We are seeking to recruit a capable data scientist (Research Fellow in Natural Language Processing) specialising on information extraction and retrieval, with previous experience in natural language processing and machine learning. The Research Fellow will take the ownership and responsibility of further development of the European Social Innovation Database (ESID). The successful candidate will demonstrate an understanding and interest of social innovation or willingness to developing domain expertise. The Research Fellow will be able to work proactively and demonstrate leadership.

About the Project

Social innovation is defined as “developing new ideas, services and models to better address social issues with inputs from public and private actors, including civil society, to improve social services” (see some social innovation project examples here). It is gaining increased practice, policy and scholarly attention, as one of the foremost types of the new forms of innovation. However, our knowledge of social innovation is still limited, primarily due to data unavailability. As part of a large EU funded project (RISIS), a team led by Dr Abdullah Gök (PI) is developing the comprehensive European Social Innovation Database (ESID) by utilising advanced text-mining and machine learning of the publicly available information on the web. We are building ESID on the work we previously conducted as part of another EU project (KNOWMAK).

Our approach in developing ESID is to utilise rich online information about social innovation projects and actors contained in a number of focused databases, project and actor websites and other sources that might contain relevant information (e.g. crowdfunding platforms). We utilise advanced text-mining and machine learning techniques to identify social innovation projects and actors and to discover a variety of their features (i.e. their social innovation type, location, their relationship to each other etc.). Our previous methodological work has been recognised as a novel application of text-mining outside of the bioinformatics and consequently published (see Milosevic et al (2019) and (2018)) in prestigious outlets and received awards. We are also working on a number of publications where we analyse ESID statistically to answer substantial social science questions. For more information on the current state of the ESID, see the ESID manual.

We are now entering a second phase of the development of ESID where our focus will be identifying more projects from wider range of sources by employing advanced information retrieval approaches as well as extending and fine-tuning our information extraction techniques. The Research Fellow will be responsible to advance the existing work and take ownership of the development.

The wider RISIS project develops, harmonises and integrates 17 different databases on science and innovation policy including the ESID. It consists of 18 leading organisations across Europe. The Research Fellow will also be a part of this vibrant community.

We are establishing an interdisciplinary Research Group on Data Science for Studying Science, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, including a number of academic staff and PhD students. The Research Fellow will be an integral part of this research group. 

The position is for 26 months, full-time, at the Research Fellow level, based at the Strathclyde Business School.

As a leading international technological University we warmly welcome applicants from across the globe. A relocation package is available to support new employees who meet the eligibility criteria.

Please include the following documents in your application:

-       A recent CV including a) links to GitHub repositories of your previous work and your previous publications.

-       A cover letter indicating a) how you meet each of the person specification criteria below and b) your motivation to apply this role.

Informal enquiries about the post and detailed information about the project can be directed to Dr Abdullah Gök, the Principal Investigator (abdullah.gok@strath.ac.uk). 

Formal interviews for this post are expected to be held on 07/04/2020.

Click here for full details