Human-AI collaboration

Description

A Full-time PhD Studentship for joining a research programme in software engineering that tackles a fundamental issue of our time, enabling collaboration between humans and autonomous agents.

The research will investigate methods to represent and reason about human (and group) behaviour and capabilities to enable their collaboration with autonomous agents (e.g., robots). The aim is to enable the satisfaction of goals that require the coordination and adaptation of humans’ and autonomous agents’ capabilities.

This is an opportunity to join a thriving multidisciplinary research team working closely with a large industrial partner and collaborating with world-leading academic institutes in the UK and Ireland.

The research programme is designed to offer exceptional access to resources, training and career development and networking opportunities.

Keywords: Autonomous Systems, Software Engineering, Formal Methods, Identity-aware robots

Skills Required

• Strong software development skills in languages such as Python or Java
• Good oral and verbal communication skills
• An interest in human aspects of computing
• Knowledge of machine learning techniques

The research will be carried out as part of a  UKRI/EPSRC-funded project REsilient Autonomous SOcio-cyber-physical ageNts (REASON), within the Open University (OU) Software Engineering and Design (SEAD) group, and in collaboration with a number of partner universities.

Background reading

In preparing you application, you may wish to read the following related papers.

• Carlos Gavidia-Calderon, Amel Bennaceur, Anastasia Kordoni, Mark Levine, Bashar Nuseibeh: What Do You Want From Me? Adapting Systems to the Uncertainty of Human Preferences. ICSE (NIER) 2022: 126-130 
• Amel Bennaceur, Thein Than Tun, Arosha K. Bandara, Yijun Yu, Bashar Nuseibeh: Feature-Driven Mediator Synthesis: Supporting Collaborative Security in the Internet of Things. ACM Trans. Cyber Phys. Syst. 2(3): 21:1-21:25 (2018)
• Gül Çalikli, Mark Law, Arosha K. Bandara, Alessandra Russo, Luke Dickens, Blaine A. Price, Avelie Stuart, Mark Levine, Bashar Nuseibeh: Privacy dynamics: learning privacy norms for social software. SEAMS@ICSE 2016: 47-56
• Raian Ali, Carlos Solís, Inah Omoronyia, Mazeiar Salehie, Bashar Nuseibeh: Social Adaptation - When Software Gives Users a Voice. ENASE 2012: 75-84

Key dates

Application cut-off date: 30th September 2022

Start dates: 1st February 2023

How to apply

For application guidance, please visit https://www.open.ac.uk/stem/computing-and-communications/phd-students/how-apply . Your research proposal should briefly summarise related work and outline how you would approach the problem.

Contacts

Informal enquiries are welcome. Please email amel.bennaceur@open.ac.uk (with a short CV if possible).