Oour joint work with UPM and CERTH ‘Behaviour analysis through multimodal sensing for improving Parkinson and Alzheimer patients quality of life’ has been accepted for publication at IEEE multimedia magazine

A description of the platform employed in ICT4Life has been published as a book chapter; it is a joint work of the ICT4Life consortium, in which, RAI, plays a leading role in AAL activities and machine intelligence applications.

For more details:

• A. Sánchez-Rico, P. Garel, I. Notarangelo, M. Quintana, G. Hernández, S. Asteriadis, M. Popa, N. Vretos, V. Solachidis, M. Burgos, A. Girault. ICT Services for Life Improvement for the Elderly. Stud Health Technol Inform. 242:600-605, 2017

ICT4Life project link: http://www.ict4life.eu/

Our paper “Landmark-based multimodal human action recognition” (S. Asteriadis, P. Daras), which is a joint work between the Univ. of Maastricht (NL), CERTH (GR) has been accepted for publication as an open access article to the Multimedia Tools and Applications journal (Springer) ( http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11042-016-3945-6 )

An article about our role in the ICT4Life project and the algorithmic techniques used for abnormal behaviour detection was published in the Computer Vision News magazine at pages 22-24: http://www.rsipvision.com/ComputerVisionNews-2016December/.

Our paper “Associating gesture expressivity with affective representations” (L. Malatesta, S. Asteriadis, G. Caridakis, K. Karpouzis, A. Vasalou), which is a joint work among the Univ. of Maastricht (NL), UCL (UK), and NTUA (GR) has been accepted for publication

Postdoctoral position in Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence in HCI

The Department of Data Science and Knowledge Engineering (DKE)  (former Department of Knowledge Engineering) at Maastricht University, Netherlands, is looking for an excellent researcher at the level of PostDoc in the crossroads of Artificial Intelligence and Computer Vision in HCI settings.

PROJECT AND JOB DESCRIPTION

The application will be in the field of affective computing in educational environments. The position is embedded in the Robots, Agents and Interaction group of DKE. The full-time position is offered as soon as possible (not later than April 1^st), till December 2018, with yearly evaluations.

The successful applicant will hold a leading role in the activities of the University of Maastricht within a large-scale, collaborative ICT H2020 European project which is in the final agreement phase and expected to commence early 2016. The RAI team will collaborate with educators, designers and game developers in order to design new, affect-enhanced tools for learning in mainstream education, vocational training and learning with learning difficulties. The postdoc researcher will lead research in synchronous/asynchronous collaboration of various learning agents (robots, mobile devices) using artificial intelligence instruments that will be targeting maximizing user interest and engagement, as well as in novel methods for affect-enhanced learning analytics. To that aim, the RAI team will develop novel emotion/cognitive state recognition algorithms, using visual (facial/bodily) and context-related cues and this position will play a central role in these activities.

The successful candidate will produce publishable results in leading conferences and journals in the field, along with the co-supervision of PhD students. Further tasks include support in acquisition of research funding and teaching activities.

**** REQUIREMENTS
The candidate should have (or should be close to completing) a Ph.D. in artificial intelligence, machine learning, computer vision, affective computing, human-machine interaction or a closely related field. Pre-knowledge and practical experience in the design of (serious) games, learning (or other) interfaces is a strong advantage, while good programming skills (C/C++/Java) are required. We are looking for a highly motivated researcher with demonstrated research excellence. Demonstrated experience in collaborative projects will be considered as an advantage.

**** CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT
The position is offered for a minimum of a 33-month period (April 2016-December 2018), based on external means, with yearly evaluation. At the PostDoc level, the salary will be set in salary scale 10 of the collective labour agreement of the Dutch Universities (expected minimum € 3044 gross) for a full-time job (38 hours/week). On top of these salaries, there is an 8% holiday and an 8.3% year-end allowance. Non-Dutch applicants could be eligible for a favorable tax treatment (30% rule).

Maastricht University (UM), founded in 1976, is the youngest university in the Netherlands. It is rapidly expanding and has developed a strong international presence. UM is renowned for its unique, innovative, problem-based learning system, which is characterized by a small-scale and student-oriented approach. In 2013 UM entered the top 100 of the Times Higher Education’s (THE) World University Rankings (2013/14).

The Department of Data Science and Knowledge Engineering (DKE) has been top-ranked in the demanding Keuzegids and Elsevier ratings over the previous years. With respect to both research and teaching, DKE is engaged in various national and international collaborations. The RAI group, in DKE, has strong experience in the design and implementation of AI systems and AI knowledge transfer, as well as in learning and coordination among autonomous systems (software or robots). This includes broad know-how in machine learning, computer vision, (joint) planning, (evolutionary) game theory, communication languages, and automated negotiation for such systems. Other project-relevant expertise of the group concerns human-machine interfaces.

• RAI group: https://project.dke.maastrichtuniversity.nl/RAI/ 
• Department of Data Science and Knowledge Engineering: http://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/web/Schools/DKE.htm
• Maastricht University:                                                                             http://www.maastrichtuniversity.nl/

**** HOW TO APPLY
Applicants are asked to send their application – motivation letter (max 1 page), transcripts of degrees, curriculum vitae, publication list (indicating and summarizing 2 or 3 publications the candidate considers representative of her/his work), summary (max 2 pages) of their PhD thesis, and the names of at least two persons who can provide recommendation letters – to stelios.asteriadis@maastrichtuniversity.nl (preferably in a single PDF document). You can also send this information via Academictransfer. Please mention “application – Postdoc in Computer Vision and Artificial Intelligence in HCI” in the subject line of the application email.

Applications received by January 17, 2016 will receive full consideration. Applicants may be called in for an interview. It is intended to fill this position as soon as possible and not later than the 1^st of April 2016.

Informal inquiries concerning this position can be directed to
Dr. Stylianos Asteriadis, DKE, stelios.asteriadis@maastrichtuniversity.nl
Prof. Gerhard Weiss, DKE, gerhard.weiss@maastrichtuniversity.nl

A joint work involving the University of Maastricht, the National Technical University of Athens, the University of Malta and IT University of Copenhagen will be presented at the 6th international conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interactions. More details can be found here

Our paper with title ‘Skeleton-based Human Action Recognition using Basis Vectors’ has been accepted for publication to the 8th International Conference on Pervasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments 2015 (PETRA 2015)