Post-Doctoral Research Visit F - M Construction Enhancement And Exploitation Of a Knowledge Graph For Natural Pests Regulation In Agronomy H/F - INRIA

A propos d'Inria

Inria, l'institut national de recherche dans les sciences et technologies du numérique, est en appui de l'État pour les stratégies nationales de recherche et d'innovation du numérique en tant qu'Agence de programmes. Inria mène plus de 300 projets de recherche et d'innovation avec ses 3500 scientifiques, ingénieurs et personnels d'appui, en partenariat avec les universités et l'écosystème numérique (entreprises, entrepreneurs, acteurs publics). Ensemble, nous explorons des domaines clés comme l'intelligence artificielle, la cybersécurité, l'informatique quantique, le Cloud, la transformation numérique de la santé, les jumeaux numériques ou encore les technologies numériques pour la défense. Nous construisons des solutions concrètes telles que des logiciels, des startups technologiques, des partenariats avec les entreprises du tissu national et des formations de pointe. Notre objectif : l'impact scientifique, technologique et industriel au service de la souveraineté numérique de la France.

Post-Doctoral Research Visit F/M Construction, enhancement and exploitation of a Knowledge graph for natural pests regulation in agronomy
Le descriptif de l'offre ci-dessous est en Anglais
Type de contrat : CDD

Niveau de diplôme exigé : Thèse ou équivalent

Fonction : Post-Doctorant

Niveau d'expérience souhaité : Jusqu'à 3 ans

A propos du centre ou de la direction fonctionnelle

Inria is the French National Institute for Research in Digital Science, of which the Inria Côte d'Azur University Center is a part. With strong expertise in computer science and applied mathematics, the research projects of the Inria Côte d'Azur University Center cover all aspects of digital science and technology and generate innovation. Based mainly in Sophia Antipolis, but also in Nice and Montpellier, it brings together 47 research teams and nine support services. It is active in the fields of artificial intelligence, data science, IT system security, robotics, network engineering, natural risk prevention, ecological transition, digital biology, computational neuroscience, health data, and more. The Inria Center at Université Côte d'Azur is a major player in terms of scientific excellence, thanks to the results it has achieved and its collaborations at both European and international level.

Contexte et atouts du poste

INRIA is the French national research institute dedicated to computer science and applied mathematics and is a founding member of the World-Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

The Inria centre at Université Côte d'Azur includes 42 research teams and 9 support services. The centre's staff (about 500 people) is made up of scientists of dierent nationalities, engineers, technicians, and administrative staff. The teams are mainly located on the university campuses of Sophia Antipolis and Nice as well as Montpellier, in close collaboration with research and higher education laboratories and establishments (Université Côte d'Azur, CNRS, INRAE, INSERM ...), but also with the regional economic players.

The Wimmics team works on the topic of AI on the Web, in particular knowledge graphs and (linked) data representation and processing in the Semantic Web. Wimmics contributes to knowledge formalization and semantic-based methods to extract, control, query, validate, infer, explain and interact with knowledge in epistemic communities on the Web. Wimmics has been involved in numerous European research projects (e.g., CoMMA, SevenPro, Sealife, Palette, Aloof, MIREL, HyperAgents) and national projects with a focus on knowledge representation and reasoning (KRR) in the Semantic Web (e.g., ISICIL, DataLift, SMILK, WASABI, D2KAB, Dekalog).

This postdoc position takes place within the context of the EcoControl project funded by PEPR Agroécologie et Numérique, with partners from INRAE. EcoControl aims to improve our understanding of arthropod regulatory services and identify agroecological levers to enhance natural pest regulation in agriculture at both local and territorial levels. To achieve this goal, the project will address the following research questions: How do biotic and abiotic factors, whether phylogenetic, environmental, related to farming practices or to the introduction of alien species, influence the structure and dynamics of interaction networks between plants, pests, and their natural enemies?

Mission confiée

The main task of the candidate will be to develop an ontology-based model to represent the literature-extracted information on plants pests and auxiliariesand integrate it with species traits and distribution data available in existing knowledge bases, to form an ecosystem of interconnected RDF knowledge graphs.

In relation with other partners, a base of competency questions should be elicited, that need to be implemented and answered using the final knowledge graph. The graph will be validated by implementing these questions in SPARQL.

The candidate should then develop a set of tools for the visual representation and exploration of the knowledge graph, and its enhancement using graph representation learning approaches and downstream applications (e.g. link prediction).

The candidate will also manage the project plan, the deliverables and the meetings with our team.

Principales activités

- Design a semantic model to represent the data of interest (ontology and thesauri)
- Build a pipeline to automate the generation of the knowledge graph from the information extracted in the scientific literature and databases of observations (in conformance with the semantic model)
- Collect the competency questions and implement them in SPARQL
- Develop methods to enhance the graphs and capture knowledge changes
- Develop an interface for the visualization and exploitation of the graph
- Present, explain, and justify results.
- Follow and manage the tasks of our team in the EcoControl project and participate in its calls and meetings and the supervision of internships.

References

Nadia Yacoubi Ayadi , Stephan Bernard , Robert Bossy , Marine Courtin , Bill Gates Happi Happi et al.A Unified approach to publish semantic annotations of agricultural documents as knowledge graphs, Smart Agricultural Technology, 2024, 8.

Cristhian Figueroa , Nadia Yacoubi Ayadi , Nicolas Audoux , Catherine Faron, CoffeeWKG: A Weather Knowledge Graph for Coffee Regions in Colombia, SmartFood 2023 - Workshop on Controlled Vocabularies and Data platforms for Smart Food Systems

Aline Menin, Franck Michel, Catherine Faron, VENUS: A Declarative Visualization Library for Knowledge Graph Exploration, ESWC 2026 - 23rd European Semantic Web Conference

Botella, C., Dray, S., Matias, C., Miele, V., Thuiller, W., 2022. An appraisal of graph embeddings for comparing trophic network architectures. Methods in Ecology and Evolution 13.

Tibi, A., Martinet, V, Vialatte, A., Alignier, A., Angeon, V., Bohan, D.A., Bougherara, D., Cordeau, S., Courtois, P., Deguine, J.-P., Enjalbert, J., Fabre, F., Fréville, H., Grateau, R., Grimonprez, B., Gross, N., Hannachi, M., Launay, M., Lelièvre, V., Lemarié, S., Martel, G., Navarrete, M., Plantegenest, M., Ravigné, V., Rusch, A., Suffert, F., Thoyer, S., 2023. Protéger les cultures en augmentant la diversité végétale des espaces agricoles. Synthèse du rapport d'ESCo. INRAE (France)

Compétences

The candidate should hold a PhD, preferably in Informatics / Computer science and must demonstrate aptitudes or matches with most of the following aspects:

- Strong experience with Semantic Web standards and technologies
- Expertise in natural language processing, ontology-based knowledge modelling, question-answering.
- High motivation for scientific research in an open science context
- Good Web development technical skills

Other appreciated skills:

- Past experience on the ecology or agronomy application domains
- Some knowledge of HCI design and evaluation methods
- Language: excellent English oral and writing skills
- Writing skills and motivation for publication
- Aptitude to work with others and engage in collaborations
- Autonomy and initiative, take on technical decisions within the project and justification of choices
- Remote working capabilities (emails, collaborative tools, trackers, etc.)

Avantages

Gross Salary: 2788 € per month

• SPARQL
• Anglais
• RDF
• Pro-activité
• Processing