PhD positions in Northwestern

The Language and Computation Lab in the Department of Linguistics at Northwestern University, directed by Dr. Klinton Bicknell, is currently looking for Ph.D. students to join the lab. Candidates should have a strong academic background, and especially desirable skills include some experience in computer science and/or math. Interested students should apply to the Ph.D. program in the Department of Linguistics, which admits students to the department as a whole rather than to a specific lab and offers all admitted students competitive five-year funding packages not tied to a specific advisor. International applications are welcome. The department's deadline to receive applications for starting in Fall 2015 is November 30, 2014. Research in the Language and Computation Lab investigates how the human brain solves the computational problems of language comprehension, production, and acquisition. We use techniques from machine learning, computational linguistics, and statistics to build computational models of such language behaviors. We test these models by analyzing large behavioral and neuroscientific datasets, and also by gathering new empirical data, especially via eye tracking and crowdsourcing. For more information on current research, see the lab website at http://lcl.northwestern.edu/. The Department of Linguistics at Northwestern has a wealth of excellent language researchers, as does the university more broadly in the Psychology, Communication Sciences & Disorders, and Electrical Engineering & Computer Science departments. Students are highly encouraged to collaborate both within Linguistics and across departments. Students can also take advantage of the university's location in the dynamic Chicago metro area. Feel free to direct any questions to Klinton at kbicknell a_t northwestern.edu.