Flowers Lab at Inria (Bordeaux, France)
https://flowers.inria.fr
Deadline: ongoing call (deadlines for full-applications will be later in 2017)

We are searching highly qualilified candidates for a tenure senior research position (full time research, no teaching mandatory).
Candidates should have an outstanding academic track record in one or two of the following domains:

1) Computational modelling of cognitive development, including the following research topics and methods:
– Models of exploration and active learning in humans and animals
– Models of human reinforcement learning and decision making
– Bayesian or neuronal models of development
– Models of autonomous lifelong learning
– Models of tool learning
– Sensorimotor, language and social development
– Strong experience of collaborations with developmental psychologists or neuroscientists

2) Lifelong autonomous machine learning and artificial intelligence, including:
– Deep learning
– Deep reinforcement learning
– Intrinsic motivation
– Developmental learning, curriculum learning
– Contextual bandit algorithms
– Multitask and transfer learning
– Hierarchical learning

As the Flowers lab domains of application include robotics/HRI/HCI and educational technologies, experience in one of these two
domains would be a clear asset.

Experience in writing successful grant proposals will also be considered positively.

Candidates should have a strong postdoc experience after their PhD, or may already be at the level of occupying a research position
in a university or research organization.

The Flowers Lab: developmental robotics and lifelong multitask machine learning
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The Flowers Lab, headed by Pierre-Yves Oudeyer, gathers a team of ~20 members and has been one of the pioneers of developmental robotics and lifelong machine learning and artificial intelligence in the last decade, in particular through developping models of intrinsically motivated learning of repertoires of skills that have both contributed to advance understanding of human curiosity and development, and to advance incremental online multitask  machine learning techniques in difficult high-dimensional robotic spaces.

This work in the Flowers lab are conducted in the context of large international projects (e.g. ERC grant, European projects 3rdHand and DREAM, HFSP project Neurocuriosity), with interdisicplinary collaborations with other labs in neuroscience, psychology, machine learning and robotics. The successful candidates would be directly involved in these international collaborations.

The Flowers Lab has is also developping applications of these concepts and techniques in the domain of educational technologies, including adaptive intelligent tutoring systems (using bandit algorithms), educational robotics, and software that stimulate curiosity and learning in humans.

The Flowers lab has recently spin-off the Pollen Robotics startup company, and is involved in multiple collaborations with industrials through Inria’s strong
support towards impacting both science and industry.

Inria and EnstaParistech
====================

The lab is within Inria, which is a prestigious, and also the largest, public European research insitution focused on computer science, mathematics and their applications.
Inria’s teams and researchers (> 2800 employees) have received prestigious awards, coordinate many international projects, and have created strong innovations now used in many
parts of industry. Inria research center in Bordeaux gathers around 300 researchers.
The Flowers Lab is also associated to EnstaParisTech, which is a prestigious French engineering school (university).

Bordeaux
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The Flowers lab in Bordeaux is located in a great building on the border of one of the world most famous vineyard, and 10mn by tram from Bordeaux town center
(and 2 hours from Paris through high-speed trains): https://www.inria.fr/en/centre/bordeaux
Bordeaux has been recently rated by Lonely Planet as the world’s best city to visit: http://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/best-cities-in-the-world-top-10-lonely-planet-bordeaux-cape-town-la-a7379066.html

Web
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Flowers web site: https://flowers.inria.fr
Neurocuriosity project: https://flowers.inria.fr/neurocuriosityproject/
Lifelong intrinsically motivated learning in robots: http://www.pyoudeyer.com/active-learning-and-artificial-curiosity-in-robots/

Pierre-Yves Oudeyer: http://www.pyoudeyer.com
Inria: http://www.inria.fr

How to apply?
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CVs and letters of motivation should be sent to Pierre-Yves Oudeyer (pierre-yves.oudeyer@inria.fr).
A pre-selection will be made in the second half of 2017 for a full-application in early 2018.