priming,  
change blindness and inattentional blindness

Compensation: The amount per year, paid in 12 (twelve) monthly  
installments, is set at EUR 22,000.00 net of expenses in charge of CNR.
This does not include remuneration for travels in Italy or abroad as  
may be necessary to carry out the related research activities.

How to Apply: The notice of selection (bando) is available at the  
following addresses:
http://www.istc.cnr.it/opportunities/vacancies/Graduate-Fellowships/open

or, alternatively:
http://bandi.urp.cnr.it/assegni/faces/pubblica/RisultatoCercaAssegniPubblica.jsp
(click at the top, on the right “Advanced Search”, then at the bottom,  
on the right select “TN” from the menu “Provincia”)

For any other enquires, please contact the responsible of the project,  
dr. Roberta Ferrario (roberta.ferrario at cnr.it)

ATTENZIONE: l'indirizzo ferrario at loa-cnr.it presto non sarà più  
attivo. Si prega di scrivere a roberta.ferrario at loa.istc.cnr.it oppure  
a roberta.ferrario at cnr.it

WARNING: the address ferrario at loa-cnr.it will soon be no more active.  
Please write at roberta.ferrario at loa.istc.cnr.it or at  
roberta.ferrario at cnr.it

----------------------------------------------------------------
This message was sent using IMP, the Internet Messaging Program.