Post-Doc position focusing on Emotion detection from acoustic and linguistic cues, Orsay

The LIMSI-CNRS (http://www.limsi.fr) is offering a Post-Doc
position focusing on "Emotion detection from acoustic and
linguistic cues in call center data" within the French VoxFactory
project.

Deadline: February 2009 (24 months)

Laurence Devillers, devil [ à ] limsi.fr

The Post-Doc project takes place within the French VoxFactory
project (project accredited with the Cap Digital Label) headed by
Vocalcom in collaboration with the following other companies: EDF,
SAFIG, VECSYS, TEMIS, SINEQUA and the public research
institutions: LEM-CNRS and LIMSI-CNRS. Cap Digital is a French
Business Cluster for Digital Content. A French competitiveness
cluster is to be an industrial pillar for driving competitive
economic development and stimulating job creation. It is designed
to concentrate within a pre-defined territory or geography a broad
range of companies, public and private research institutions and
multi-level educational organizations focused on a specific
technology-driven industry. The Computer Sciences Laboratory for
Mechanics and Engineering Sciences (LIMSI) is a CNRS laboratory
(UPR 3251) associated with Paris-6 and Paris-11 French
Universities. The laboratory accommodates approximately 120
permanent personnel (researchers, professors and assistant
professors, engineers, technicians) and about sixty PhD
candidates. It undertakes multidisciplinary research in Sciences
and Technologies for Information and Communication. The research
fields cover a wide disciplinary spectrum from acoustics to
cognition, encompassing spoken language and text processing,
vision and virtual.

The VoxFactory project aims at analyzing and modeling of the
Customer / Agent interaction in data recorded in call center. Call
centers are an integral part of customer service, which in turn is
what guarantees repeat customers. For that reason, corporations
that put them to extensive use are being provided with tools to
help improve their functionality. One of those tools is software
that analyzes the vocal interaction of customer service calls.
Performing a function known as 'interaction analytics,' this
software can listen for keywords that indicate stress such as
'cancellation' or 'late delivery' or just plain 'you're terrible'.
Beyond that, it can analyze the emotional content of a
conversation and assign algorithmic values to what is monitored.
The software will attach values to such components as vocal pitch,
intensity, rapidity of speech, intonation and, of course, volume.
From these values, emotion detection system can be built.

Following the project Infom [ à ] gic (CallSurf, Cap Digital project),
we propose in VoxFactory to analyze and to model the quality and
efficiency of customer/agent interaction, using the technologies
of speech processing, emotions detection and text mining. The
originality consists in a mixed approach based on a textual
analysis of the call, from its automatic transcription, and on the
speech signal features for the detection of emotions in
particular.

Work program.



The project basically consists of two parts. The first part of
the
project will exploit the available or to-be-invented methods and
techniques from machine learning and pattern recognition in order
to design an emotion detection system from acoustic cues
(prosodic, spectral cues). Several acoustic libraries already used at
LIMSI can serve for extracting cues. As a second task, the PhD
is expected to get involved with all of the partners in order to
use linguistic cues (topic, concept, words) coming from speech
processing and text mining in order to build a mixed approach
based on textual analysis and acoustic signal for emotion
detection (satisfaction, stress, annoyance.). Efforts will be
devoted to help final users to specify their needs in terms of
system functionalities. The two parts of the project will interact and
evolve through several iterations where prototypes will serve
as a proof-of-concept for the project.


To apply, include the following information: - C.V (English language
is
mandatory, French language is a plus).- the names and contact
email/phone of one or two academic referees who would willing to
write letters of recommendation- a cover letter describing your
research interests

Salary : around 2000? net salary


Contact: the interested persons should directly contact:
Laurence Devillers

devil [ à ] limsi.fr