Postdoctoral Research Fellow

NCSU Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at IEC Lab in Computer Science

The Innovative Educational Computing laboratory in the Department of Computer Science at North Carolina State University (NCSU) is looking for a postdoctoral research fellow with a primary focus on the SimStudent project (www.SimStudent.org) funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) entitled “Developing an Online Learning Environment for Learning Algebra by Teaching a Synthetic Peer”. See the project abstract at https://ies.ed.gov/funding/grantsearch/details.asp?ID=2200

The primary purpose of the IES funded project is to study an effect of a constructive dialogue between a tutor and a tutee in a context of learning by teaching with a synthetic tutee (aka teachable agent). We investigate the following central research questions: Is the effect of learning by teaching enhanced when the synthetic tutee asks constructive questions while a student is teaching how to solve problems? If so, how and why? A technological goal of the current project is to extend an existing synthetic peer, SimStudent, so that it poses questions, evaluates student’s responses, and provides follow up questions based on the quality and adequacy of the student’s response.

The postdoctoral research fellow will select a specific research topic based on their research interest/background and pursue independent research under the supervision of Dr. Matsuda, the project PI. Potential research topics include (but not limited to) topics in machine-learning application for natural language processing (e.g., tutoring dialogue, conversational animated agent, question generation), topis in learning analytics (e.g., multimodal student modeling), and topics in fundamental machine learning (e.g., semi-supervised learning, representation learning, deep reinforcement learning).

A candidate should have a PhD degree in Computer Science or related fields with a research specialization in artificial intelligence, machine learning, adaptive learning technologies, and/or the sciences of learning. Established record of scholarly work in one or more fields in artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, computational model of leaning, natural language processing, educational data mining, and/or learning analytics is required. An ideal candidate should also have strong background in research methods and statistics.

The postdoctoral research fellow receives a competitive salary and health insurance. The fellow would benefit from access to a stellar research community at NCSU and the Research Triangle (Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill), plus cutting-edge research facilities.

The fellow will be provided with a mentoring committee and invited to join regular research group meetings within their field plus career development workshops. Funding is provided in one-year terms renewable for up to two years.

Interested candidate should email a current CV, a statement of research, and three names of reference to Dr. Noboru Matsuda, Noboru.Matsuda@ncsu.edu