ROLE PROFILE OF A CONTRACT RESEARCH PROFESSOR (M/F)
27th section of the National Universities Council (CNU)
Tours Laboratory of Fundamental and Applied Computer Science (LIFAT)

Keywords: Computer science, Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis

The Centre-Val de Loire National Institute of Applied Sciences (INSA) http://www.insa-centrevaldeloire.fr/ is looking to hire a contract research professor effective 1 September 2021.

The Centre-Val de Loire INSA is a public scientific, cultural and professional institution (EPSCP) located on two campuses, in Blois and Bourges. 

It awards:
-    4 engineering degrees accredited by the independent accreditation body for engineering degrees (CTI):
•    Energy, Risks and the Environment (ERE),
•    Industrial Systems Engineering (GSI),
•    Industrial Risk Control (MRI)
•    Computer Security and Technologies (STI),
-    The State Landscape Architect Degree (DEP) via the School for Nature and Landscape Department (DENP);
-    PhDs, through its Doctoral schools EMSTU (for Energy, Materials, Geosciences) and MIPTIS (for Mathematics, IT, Theoretical Physics and Systems Engineering).

The candidate must have demonstrated his/her ability to conduct all of his/her staff duties (teaching & research) in French and English (oral and written) and to get involved in the themes of sustainable development and social responsibility.

Teaching

The candidate will have to contribute to teaching of the varied general computer science modules at INSA, specifically on the Blois campus.

The candidate is likely to be involved in the following fields:
-    C programming and algorithmics - 1st and 2nd years of Sciences & Techniques for Engineers (STPI),
-    Object-oriented programming (C++) - 3rd and 4th years of Industrial Systems Engineering (GSI),
-    Databases
-    As well as a range of computer science modules within the Acquisition, Analysis and Decision (ACAD) option in Year 5.

The candidate will also be expected to play a part in supervising projects, placements and industrial assignments.

The successful candidate will join the computer science faculty on Blois campus. S/he is expected to become involved in the institute’s day-to-day running by fairly quickly assuming responsibilities which may be educational in nature.

Teaching Contacts

Michaël CALIEZ, Director, STPI Department 
Email:  michael.caliez@insa-cvl.fr

Roger SERRA, Director, GSI Department 
Email: roger.serra@insa-cvl.fr

Jérôme FORTINEAU, Education Director
Email: jerome.fortineau@insa-cvl.fr 

Research

The successful candidate will join the Tours Laboratory of Fundamental and Applied Computer Science (LIFAT-Host Team/EA 6300). The research conducted at LIFAT bears on a range of scientific fields including computer vision, machine learning, data mining, data visualisation, text mining and combinatorial optimisation. There are more than 90 researchers at the unit, split into 3 research groups: Databases and Natural Language Processing (BDTLN), Operational Research, Scheduling and Transportation (ROOT – Joint Research Team/ERL CNRS 7002), Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis (RFAI). Owing to specific regional characteristics, the areas of application given precedence are the “digital humanities” and “health and disability”.

The primary aim of hiring a contract research professor with equivalent status to a University Professor is to strengthen the research supervision, organisation and leadership capabilities on the topics already being studied within the Pattern Recognition and Image Analysis (RFAI) team at the Centre-Val de Loire INSA.

This team comprises 20 permanent members working across the Tours and Blois sites and organises its research around 4 main strands: computer vision, machine learning, graph-based pattern recognition and temporal and sequential data processing.

The contract research professor’s activities may also contribute to the other topics of the LIFAT already being studied at the Centre-Val de Loire INSA.

The candidate must have an excellent scientific record and demonstrate his/her abilities at (i) leading and federating research (ii) setting up ambitious research projects and collaborative ventures at national and international level (iii) strengthening industrial partnerships and collaborative ventures between the LIFAT teams.

Alternatively, and on the basis of the quality of the candidate's profile, integration in the ROOT team (ERL CNRS 7002). The candidate should then have demonstrated his/her ability to manage projects related to Operations Research and its domains (models, complexity, approximation, exact methods, approximate methods, exact methods, approximate methods, ...).

His recruitment should allow to reinforce the development of work on scheduling theory, and/or on the optimisation of transport systems. This work could be of a theoretical nature or oriented towards the resolution of problems relating to the societal challenges addressed by the team: Factory of the Future, Health, HPC and Big Data, or Mobility and sustainable development. The ROOT team would also like to strengthen its position in one of the following areas: discrete event dynamic systems, scheduling in production systems, RO and machine learning. Eventually, an integration in the BDTN team would also be possible. Needs have been identified in particular on the joint contribution of learning and data mining more particularly dedicated to complex data such as complex data such as graphs, trajectories, sequences and with possible applications to the semantic web and Linked Open Data. In its work, LIFAT considers the user as an integral part of decision support systems. Interpretability and user interaction are therefore also sought-after areas of expertise.

The contract research professor hired will be responsible for the organisation and coordination of the activities conducted by the team s/he supervises. In that regard, s/he will be expected to respond to a wide range of academic and industrial requests. S/he shall monitor the international profile of the team’s research activity.

The candidate must demonstrate a high-quality research activity in computer science grounded in the best practices supported by the High Council for Evaluation of Research and Higher Education (HCERES) and French Office for Research Integrity (OFIS).

Research contacts

Julien MILLE, Member, RFAI Team   
Email: julien.mille@insa-cvl.fr

Jean-Yves RAMEL, Director, LIFAT Laboratory    
Email: direction.lifat@univ-tours.fr

Khaled CHETEHOUNA, Research and Promotion Director
Email: khaled.chetehouna@insa-cvl.fr 

Website of the LIFAT Laboratory: https://lifat.univ-tours.fr/

Procedure: 

Qualification: national candidates must hold a valid qualification from the relevant CNU section on the date they begin their employment.

Accreditation to supervise research (HDR): national candidates must hold an accreditation to supervise research.

Recruitment method: recruitment after consultation with a selection committee, grading proposal by the Restricted Academic Board (CAR) to research professors and decision by the Director of Centre-Val de Loire INSA.

Term: One-year fixed-term contract before renewal as a permanent contract.

Salary: on the basis of the university professors’ salary scales not including PPCR (Professional Pathways, Careers and Remuneration). Seniority taken into account according to the reclassification rules for the recruitment of civil servant university professors.

Staff service: the reference working time, corresponding to the working time decreed in the civil service, comprises, for research professors (civil servants and contract staff):

• For 50%, teaching services determined in relation to an annual reference duration equal to 192 hours of tutorials. These teaching services go hand-in-hand with preparation and assessment of the associated knowledge.
• For 50%, research activity.

Assignment: the position shall be taken up on the Blois campus.

Committed to combating all forms of discrimination, the Centre-Val de Loire INSA is ensuring as wide a distribution as possible of the job vacancy in a bid to encourage applications from diverse backgrounds.