3 year PhD studentship in Visual Contextualisation of Multidimensional Data

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The OAK Group, Department of Computer Science, The University of Sheffield, is offering a fully funded 3 year PhD Research Studentship in Visual Contextualisation of Multidimensional Data

Application closing date is 15 November 2013.
Start date is 1 January 2014 or soon thereafter but not after March 1 2014

Aim

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 and sensing, as well as social media monitoring. The project aims to develop a new concept of citizen observatories of water where authorities and citizens cooperate to monitor rivers: the project is providing the social and technological methodology for the observatories, via methods for – among other things – monitoring of social media and the creation of novel low cost sensors that can be used and even built by the citizens themselves.

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 methods for interactive data analysis, allowing direct manipulation of data and visualisations.

Requirements
Candidates should have a First Class Honours/Distinction in Computer Science or Engineering (e.g. MComp, MEng or MSc) 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 £13290 p.a.. The project will also provide travel funds for the student to attend international conferences. Non-EU citizens can apply but the bursary will not cover the additional non-EU fees (about £9,000 a year).

Full description can be found at http://staffwww.dcs.shef.ac.uk/people/F.Ciravegna/VAWeSenseItSFD.pdf 

For further information please contact
• Prof. Fabio Ciravegna (f.ciravegna@sheffield.ac.uk) AND • Dr Vitaveska Lanfranchi v.lanfranchi@dcs.shef.ac.uk AND • Dr Stuart Wrigley s.wrigley@dcs.shef.ac.uk

Best wishes

Prof Fabio Ciravegna,
Professor of Language and Knowledge Technologies,
Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield,
Regent Court, 211 Portobello, S1 4DP, Sheffield, UK
Tel: +44(0)1142221940, Fax: +44(0)1142221810
www: http://staffwww.dcs.shef.ac.uk/People/F.Ciravegna/