Job Opportunity for Research Scientist (Speech and Audio) at Pratham in New Delhi

About Pratham

Pratham was founded in 1995, to provide pre-school education to children in Mumbai slums. Over the last 20 years Pratham has grown to be India’s largest NGO working to provide quality education to underprivileged youth and children in over 21 states and union territories across the country, with a range of interventions.

Pratham is a widely recognized organization, having received notable awards such as the WISE Prize for Innovation, Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, the Henry R Kravis Prize in Leadership and the CNNIBN Indian of the Year for Public Service. For more details, refer to www.pratham.org

About Pratham Digital

Pratham Digital has produced over 5600 videos and 500 learning games in the last few years. These resources can be viewed on www.prathamopenschool.org.
These resources have been deployed and monitored in many rural and urban communities. With each passing year, this repository of content – videos, games, and applications has grown to cater to the interests and engagement of children.
Translating videos into 11 regional languages helped us become relevant and accessible to learners in all states. Moving forward we are planning to create a mass dissemination mechanism where with the help of content repository, parents and learners can take necessary content on to their android devices.
In this effort to make engaging content reach learners across India, Pratham has been actively collaborating with youth-driven start-ups, content creators and interest groups.

The AI/ML Team

The AI/ML team at Pratham Digital works on developing Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning solutions to improve students’ learning outcomes. We work on several cutting-edge projects in the domain of Automatic Speech Recognition, Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing. We also have a strong research focus in terms of usage of AI and ML in the EdTech Space.

Research Associate AI/ML – Job Description

The Research Scientist -Speech and Audio position in the AI/ML team of Pratham Digital offers young, motivated, energetic people who are interested in AI and Machine learning, the opportunity to work on application of Machine Learning and Deep learning to solve problems related to education in India. We are looking for people who have worked in the Domain of Speech Recognition and Natural Language processing.

● The associate will be required to work on large audio datasets

● The Associate will work on training speech recognition systems from scratch using Pratham’s
audio datasets in different Indian Languages

● Pratham’s datasets include audio data of children reading out text and numbers. The associate
would also have to work on building speech models for Numeracy Data

● The associate should be well versed in reading research papers on speech recognition, audio
preprocessing techniques, speech model training and implementing ideas from papers on Pratham’s datasets

● The associate should also have and orientation towards publishing research on existing projects
and Data

Desired Qualifications and Experience

A Degree in any Mathematics, /Computer Science/Data Science or Related field.

Required:

● Technical Skills: Python, Machine Learning, Deep learning, Natural Language Processing,
Exposure to TensorFlow, Keras and Pytorch, Exposure to NLP libraries like Spacy and NLTK

● Exposure to Automatic Speech Recognition Tools such as Kaldi

● Experience in custom training speech models using Kaldi

● Exposure to Speech to Text Services such as Google Speech to Text, Azure Speech Text

● Experience in doing literature Reviews and drafting research papers

● Excellent written and oral communication skills in English

● Ability to work well in teams

● Self-motivation and pro-activeness

● Ability to organize and manage multiple tasks efficiently

Application Process

Send the following to digital@pratham.org and cc to satish.k@pratham.org (early applicants will be given preference) and mention ‘Application for the position of ‘Research Scientist (Speech and Audio)
AI/ML– Pratham Digital’ in the subject line, with the following attachments:

1. Current Résumé: Résumé should contain:

● Contact Information for Applicant

● Academic Background, universities attended/degrees acquired

● Academic Record (Marks or GPA)

● Past work experience, highlighting relevantskills

● Experiences in development, and/or education (if applicable)

● Languages Spoken

2. Statement of Purpose (300 Words)