IMIBIC HOSTING OFFER:

La Caixa INPhINIT INCOMING Doctoral Fellowship Programme

CENTRE DESCRIPTION

IMIBIC, located in Cordoba, southern Spain, is a partnership between the University of Cordoba (UCO) and the Reina Sofia University Hospital. IMIBIC offers a multidisciplinary environment focused on results-oriented research and based on precision medicine and excellence in science. IMIBIC is accredited with the Excellence distinction from the National Institute of Health Carlos III and the “HR Excellence in Research” by the EC.

The Institute is structured in 44 research groups that cooperate in the implementation of five scientific programmes. IMIBIC offers an active environment in which to conduct high-level scientific research. Regular seminars and research events offer the opportunity to meet with national and international experts covering a diverse range of topics in biomedicine. Advanced training of our PhD students is provided primarily through the Doctoral Program in Biomedicine (UCO), hosted at the IMIBIC and integrated by leading scientists from the University and the Hospital. Results from research activities are exposed yearly in the IMIBIC Young Investigator Meetings, providing an ideal environment to strengthen the skills and knowledge of young scientists and to foster translational research by bringing together experimental basic and medical sciences.

IMIBIC is young and fast growing research center. It operates in a brand new building located within the UCO Health Sciences Campus and next to the University Hospital. It hosts over 600 researchers, and offers the latest technology, equipment and laboratories to support the technical needs of the research community.

Cordoba is a medium sized city located in the hearth of Andalusia, with excellent transport connections to the main cities of Spain and both to the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts. Rich in history and culture, Cordoba is a friendly and welcoming city, with high standard of living, making it an ideal location for international students wishing to carry out their doctoral studies in Spain.

GROUP LEADER

Dr.Rafael Muñoz Salinas (rmsalinas@uco.es)

RESEARCH PROJECT/RESEARCH GROUP

AVA Group website: http://www.uco.es/grupos/ava/node/4

POSITION DESCRIPTION

The AVA group, a consolidated research group at “Instituto Maimónides de Investigación Biomédica de Córdoba” (IMIBIC), composed by 11 members (including 7 senior scientists, 2 pre-doctoral fellows, and 2 associate researchers), works in close collaboration with the Reina Sofia University Hospital. The group’s expertise is focused on Applied Computer Vision, with particular interest on 3D Reconstruction, Augmented Reality, Multimodal data fusion, Deep Learning and its applications in industry and medicine.

The group's funding comes from both the public and private sector, obtaining in the last five years € 4,172,753 from public financing and private companies (including Google and NVIDIA). Our group has an extensive international collaboration network, which includes:

- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA)

- Oxford University (UK)

- Carnegie Mellon University (USA)

- Microsoft Research Cambridge (UK)

- Groningen University (Netherlands)

- INRIA Grenoble (France)

- Université du Luxembourg (Luxembourg)

- Technische Universität München (Germany)

- The University of Edinburgh (Scotland)

- Google Research Zurich (Switzerland)

Such a combination of scientific goals and diversity of analytical approaches would permit the appointed Ph.D. student to obtain an integral and highly qualified formation in computer vision and creating an international high-qualified collaboration network.

Job position description:

Camera pose estimation is a common problem in applications such as augmented-reality, three-dimensional reconstruction, robotics, education, and medicine, among others. The goal is to determine the camera three-dimensional position and orientation with respect to a known reference system.

An approach to solve that problem consists of using natural landmarks, such as keypoints, which do not require any modification of the environment. However, in indoor environments, it is not strange to find low textured regions (like corridors or large white walls) or with regular patterns, in which systems based on natural landmarks cannot be employed.  Another approach to tackle the problem consists in using artificial landmarks, which are easily distinguishable elements that can be robustly detected using low computational resources, and provides a high accuracy. Recent works have been proposed to merge both approaches to build robust and fast localization systems. Nevertheless, these systems are carefully designed by experts, requiring a large amount of effort.

Convolutional neural networks (CNNs) have recently appeared as a powerful Artificial Intelligence tool for learning from a set of examples. It is a class of artificial neural network that uses convolutional layers to filter inputs for useful information. The convolution operation involves combining input data with a convolution kernel to form a transformed feature map. Since their arrival, they have been successfully applied to several computer vision problems obtaining state-of-the-art results. This project aims at extending the pose estimation techniques already developed by the Research Group to CNNs, to improve results and to minimize human intervention, reducing costs.

The main task of the applicant is developing techniques for camera pose estimation, designing and training novel CNN architectures for this problem. The applicant needs to have a strong background on programming (C/C++) and knowledge of computer vision.

Eligibility Criteria

1) At the call deadline (6^th Feb 2019), applicants must be in the first four years (full-time equivalent research experience) of their research careers and not yet have been awarded a doctoral degree.

2) At the time of recruitment, candidates must comply with one of the following options:

• To have completed the studies that lead to an official university degree adapted to the European Higher Education Area awarding 300 ECTS credits, of which at least 60 ECTS credits must correspond to master level.
• To have completed a degree in university not adapted to the European Higher Education Area that gives access to doctoral studies. The verification of an equivalent level of studies to the ones mentioned above will be made by the university when the admission procedure starts.

3) Candidates must not have resided or have carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Spain for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the call deadline (6^th Feb 2019). Short stays, such as holidays, done in a country other than their country of usual residence (where they carried out their main activity), will be considered as time spent in their country of usual residence.

4) Candidates must have a demonstrable level of English (B2 or higher).

5) Only candidates whose applications meet all the requirements of the call may be accepted.

You can find this offer via the Offer Finder, available at: https://hosts.lacaixafellowships.org/finder

Select “IMIBIC – Maimonides Biomedical Research Institute to Cordoba” from the dropdown list under “RESEARCH CENTER”

You can also search the position by its title "CAMERA POSITIONING TECHNIQUES USING CONVOLUTIONAL NEURAL NETWORKS" under "SEARCH BY PROJECT TITLE / JOB POSITION TITLE".

How to Apply:

If you want to apply for an INPhINIT fellowship, click on the link below to create your personal account and fill in the on-line application form: https://www.lacaixafellowships.org/index.aspx

Schedule:

6 February 2019: Application deadline.

20 February 2019: Deadline for submitting the language certificate.

23 April 2019: Notification of the shortlist results.

28 and 29 May 2019: Face-to-face interviews in Barcelona.

4 June 2019: Publication of the final list of selected candidates.

4 June 2019 to 5 July 2019: Matching between the research centres – fellows.

More Information:

Call for applications:

https://obrasociallacaixa.org/en/investigacion-y-becas/programa-de-becas-de-posgrado/inphinit/incoming

Programme Rules: https://obrasociallacaixa.org/documents/10280/590054/inphinit_incoming_2019_en.pdf/2fa7e823-a7c7-22d8-98a7-dd14a0d0171f

Email:

international@imibic.org