5 PhD Studentships - Data Science at the Knowledge Media Institute, United Kingdom

Deadline for applications: 13th July 2015
How to apply: http://kmi.open.ac.uk/studentships/vacancies/

The Knowledge Media Institute (KMi) is home to internationally recognised researchers in semantic technologies, educational multimedia, collaboration technologies, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and human-computer interaction. KMi offers students an intellectually challenging environment with exceptional research and computer facilities.

As part of setting up Data Science as a key research priority for the lab, 5 PhD Studentships are available to start in October 2015. The deadline for applications is 13th July 2015.

Topics

Data Science is becoming an increasingly critical field in most areas of business, academia and everyday life. The rise of the internet of things, of online platforms and of social media means that more and more data is being produced, ready to be mined and analysed, to reach a better understanding of various processes, ranging from human behaviours to complex (natural or organisational) systems. We are therefore looking for the next generation of bright researchers to investigate and solve the key challenges of Data Science, including for example:

- How to automatically select and assess analytics workflows in specific scenarios and for specific datasets?
- How to preserve privacy and user-control in a world of Big Web Data?
- How to bring the benefits of data science to everyday life and make it accessible to people without technical skills?
- How to mine distributed web data and discover new knowledge?
- How to structure unstructured web dialogues around key social issues?
- How to predict sentiments and opinions from data?
- How to develop tools, protocols and guidelines for validating the modelling process?
- How to algorithmically extract meaning from multimedia contents?

The successful candidates will be integrating a team of highly successful researchers, and will work in collaboration with ongoing Data Science projects in KMi. In particular, we are currently working with various stakeholders on the following domains:

Space: The Open University's Faculty of Science<http://www.open.ac.uk/science> is conducting world-leading research on space exploration and observation, which is generating massive amounts of data for analysis.
Smart Cities and the Internet of Things: Through MK:Smart<http://www.mksmart.org/> and other projects, KMi is involved in the creation of large data infrastructures to support innovation in complex urban environments equipped with large scale sensor networks.
Education: With the Open University being the largest university in the UK, and one of the first distance learning institution in the world, the use of open and web data to support effective learning and teaching has been a key area of research for KMi.
These are examples of domains/research issues that we expect the successful candidates to explore and that research proposals might reference.

Person Profile

Candidates are expected to be creative individuals, able to generate and pursue original ideas and to organise their own work with minimal day-to-day supervision. Candidates should also have very good verbal and written communication skills, and are able to travel internationally. Good computer programming and data analysis skills are essential. Experience with one or more of these areas is highly desirable: machine learning, data mining, semantic technologies, web development, large scale data management, distributed data architectures.

Contacts

For informal enquiries please contact:

Prof. John Domingue, Professor & Deputy Director
john.domingue [at] open.ac.uk<http://open.ac.uk/>

Dr Mathieu d'Aquin, Research Fellow
mathieu.daquin [at] open.ac.uk<http://open.ac.uk/>

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