University Assistant (post doc) at the Department of Geography and Regional Research

The University of Vienna (20 faculties and centres, 184 fields of study, approx. 10.400 members of staff, about 90.000 students) seeks to fill the position as soon as possible of a


Reference number: 13754

Founded in 1885, the Department of Geography and Regional Research is the oldest and largest geography department in Austria. It is home to more than 90 researchers in 9 working groups and 3,400 students. Since its inception, it has not only grown dynamically but also continuously broadened its focus. Since the beginning, it has accommodated both human and physical geography. The department also has been recognized for its contributions to geoinformatics and cartography, including a highly successful master’s program. This interdisciplinary basis in computational, social, and natural sciences provides a dynamic and inspiring environment for researchers to address the grand challenges of our time.

The position is assigned to the research group Geoinformation and Cartography, which is interested in providing computational methods to improve the representation, retrieval, integration, analysis, visualization, and communication of spatial and spatiotemporal data with a wide range of applications including humanitarian relief and disaster mitigation, social sensing, location-based services, supply chains, commodity trading, environmental intelligence, privacy, social and professional networks, and so on.

We seek an outstanding, creative, and enthusiastic scientist who will contribute to the development of the research group.



Duration of employment: 6 year/s

Extent of Employment: 40.0 hours/week
Job grading in accordance with collective bargaining agreement: §48 VwGr. B1 lit. b (postdoc) with relevant work experience determining the assignment to a particular salary grade.

Job Description:

• Self-motivated contribution to our research on computational representation and reasoning about places in the broadest sense. We are particularly interested in novel methods and models for (geographic) fact-checking and open-source intelligence (OSINT) but also welcome applicants working on points (and areas) of interest, social sensing methods (e.g., applied to detecting power outages), geoparsing, location-based services, smart cities and mobility (trajectory) analysis, affordances, vague cognitive regions, ontologies of space and place, similarity and analogy-based reasoning over place-based data, and methods for place-based GIS


• Participation in activities related to growing the group's excellence, such as outreach, networking, reviewing and editorial work, (co-)organization of events such as conferences, workshops, tutorials, data engineering, capacity building


• Research activities in the developing fields of Spatial Data Science and GeoAI


• International publishing and presentation activities


• Acquisition of third-party funding


• Independent teaching (as defined by the collective agreement), mentoring, and supervision of students


• Maintaining and deepening the group's strong ties to industry, government agencies, and international partners


• Research (data) management (FAIR data)

Profile:

• PhD / Doctorate in Geoinformatics/GIScience or related fields, e.g. Geography, Computer Science, Cognitive Science, Information Science, Data Science


• Professional competence in at least two of the following sub-fields of Spatial Data Science: Social Sensing, Geographic Information Retrieval, Knowledge Graphs, Geo-Feature Engineering, Spatial Data Analysis, Knowledge Representation and Reasoning, Representation Learning (and Machine Learning in general), Geo-Data Exploration and Visualization, Research Data Management


• Proven ability to publish in top-tier international journals and conferences


• Professional competence in programming and spatial data processing and analysis


• Experience in acquiring third party funding is an asset


• Experience in teaching and supervision of students is an asset


• Excellent command of English; German is an asset


• Interest and willingness to contribute to the broader field of Spatial Studies is an asset


• Willingness to engage with our large, international network of partners in industry, governments, and academia, including flexible working hours as necessary


• Willingness to contribute to research management and growing our scientific community, e.g., co-organizing conferences

Application documents:

• Letter of motivation


• Academic curriculum vitae (including a list of publications, a list of courses and a list of talks given)


• Description of research interests and research agenda


• Contact details of people who could provide a letter of reference


• Academic and other relevant certificates

Research fields:

Main research field	Special research fields	Importance
Geosciences	Geoinformatics	MUST

Applications including a letter of motivation (German or English) should be submitted via the Job Center to the University of Vienna ( http://jobcenter.univie.ac.at) no later than 15.04.2023, mentioning reference number 13754.

For further information please contact Janowicz, Krzysztof +43-1-4277-48740, Wölfle, Daniela +43-1-4277-48604.

The University pursues a non-discriminatory employment policy and values equal opportunities, as well as diversity ( http://diversity.univie.ac.at/). The University lays special emphasis on increasing the number of women in senior and in academic positions. Given equal qualifications, preference will be given to female applicants.

Human Resources and Gender Equality of the University of Vienna
Reference number: 13754
E-Mail: jobcenter@univie.ac.at
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