Research Scientist Senior

Standard Job Description:
Performs scientific experiments, investigations, observations and related research studies into the nature and operation of natural phenomena in a particular field, using the scientific methods. Develops theories for understanding, characterizing and organizing natural phenomena into a systematic and meaningful pattern for the benefit of project advancement and emerging technologies.

Specific Job Description:
AIR FORCE RESEARCH LABORATORY (AFRL), Mesa, Arizona is looking for a computational cognitive scientist or cognitive/functional linguist with interdisciplinary experience in Linguistics, Psychology, Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science. This position is in the Performance and Learning Models research group at AFRL. Ideally, this person will have experience in designing and or implementing all or some of the subsystems of a Natural Language Processing system. This is an applied research position working directly with the government customer as well as other cognitive/computer scientists, cognitive/functional linguists and psycholinguists. Working as part of an interdisciplinary team, this research scientist will help create language-enabled synthetic entities that closely match human behavior. These synthetic entities will be integrated into training simulations to enhance training while reducing resource requirements. These synthetic entities are not gaming systems based on black-box AI techniques. They are cognitively transparent entities that exhibit human-like behavior at a fine-grained level of detail as supported by their implementation in the ACT-R cognitive architecture and validated via psychological measures like eye movements, reaction times and error rates.
REQUIREMENTS
Required Skills: Strong programming skills in Lisp or Prolog, C, Java, C++, C#, Visual Basic, Software development life-cycle understanding, Ability to obtain a clearance.
Degree in Cognitive Science or Computational Linguistics or Artificial Intelligence or Linguistics or Psychology or Speech or Computer Science or Computer Engineering or Engineering or Math STRONGLY preferred.
Desired Skills: Experience developing Natural Language Processing (NLP) systems; experience w/language Comprehension, Generation, Discourse/Dialog, Modeling, Speech Recognition, Synthesis; Knowledge of Cognitive Architectures, e.g. ACTR, SOAR (Cognitive Model), knowledge of Cognitive/Functional Linguistics; interest in developing cognitively plausible yet functional NLP.

Typical Minimums: Bachelors degree from an accredited college in a related discipline, or equivalent experience/combined education, with 5 years of professional experience; or 3 years of professional experience with a related Masters degree; or 0 years prefessional experience with a related PhD degree.