Doctoral researcher for a project that involves natural language processing (NLP) (F/M/X)

Offer

Doctoral researcher for a project that involves natural language processing (NLP) - (F/M/X)

Job Id : SF  37756
Internal and external job posting until Augustus 17 2025.

For Institute for Language and Communication (ILC) of Social Sciences Sector
Main campus : Louvain-la-Neuve (Belgium)
Full-time doctoral fellowship (100%) for two years, with conditional renewal for another two years
Starting date : after 1st October 2025 (the start date is flexible)

Introduction

Specialised bilingual glossaries are vital resources for the translation industry. Their development is, however, very time-consuming, and bilingual parallel corpora that can serve as basis for their creation are scarce, depending on the language pair and the specialised domain. This project thus focuses on developing a new methodology, based on existing machine learning and deep learning techniques, for automatically extracting bilingual terminology using comparable corpora. By combining language models fine-tuned for token classification and cross-lingual sentence similarity, this project proposes a cost-effective way of automatically building specialised bilingual glossaries on demand.

To achieve that, the PhD project consists of two main goals:
    1. Create a bilingual comparable corpus in French and English, focusing on the general domain of international patents, which has to be semi-automatically annotated with terms and bilingual terminology alignments. The specific domain of the corpus will be defined by the doctoral researcher.
    2. Create a new methodology for automatic terminology extraction (ATE) using deep learning and fine-tuning of existing language models. This objective is divided in three main parts: 
        a. Testing the existing methodologies for ATE;
        b. Analyzing positive and negative aspects of the existing methodologies; and
        c. Developing a new methodology for ATE that can be adapted to other languages.

Work environment: 
The Institute for Language & Communication (https://www.uclouvain.be/en/research-institutes/ilc) is part of UCLouvain (https://www.uclouvain.be/en/the-university), a lively university with its main campus in Louvain-la-Neuve, a city with a very dynamic, pedestrian-only urban centre that offers good quality of life and is very close to Brussels (around 30km).

The research project will be conducted under the supervision of Leonardo Zilio, whose specialty lies in the study of specialized language and terminology extraction.

Job description

The doctoral researcher is expected to conduct the essential points of the research to attain the above-mentioned goals. They should also ensure the visibility of the results by publishing the work in academic venues and write a doctoral thesis.

Required qualifications and skills

• A master’s degree in computational linguistics, natural language processing, computer science (with emphasis in artificial intelligence), digital humanities, or a related domain.
• An excellent academic curriculum
• Good knowledge of French (at least B2 level) and English (at least B2 level)
• Good computational and programming skills:
       * Programming language: Python
       * Knowledge of scikit-learn, pandas, tensorflow/keras and/or pytorch.
• Good knowledge of the main NLP tools. Knowledge of deep neural networks and token-classification models is a plus.
• Knowledge of lexical sciences, specially terminology.
• Autonomy, curiosity, collaborative sense, good attention and analytical skills, proactivity and reactivity.

Application process

The offer of this doctoral fellowship is subject to the following conditions:

• After the recruitment, the selected applicant should also be approved by the UCLouvain’s Research Counsel
• The doctoral researcher should live in Belgium for the whole duration of the fellowship
• The net monthly amount that can be expected by the doctoral researcher is around 2,450 euros.
• The initial contract is for two years. To ensure the renewal of the fellowship, the doctoral research will have to successfully pass the mid-term evaluation of the doctoral thesis and also apply for FNRS funding and attain a classification at rank “A”.
• The maximum period indicated above is increased by one year in case of paternal or maternal leave.

Application documents

Application deadline: 17 August 2025

If you are interested in this doctoral fellowship, please send your application per e-mail to Leonardo Zilio (leonardo.zilio@uclouvain.be) and attach all the requested documents below. These are the requested documents:

    1. A detailed curriculum vitae in English, showing the required qualifications and skills, the academic record (with courses and final marks), as well as existing publications (if any), work experience (if any) and other academic and scientific experience;
    2. A motivation letter, in French, describing why the applicant is interested on this doctoral fellowship and how their profile aligns with the project description and its objectives (max. 2 pages);
    3. A reference letter in English or French from a previous lecturer / supervisor.
    4. An concise academic statement in English, indicating the expectations of the applicant in relation to their doctoral studies and their career objectives.

The pre-selected applicants will be invited to attend an online interview. Details for the interview will be sent to those applicants per e-mail.

More information:
Questions regarding the fellowship and the application procedure can be sent per e-mail to Leonardo Zilio (leonardo.zilio@uclouvain.be) before the 25th of July 2025.