The Cyprus Institute (CyI) is a non-profit research and educational institution with a strong scientific and technological orientation, emphasizing international collaborations, cross-disciplinary research, innovation, and post graduate education. CyI, through its established research centres, addresses challenging issues that are important at both the regional and international levels. Many of its research activities are being carried out in partnership with leading institutions in the respective thematic areas.

The STARC Centre of the Cyprus Institute is seeking to recruit a Research Assistant with a focus on 2D documentation of archaeological and heritage artefacts, in order to further extend its research activities in the field of heritage documentation and safeguarding, with a particular attention on the fight against archaeological looting and illicit trafficking of cultural property.  

The successful candidate is expected to perform massive photographic data collection of archaeological material, icons, and other artefact typologies, with the main aim to create a 2D structured database, coupled with ontologies, for the training of Artificial Intelligence networks. Data collection is expected to take place in several institutions in Cyprus and abroad, if needed.

The successful candidate will also participate in the development of annotation tools based on machine learning techniques to reduce the amount of manually annotated data and simplify the overall annotation process.

This position is supported by the Project SIGNIFICANCE, NUMBER — 101003625, funded by the EU, Internal Security Fund Police.

The SIGNIFICANCE project (Stop Illicit heritaGe traffickiNg wIth artiFICiAl iNtelligenCE) has been specifically designed to help and increase the responsiveness and effectiveness of the public authorities and police forces against the illicit trafficking of cultural goods through Internet channels (i.e., social platforms, web and dark web).

Reference Number: STARC_RA_21_03