Introduction:

Swansea University’s College of Science invites applications for a fully-funded PhD project:Personalised Health Monitoring and Nanotechnology.

About the project:

The studentship is part of an interdisciplinary effort to understand the significance of personalised healthcare, particularly in light of developments in NanoHealth, for the design of pervasive health monitoring systems. NanoHealth is at the inception of a development pipeline that will see it make the cross over from the electronics industry into medicine and health, for diagnosis and treatment of illness. NanoHealth is widely recognised as being one of the largest growth markets in the world, with a lifetime likely to span decades. Nanotechnology will become pervasive in healthcare, becoming a part of it that each of us will be expected to use and will allow complex measures of health to be gathered from worn or even embedded sensors.

The student selected will be expected to explore people’s reactions to the concept of NanoHealth and to collaborate with experts in NanoHealth/engineering/design perspectives. The student will be asked to engage with groups of potential future users and investigate and prototype potential interface designs for personalised healthcare monitoring. The student will work alongside another student developing prototypes that explore the monitoring of variable drug dosage, for example, Warfarin for stroke patients, and the two will work together to create acceptable designs.

Candidate eligibility:

The successful candidates will have a first or upper second class degree in computer science or engineering (or similar) with numerical and analytical skills.

Familiarity with at least one computer programming language (C, Java, Python, etc.) is expected.

Familiarity with the human computer interaction field and participatory approaches to design in particular would be strongly beneficial. 

Knowledge with the field of nano-engineering and NanoHealth in particular would be beneficial but not required.

Evidence of ability to work in interdisciplinary or healthcare contexts would be beneficial. 

Studentship value:

This project is funded by Swansea University and due to funding restrictions is open to EU/UK candidates.

The successful student will receive an annual stipend of £13,726 for three and a half years.

The start date of the project will be 1 October 2013 or 1 January 2014.

Further information:

For informal enquiries please contact Dr Stephen Lindsay (s.c.lindsay@swansea.ac.uk).

Application closing date:  

The application closing date is 14^th August 2013.