The Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery Group of INESC-ID is looking for qualified applicants for three fully funded PhD student positions on topics related with the application of deep learning techniques to problems with societal impact. These positions are funded by a large-scale research project in responsible AI, supported by the Resiliency and Recovery Facility. The successful candidates will pursue a PhD degree in Computer Science and Engineering at Instituto Superior Técnico, in Lisbon Portugal. The broad topics of research are: 1 - Normalization of geolocation records using deep learning techniques, 2 - High confidence information retrieval and question answering, 3 - Application of reinforcement learning methods to the generation of efficient algorithms.

Emotion is defined as a rapid psychological process involving experiential, expressive and physiological responses. These emerge following an appraisal process that involves cognitive evaluations of the environment assessing its relevance, implication, coping potential, and normative significance. It has been suggested that changes in appraisal processes lead to changes in the resulting emotional nature. Simultaneously, it was demonstrated that personality can be seen as a predisposition to feel more frequently certain emotions, but the personality-appraisal-emotional response chain is rarely fully investigated. The present project thus sought to investigate the extent to which personality traits influence certain appraisals, which in turn influence the subsequent emotional reactions via a systematic analysis of the link between personality traits of different current models, specific appraisals, and emotional response patterns at the experiential, expressive, and physiological levels. Major results include the coherence of emotion components clustering, and the centrality of the pleasantness, coping potential and consequences appraisals, in context; and the differentiated mediating role of cognitive appraisal in the relation between personality and the intensity and duration of an emotional state, and autonomic arousal, such as Extraversion-pleasantness-experience, and Neuroticism-powerlessness-arousal. Elucidating these relationships deepens our understanding of individual differences in emotional reactivity and spot routes of action on appraisal processes to modify upcoming adverse emotional responses, with a broader societal impact on clinical and non-clinical populations.