4 PhD/Postdoc positions for project on negotiation support system

Mo Feb 11 20:05:21 CET 2008

Job opening: 4 PhD/Postdoc at Delft University of Technology, The
Netherlands

Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands is looking for candidates
for 4 PhD/Postdoc positions in the area of:

1 PhD / Postdoc - Qualitative Negotiation Models

2 PhD / Postdoc - Emotion and Interaction in Negotiation

3 PhD / Postdoc - Man machine interaction and negotiation

4 PhD / Postdoc - Negotiation Strategies

More detailed information is provided below or can be found at
http://mmi.tudelft.nl/nego/index.php/Vacancies

PhD / Postdoc - Qualitative Negotiation Models (vacancy number EWI-2008-03)

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JOB DESCRIPTION

Existing negotiation support systems are based almost exclusively on
quantitative models of preferences. It is however difficult to elicit such
models from users, while complex utility functions also have serious
computational limitations. Qualitative preference models in many regards
would provide a better correspondence with human cognitive representations.
This would allow a human user to more naturally interact with a machine
negotiating on his/her behalf. The candidate's research will focus on the
design of an expressive qualitative preference language and associated
techniques for using this language in negotiation. The techniques that need
to be developed concern the elicitation of qualitative preferences, the
reasoning with possibly incomplete qualitative preferences, and associated
strategies for negotiation. The research will be performed in close
collaboration with other subprojects with the aim of developing a
negotiation support system.

REQUIREMENTS

Candidates have received a graduate / PhD degree in Artificial Intelligence
and have a strong background in logic and knowledge representation. Ideally
the candidate has experience with negotiation, qualitative preferences
and/or is familiar with game theory.

For further details on these positions, please contact Prof. C.M. Jonker,
phone: +31 (0)15-27 81315, email: C.M.Jonker at tudelft.nl, and/or Dr. K.V.
Hindriks, phone: +31 (0)15-27 82523, e-mail: K.V.Hindriks at tudelft.nl.

PhD / Postdoc - Emotion and Interaction in Negotiation (vacancy number EWI
2008-04)

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JOB DESCRIPTION

The way people interact with each other in negotiation plays a major role in
the negotiation process and in the quality of the negotiation outcome. The
prospect of negotiation elicits emotions in the participants, so does the
interaction with the other party. Therefore, the candidate's project will
focus on the design of a knowledge-based system to support User-Opponent
Interaction in the negotiation. The project will look at emotions with the
aim to establish an emotive model that relates negotiation relevant emotions
to concerns and effects, and to establish a tool and technique to establish
user's and opponent's emotion and sources during and after negotiation, and
finally to develop ways to make user aware of the role of emotions as part
of a negotiation support tool. In addition, the project will look at
conflict handling styles in order to establish an instrument to estimate the
conflict-handing styles and mental models of negotiation of both user and
the opponent, and create tools to explain this to the user. Work will also
focus on how users can cope with emotions in the negotiations context.
Throughout the project the candidate will work on establish criteria,
techniques, and methods for assessing objective and subjective effectiveness
of negotiation support systems. To conduct this project, the candidate will:
interview laymen, experts, and trainers; make observation of training
sessions; and set up, conduct and analyze (Wizard-of-Oz type of)
experiments. All experiments will be designed and executed in the real
estate domain. The project will be supervised by Prof. dr. Catholijn Jonker,
Dr. Willem-Paul Brinkman, and Prof. dr. Mark Neerincx.

REQUIREMENTS

The candidate should at least have a graduate degree in the fields of
Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) or Cognitive Science. Ideally, the
candidate should have an understanding and appreciation of human emotion and
human negotiation theories, and has experiences with conducting experiments.

For further details on these positions, please contact Prof. C.M. Jonker,
phone: +31 (0)15-27 81315, email: C.M.Jonker at tudelft.nl, and/or Dr W.-P.
Brinkman, phone +31 (0)15-27 83534, email: w.p.brinkman at tudelft.nl.

