Joint PhD position in computer vision at the University of Edinburgh and INRIA Grenoble

The LEAR research group at INRIA Grenoble and the CALVIN research group at the University of Edinburgh are looking for a joint PhD student. The candidate will be jointly supervised by Dr. Vittorio Ferrari and Dr. Cordelia Schmid. The candidate will spend time at both institutions.

The topic of the PhD is learning object classes from consumer videos. While traditional approaches learn object classes from annotated still images, in this project we want to exploit video as another source of data. A video shows a range of viewpoints, poses and lighting conditions, which are necessary for building richer models. Moreover, the temporal continuity facilitates the task of segmenting the object from its background, reducing the need for manual annotation. The PhD student will explore these aspects in order to advance the state-of-the-art in weakly supervised learning of object class models.

Starting date: as soon as possible

Applicants must have:
* Master degree in Computer Science or Mathematics
* Excellent programming skills (the project is in Matlab and C++)
* Solid mathematics foundations (especially algebra and statistics)
* Highly motivated
* Fluent in English, both written and spoken
* UK or EU nationality is mandatory
* Experience in computer vision and/or machine learning is a plus

The project will be funded by a starting and an advanced ERC grant hold by the respective supervisors. This offers a unique opportunity for the candidate to develop within a stimulating environment involving two prestigious institutions.

The School of Informatics at Edinburgh is one of the top-ranked departments of Computer Science in Europe and offers an exciting research environment. Edinburgh is a beautiful historic city with a high quality of life. For an overview of current research activities of the CALVIN team, please visit http://groups.inf.ed.ac.uk/calvin/.

INRIA is one of the top-ranked computer science institutes in Europe and the LEAR team at INRIA Grenoble has a track record of computer vision research (http://lear.inrialpes.fr).
Grenoble is locate in the French Alpes and offers excellent outdoor facilities.

Location:
This is a joint project between INRIA Grenoble and the University of Edinburgh.
The candidate will be required to spend time in both institutions.

Please send applications to the email address below, including:
* complete CV
* title and abstract of master thesis
* complete grades for all exams passed during both the bachelor and master
* the name and email address of one reference (preferably your master thesis supervisor)
* if you already have research experience, please include a publication list

Contacts:
Dr. Cordelia Schmid, schmid@inrialpes.fr
Dr. Vittorio Ferrari, vferrari@staffmail.ed.ac.uk