Applications are invited for a fully funded PhD studentship.
Application closing date is 15 November 2013.
Start date is 1 January 2014 or soon thereafter but not after March 1 2014
Background
The aim of this studentship is to research new methodologies for contextualising multidimensional data to support decision-making in complex situations. The studentship will involve working on the externally funded WeSenseIt (www.wesenseit.eu) research project, supported by the European Commission as part of FP7. WeSenseIt is a multi-site, multi-disciplinary project involving researchers and industrial partners in web technologies, environment, sensing, and social media monitoring. The project aims to develop a new concept of citizen water observatories where authorities and citizens cooperate to monitor rivers: the project is providing the social and technological methodology for the observatories, via methods not limited to monitoring of social media and the creation of novel low cost sensors that can be used and built by citizens.
The student will be designing, developing and evaluating innovative solutions to enable contextual analysis of data focusing especially on the spatial and temporal dimensions and on methods to allow quick visual comparison with historic data and/or similar events. The student will need to focus on the development of methodologies for supporting multidimensional data analysis using large amounts of heterogeneous data, methods for interactive data analysis, allowing direct manipulation of data and visualisations using large amounts of heterogeneous data collected from social media and water sensors.
Requirements
Candidates should have a First Class Honours in Computer Science or Engineering and have excellent computer programming skills (e.g. Java, Javascript, PHP, HTML, Python). Experience with human computer interaction and information visualisation is essential, and detailed knowledge of Web Technologies (in particular in the use of social media API) and experience in using data analysis tools and techniques (i.e. APIs for information extraction, sentiment analysis etc.) would be highly desirable. A background in user evaluation and statistical analysis of data would also be desirable, but is not strictly necessary.
Stipend and Fees
The grant will cover all study fees for EU and UK nationals and a living stipend for three years. The stipend will provide £13,290 p.a. The project will also provide travel funds for the student to attend international conferences. Non-EU citizens may apply but the bursary will not cover the additional non-EU fees (about £12,740 a year).
For further information please contact
- Prof. Fabio Ciravegna (f.ciravegna@sheffield.ac.uk)
- Dr Vitaveska Lanfranchi v.lanfranchi@dcs.shef.ac.uk
- Dr Stuart Wrigley s.wrigley@dcs.shef.ac.uk
Applicants should apply using the online application form via the ‘Apply’ button below.
Related links:
WeSenseIt project homepage -Â http://www.wesenseit.eu
OAK research group -Â http://oak.dcs.shef.ac.uk/