PhD / Postdoc - Man machine interaction and negotiation (vacancy number EWI
2008-05)

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JOB DESCRIPTION

The idea is to support users in the negotiation process with a special
designed computer support system. Such a system should have knowledge of the
domain of negotiation, user profile, user interaction, state of mind of user
and opponent and focus of attention, to support the user in an adaptive,
user-friendly, intelligent way. In order to increase the effectiveness as
well as to enhance the user's experience, it is important that a negotiation
support system is able to provide feedback and explanation to its user. The
applicant's research will focus on the development of human-computer
interaction tools and techniques to effectively licit a user's preferences
and to explain the negotiation process and the functionality provides by a
support system. The process of reasoning and the context should be modeled
using probabilistic reasoning (Bayesian networks). The user interaction
should be supported by a special designed Wizard. To model such a system and
to test the first prototypes it is necessary to perform some usability
studies and Wizard-of-Oz studies. The effectively and efficiency should also
be tested in user studies.

The project will be supervised by Prof. dr. Catholijn Jonker, Dr. Leon
Rothkrantz.

REQUIREMENTS

>From the applicant it is expected that he/she has a background in Computer
science or related studies, and has with affinity to cognitive modeling,
probabilistic reasoning, affective computing and usability studies. The
applicant is requested to write scientific Conference/Journal papers in
English during the fourth year project and the project will end with a
written thesis report.

For further details on these positions, please contact Prof. C.M. Jonker,
phone: +31 (0)15-27 81315, email: C.M.Jonker at tudelft.nl, and/or Drs.
Dr.L.J.M. Rothkrantz, phone: +31 (0)15-27 87504, e-mail:
L.J.M.Rothkrantz at tudelft.nl.

PhD / Postdoc - Negotiation Strategies (vacancy number EWI-2008-06)

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JOB DESCRIPTION

One of the functions of a negotiation support system is to advice its user
what offers s/he should propose to an opponent in a negotiation. Such a
system would also need to be able to assist its user in assessing offers
received from an opponent: Should the user accept an offer? If not, what
counter-offer should be made? In order to develop such a system, several
fundamental questions need to be addressed: Which strategies should be
selected for effective negotiation? How can information about an opponent be
used to increase the performance in a negotiation? How easy is it to exploit
a negotiation strategy? Which techniques are needed to deal with complex
negotiation domains and preferences in a computationally effective way? The
candidate's research will focus on the design of effective negotiation
strategies for automated negotiation. Techniques based on heuristic search
and machine learning such as Bayesian networks will be used to design and
improve existing strategies from the literature. The research will include
the setup of an experimental methodology for assessing the effectiveness of
implemented strategies. The resulting techniques will also be evaluated in
the particular domain of job contract negotiation.

REQUIREMENTS

Candidates have received a graduate degree in Artificial Intelligence and
have a background in automated negotiation and game theory. Ideally the
candidate has experience with machine learning techniques, and/or a
background in the area of any-time or approximation algorithms.

For further details on these positions, please contact Prof. C.M. Jonker,
phone: +31 (0)15-27 81315, email: C.M.Jonker at tudelft.nl, and/or Dr.
Hindriks, phone: +31 (0)15-27 82523, e-mail: K.V.Hindriks at tudelft.nl.

General Information

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HOW TO APPLY

To apply to any of these positions, please send a detailed CV together with
a letter of application, at least three references and no more than five key
publications before March 15, 2008 to Delft University of Technology,
Faculty of EWI, Attn: Jamila Eddini, Mekelweg 4, 2628 CD Delft, The
Netherlands or send your application online to peno-ewi at tudelft.nl. TU Delft
is an equal opportunity employer. When applying for this job always mention
the vacancy number

DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING, MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTER SCIENCE

The Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science is a
strong international player and an ambitious research and learning
environment offering many opportunities for synergistic collaboration. The
section Man-Machine Interaction aims to design and build intelligent support
systems and gain an understanding of the way humans experience such systems.
The group works on a large NWO-VICI project to create a negotiation support
system.

CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT

TU Delft offers an attractive benefits package, including a flexible work
week, a free ADSL connection at home, and the opportunity to assemble a
customized compensation and benefits package (the 'IKA'). Salary and
benefits are in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch
Universities. The appointee will be employed by TU Delft for a fixed period
of 4 years.

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