Full time PhD in Topic/Sentiment Tracking and Analysis - KMi, OU, UK

[apologies for cross-posting]

http://kmi.open.ac.uk/studentships/topic-sentiment-tracking-and-analysis.php

*Full-time PhD studentship in Topic/Sentiment Tracking and Analysis*

Knowledge Media Institute
Based in Milton Keynes
Three-year PhD studentship

*Application deadline: 8 November 2010*

The PhD studentship will provide a tax-free stipend of £13,590 
(increases on an annual basis) and covers all fees, and is available to 
any suitably qualified UK, EU and International student.

Start Date: January 2011 (or later by agreement).

Background: With the explosion of people's attitudes and opinions 
expressed in social media including blogs, discussion forums, tweets, 
etc, detecting sentiment or opinion from the Web is becoming an 
increasingly popular way of interpreting data. Sentiment analysis is 
concerned with automatically identifying sentiment or opinion expressed 
in a given piece of text. It finds wide applications in tracking 
companies' reputations, finding customers' opinions about 
products/services and competitors, monitoring positive or negative 
trends in social media, etc.

This studentship is funded by both the Open University and an EU project 
that involves several academic and industrial partners from various 
European countries. The aim of this project is to design and develop a 
platform for real-time monitoring and analysis of business online 
communities.

Project: This PhD project aims to use semantic technologies to develop 
novel techniques for topic/sentiment extraction and monitoring from 
blogs, forums, and other social media using techniques from machine 
learning, natural language processing, information retrieval, data 
mining, and semantic web. In particular, it will focus on detecting, 
tracking and qualitatively measuring topic ebb and flow, providing views 
of current and recurrent interests and shifts in topic and sentiment. 
This project will also identify community roles such as topic 
innovators, summarisers, answer-givers or the content of topics likely 
to engender disputes.

Academic Requirements: You should have a first or upper second-class 
honours undergraduate degree or a relevant Masters Degree or equivalent 
experience in a relevant computer science discipline. Knowledge of 
natural language processing or machine learning would be desirable.

How to Apply: Be sure to refer to the online prospectus at 
http://www3.open.ac.uk/study/research-degrees/computing.htm and download 
and complete the 10-page MPhil/PhD application form. Applications should 
be sent by email to Miss Ortenz Rose, including a covering letter, a 
research proposal (a maximum of 2,000 words) and a full CV, giving 
contact details for two academic referees.

Application deadline: 8 November 2010

Interviews: week commencing 22 November 2010

-- 
The Open University is incorporated by Royal Charter (RC 000391), an exempt charity in England & Wales and a charity registered in Scotland (SC 038302).

Received on Tuesday, 19 October 2010 12:06:40 UTC