Current PhD topics and studentships

Funded Full-time PhD Studentship

• DISCnet Studentships (the DISCnet studentships are for UK students only)
  • Natural Language Processing to identify student misunderstandings from free-response assessment questions in physics

  • I CAN’T BELIEVE IT’S NOT JWST MIRI

  • Forecasting Martian Weather using Machine Learning

• Human-AI collaboration - If you are interested in this project, please contact Dr Amel Bennaceur for advice. 

The application procedure can be found here. Application cut-off date: 17 March 2023.

PhD opportunities

The following is a list of topics our academics proposed for PhD projects. If you are interested in a project, please contact the relevant academic for advice. The application procedure can be found here. 

These projects are open to both full-time and part-time PhD study. Please contact the relevant academic for further information and advice. Funding for up to 2 full-time PhD studentships are available. These studentships are open to both UK and international students. Application cut-off date for the funded studentship is 17 March 2023.

Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing

• Statistical Models for Analysing and Generating Music Contact: Dr Robin Charles Laney
• Collaborative Environments for Creative Uses of Musical Information Retrieval Contact: Dr Robin Charles Laney
• Algorithmic Generation of Computer Game Music Contact: Dr Robin Charles Laney
• Musical Contrast and Similarity Contact: Dr Robin Charles Laney
• Automatic Generation of Dialogue Acts: Understanding Dialogue through Computational Modelling Contact: Dr Paul Piwek
• From data to questions and stories: inclusive technologies for data exploration Contact: Dr Paul Piwek
• Dialogue Games, Argumentation and Meaning: Computational modelling of Brandom's inferentialism Contact: Dr Paul Piwek
• Explainable machine learning and natural language processing for automatic assessment Contact: Dr Alistair Willis
• Lightweight semantics for text similarity Contact: Dr Alistair Willis
• Semantics of ambiguity Contact: Dr Alistair Willis
• Exploring Quantum Models for Contextual Classification and Decision Making over Online Information Spaces Contact: Prof. Dawei Song
• Incorporating Domain-specific Knowledge into Pre-trained Language Model based Controllable Text Generation Contact: Prof. Dawei Song
• Simulation Models for Theoretical Life Science Research Contact: Dr Adam Linson

Critical information studies

• Decolonial Computing Contact: Dr Mustafa Ali
• Examining the historical roots and social aspects of the nature of information Contact: Dr Magnus Ramage

Interaction design

• Interfaces for life logging mood and affect Contact: Dr Daniel Gooch, Professor Blaine Price
• Music and Human Centred Computing Contact: Dr Simon Holland
• Digital Health and Interaction Design Contact: Dr Simon Holland, Professor Blaine Price
• Animal-Computer Interaction Contact: Dr Clara Mancini
• Socialised Exploration and Sense-Making over Online Information Spaces Contact: Prof. Dawei Song
• Decision dashboards for clinicians to make sense of patient-collected data Contact: Dr Daniel Gooch, Professor Blaine Price
• Digital Civics Contact: Dr Daniel Gooch

Next generation multimedia and networking

• Deepfake images detection for forensic purposes Contact: Dr Patrick Wong
• 6G ubiquitous wireless networks Contact:Prof Laurence Dooley
• 3D-imaging paradigms for 6G networks Contact:Prof Laurence Dooley
• Future trends in wireless communications: Exploring new structures of turbo codes Contact: Dr Dhouha Kbaier
• A hardware module for Robust and Resilient UAVs Communications Contact: Dr Dhouha Kbaier
• Game-Theoretic Approaches to Environmental Risk Contact: Dr Dhouha Kbaier
• Developing geographical understanding through 3D immersive environments Contact: Professor Shailey Minocha, Dr David Morse
• Effective inappropriate images and videos filtering Contact: Dr Patrick Wong
• Chasing criminal suspects using drones Contact: Dr Patrick Wong
• Participatory Machine Learning - Rethinking the Power Dynamics Contact: Dr. Soraya Kouadri Mostéfaoui
• Explainable Machine Learning to Reverse Inequalities in Healthcare Provision Contact: Dr. Soraya Kouadri Mostéfaoui
• Unbiased by Design - ‘Towards a Fair Machine Learning’ Contact: Dr. Soraya Kouadri Mostéfaoui

Software engineering and design

• Security by design: Trust, Reliability and Resilience for IoT devices in Healthcare Contact: Dr Chitra Balakrishna
• Machine Learning for Emergent Middleware Contact: Dr Amel Bennaceur, Professor Arosha Bandara
• Participatory Security: Self-protecting Communities On the fly Contact: Dr Amel Bennaceur
• The role of storytelling in software engineering practice Contact: Dr Chris.Douce, Dr Tamara Lopez
• Business analytics as organisational problem solving Contact: Dr Lucia Rapanotti
• Facilitating the Maintenance and Evolution of Software Contact: Dr Michel Wermelinger
• Analysing the Complexity of Software with (Social) Network Metrics Contact: Dr Michel Wermelinger, Dr Christopher Douce
• Automating Online to Offline Services using Smart Contracts Contact: Dr Yijun Yu
• Live Forensics for Drones Contact: Dr Yijun Yu
• Engineering Adaptive IoT-based Software for Food Security Contact: Professor Andrea Zisman, Dr Amel Bennaceur
• Software Adoption to Solve Multi-Domain Integration Problems Contact: Dr Michel Wermelinger
• Delivering full-fibre connectivity broadband in the UK Contact: Dr Advait Deshpande
• Business agility in an era of hybrid working Contact: Dr Advait Deshpande
• Mobilising artificial intelligence to identify patterns of criminal behaviour on digital devices Contact: Dr Ian Kennedy

Technology and education

• MOOCs for professional development of school teachers Contact: Professor Shailey Minocha
• Education and training for globally distributed virtual teams: preparing the workforce for the future Contact: Dr David Morse
• A Novel Language and Environment for Teaching Programming Contact: Dr Michel Wermelinger
• Teaching programming at a distance Contact: Dr Michel Wermelinger, Dr Christopher Douce