About the position

1-2 positions as Postdoctoral Research Fellow is available at the Department of Informatics.

The Postdoctoral fellowships are available immediately for a period of up to 3 years.

The position is funded by SIRIUS (Center for Scalable Data Access in the Oil and Gas Domain), a new Center for Research-Driven Innovation (SFI) at the University of Oslo. It constitutes a long-term research initiative, funded by the Norwegian Research Council, involving both academic research teams (UiO, NTNU and Oxford University) as well as industrial partners including operators (Statoil), service companies (Schlumberger and DNV GL) and IT companies (e.g., Computas, Evry, IBM). The center has as its main goal to develop novel technologies to improve our ability to extract and exploit information from large data stores.

Job/project description

The positions will be affiliated with the ontology engineering research program, one of SIRIUS' six research programs. The overall goal of the ontology engineering research is to develop tools and methods for constructing, maintaining and using ontologies that scale to the needs of the applications of SIRIUS' industrial projects and partners. These are applications which typically require large-scale ontologies for representing domain specific information from technical specifications and standards originally available only in semi-structured formats.

Reasonable Ontology Templates (OTTR) is developed by SIRIUS to address these challenges. OTTR is a language and framework for representing ontology modelling patterns, and is designed to support interaction with OWL or RDF knowledge bases at a higher level of abstraction, using modelling patterns rather than OWL axioms or RDF triples.

The successful applicants are expected to contribute to ongoing research activities surrounding the use and development of OTTR, such as:

• developing a methodology for a template-based approach for building and maintaining industrial ontologies that is adapted the different roles in the ontology engineering process, e.g,. the ontology expert, the domain expert and the data expert.
• developing tools and methods for managing template libraries
• developing tools and interfaces that allow of the efficient use of a template based approach for building, maintaining and using ontologies

The successful applicant should have an interest in working on real industrial problems, and is expected to evaluate research developments in ongoing industrial applications in collaboration with industrial partners.

The successful applicants will contribute to identifying future research opportunities for the group. Activities he or she will be expected to take on include but are not limited to:

• Participate and contribute to our industry research projects
• Supervise students and undertake administrative duties
• Participate in writing research grants for various national and European funding agencies

Qualification requirements

The Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences has a strategic ambition of being a leading research faculty. Candidates for these fellowships will be selected in accordance with this, and expected to be in the upper segment of their class with respect to academic credentials.The main purpose of post-doctoral research fellowships is to qualify researchers for work in top academic positions within their disciplines.

Applicants must hold a degree equivalent to a Norwegian doctoral degree in formal methods. Doctoral dissertation must be submitted for evaluation by the closing date. Appointment is dependent on the public defense of the doctoral thesis being approved.

The candidate must have a strong formal background in one or more of the following areas:

• knowledge representation
• semantic web technologies
• programming language theory
• software engineering

The candidate should have implementation experience and programming skills in these fields. Experience with industrial size application of these techniques is considered an advantage.

The candidate should have a strong publication record and experience with European level research projects. Experience in research collaboration with industry, international mobility, and international collaborations will be given additional weight.

Please also refer to the regulations pertaining to the conditions of employment for post-doctoral fellowship positions. A good command of English is required.

We offer

• Salary NOK 515 200 – 597 400 per year depending on qualifications and experience in position as Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (position code 1352)
• Postdoctoral development programs
• Stimulating, challenging and friendly work environment
• An organization in continuous development with ambitious goals
• Membership in the Norwegian Public Service Pension Fund
• Attractive welfare benefits

How to apply

The application must include:

• Application letter
• CV (summarizing education, positions and academic work – scientific publications)
• Copies of educational certificates, transcript of records and letters of recommendation
• List of publications and academic work that the applicant wishes to be considered by the evaluation committee
• Names and contact details of 2-3 references (name, relation to candidate, e-mail and telephone number)

The application with attachments must be delivered in our electronic recruiting system. Foreign applicants are advised to attach an explanation of their University's grading system. Please note that all documents should be in English or a Scandinavian language.

Formal regulations

Please see the guidelines and regulations for appointments to Postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Oslo.

No one can be appointed for more than one Postdoctoral Fellow period at the University of Oslo.

According to the Norwegian Freedom and Information Act (Offentleglova) information about the applicant may be included in the public applicant list, also in cases where the applicant has requested non-disclosure.

The University of Oslo has an agreement for all employees, aiming to secure rights to research results etc.

The University of Oslo aims to achieve a balanced gender composition in the workforce and to recruit people with ethnic minority backgrounds.

Contact information

• Professor Arild Waaler, +47-22 952 12 954, arild@ifi.uio.no or
• Researcher Martin G. Skjæveland, +47 951 54 820, martige@ifi.uio.no

For technical questions regarding the recruitment system, please contact HR Adviser Torunn Standal Guttormsen, e-mail: t.s.guttormsen@mn.uio.no, phone: +47 22 85 42 72.

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