We are pleased to announce the availability of a new 3-year fully-funded PhD position in our group!
Application deadline: May 12th, 2025, hrs. 04:00 PM (CEST)
Application Details: https://iecs.unitn.it/education/admission/call-for-application
Online Application Form: https://webapps.unitn.it/Apply/en/Web/Home/dott
Topic: Automatic translation with large multimodal models (Area A4)
The rise of large, multimodal foundation models has driven remarkable progress in natural language processing. In text and speech translation, their growing adoption comes with quality improvements while also opening critical research directions for successful deployment and widespread access. Among the current hot research topics, three are particularly relevant to this PhD position: resource efficiency, model alignment, and model accessibility. (i) Resource efficiency aims to reduce computational demands through model compression techniques that shrink large general-purpose models, optimizing them for specific hardware (e.g., mobile devices), translation tasks, domains, or language settings. (ii) Model alignment ensures outputs are trustworthy, fair, and human-centered by integrating cultural, sociodemographic, and human factors into model design and evaluation. This includes bias-aware solutions that promote diversity and inclusivity, as well as improved evaluation methods that better capture real-world user needs. (iii) Model accessibility enhances inclusivity for individuals with visual, hearing, or cognitive impairments by integrating multimodal solutions such as sign language, speech-to-text simplification, and description-augmented subtitling, expanding the capabilities of large models. This PhD position is open to candidates with a strong interest in advancing the state of the art in any of these areas.
Contacts:
negri@fbk.eu, bentivo@fbk.eu
