MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - Proposals in Virtual Signers aka Signing Avatars

Are you thinking about spending one or two years as a postdoc in a very active research environment?

Are you socially motivated and want to apply your CG research to animating virtual signers?

Do you want to benefit from a research group with strong connections with outstanding film, broadcasting and games companies?

Prof. Josep Blat, professor at the Interactive Technologies Group in the Department of Information and Communication Technologies, based in Barcelona, Spain, offers support to eligible researchers to apply to the Postdoctoral Fellowship scheme of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions for proposals in the area of Virtual Signers aka Signing Avatars.

About us

UPF-GTI, a research and innovation group within the School of Engineering and the Information Communication Technologies Department of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, focused mainly on interactive 3D graphics on the web.

UPF-GTI has a long time experience in collaborating in EU projects with outstanding industrial players in the film, broadcasting and games sectors, as shown in our current projects, PRESENT, and AdMiRe, and the recently finished SAUCE, and HDR4EU. Professor Blat has been recently involved in two successful MSCA Postdoctoral fellowships applications, one in Bayesian Montecarlo Rendering, and another one related to Haptics.

We recently received funding for a challenging Sign Language project SignON, to provide animated virtual signers (aka signing avatars) in several Sign Languages. We want to additionally increase the research related to virtual signers, and we are interested in hosting researchers who would address the multiple challenges of animation of SLs.

Eligibility criteria

The Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowships scheme (MSCA-PD) is a prestigious European funding programme that supports mobility, career development, and training within and beyond Europe. The scheme offers highly competitive salary and research costs. MSCA-PD involves a joint application between the researcher and the Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

Applications are encouraged from applicants with background in Computer Graphics, specifically in fields related to animation of virtual signers and complementary disciplines.

All expressions of interest must meet the eligibility criteria of the scheme:

• applicants must have a Ph.D. by the call's deadline (October 12, 2021);
• applicants must be within the first 8 years of experience after having the PhD (maternity and paternity exceptions apply as well as time spent outside the EU -if it is your case, please contact us);
• must not have resided or carried out their main activities in Spain for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the above mentioned deadline.
• Applicants from any country may apply, but must not have resided or carried out their main activity (work, studies, etc.) in Spain for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to the submission deadline (12/10/2021).

Selection process

Applicants should check that they fulfil all the eligibility criteria and then send an expression of interest consisting of a CV, a summary presentation of the research proposal (c. 2 pages) and the contact information of at least one referee.

Expressions of interest must be submitted by email (rocio.petruzzi@upf.edu) by July 27th The title of the e-mail must be "MSCA application – Prof. Josep Blat– your name and surname"

Proposals will be preselected on the basis of internal evaluation.

Links

Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions