Training

Employment of Young Researchers

VIRGO involves ten participating organizations, each of which will employ a number of young researchers during the three year period of the contract. Participants aim at employing mainly post-doctoral researchers; fewer man-months will be devoted to doctoral students. A total of 422 man-months are envisaged to be funded by the network. From these, 120 man-months (on the average, 12 man-months 10 participants) will be occupied by doctoral students, whereas 302 man-months (on the average, 30 man-months 10 participants) will support post-doctoral researchers. The table below summarizes the distributions of doctoral students and post-doctoral researchers in man-months among VIRGO participants, as foreseen at the beginning of the programme.

The young researchers employed by the network will work at the partner institutions. For their recruitment various procedures will be followed. First, existing practices to recruit and employ fellows at partners' institutions will be employed. Second, the Community R & D Information Service (CORDIS) will be utilized to advertise post-doctoral positions in the network and foster the recruitment of highly qualified young researchers. A final procedure will rely on the participation of three institutes of the consortium in ERCIM. These institutes have the ability to involve other ERCIM institutes in recruitment procedures. Therefore, young researchers need not come from the countries represented in the project consortium, but from any of the ERCIM member countries. Vacancies will be published using available channels within the participating organizations and especially the Internet and the World Wide Web. Typically, young researchers will be appointed for an average of 18 months, which they will be asked to spend in two to three participating labs.

Training Programme

The young researchers to be selected are expected to have expertise in one of the following areas: computer vision methodologies (visual competences), object recognition (pattern recognition), planning (global/local motion planning) and machine learning. Through their involvement in VIRGO, they will acquire experience in at least one other area of the above areas and, moreover, will develop insights in the general scientific area of the project. The research subject itself is very well suited for training purposes since the techniques and methods involved are not unique, rather they require evaluation and experimentation. Researchers will therefore have the opportunity to experiment and train with different approaches, thus further developing their own ideas and critical thinking.

Moreover, young researchers and other staff involved in the Project will have the opportunity to attend the network meetings and workshops, especially the ones covering their particular task. Since their involvement and contribution to the project will be essential, they will be encouraged to present their work in conferences and produce joint publications together with the network researchers. Finally, through the involvement of industry in VIRGO, they will make contacts with companies and acquire valuable experience with respect to the working procedures of European industry and related work opportunities.

Finally, for the best possible exploitation of the network's potential, short visits and secondments of young and senior researchers in participating labs are planned. This mobility of researchers will greatly enhance the exchange of ideas and training of all participating scientists and will contribute towards the advancement of the particular research field.