Department of Computer Science
Current EngD Vacancies
We currently have a number of fantastic opportunities for those who wish to enrol on the EngD in Large Scale Complex IT Systems programme:
Project: COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH TOOLS FOR METABOLOMIC DATA ANALYSES, FERA
- Full Project Details
Applications are invited for a Research Engineer to work on a research project in Collaborative Research Tools for Metabolomic Data Analyses. The project is supervised and sponsored by the Food and Environment Research Agency (Fera).
A large-scale project to speed up the development of drought and disease resistant crops is being led by the Food and Environment Research Agency (Fera) in collaboration with European partners. The approach will be developed using a clover-like plant as a model. Under laboratory conditions, hundreds of these plants will be subjected to drought and/or infection with a type of soil fungus called Fusarium. The information obtained from studying the model plant will then be applied to breeding new pea varieties. These new varieties will be compared with existing commercial crops, identifying those that perform better when challenged with a combination of Fusarium and drought. The best of the plants will undergo field trials at different sites across Europe. s
Academic Supervisor: Dr Simon O’Keefe
Project: ARTIFICIAL INTELLEGENCE(AI)/OPERATIONAL RESEARCH(OR). A PhD level project : Extending Assest Life through Optimised Maintenance using Grid-Based Decison Support, Gaist Ltd
- Full Project Details
- Further Particulars
Applications are invited for a Research Engineer to work on a research project in computerised decision support systems which can use geolocated condition data to generate plans and schedules which greatly improve the efficiency of asset maintenance, and hence prolong the life of assets. The project is supervised and sponsored by Gaist Ltd, and will require research and experimentation in modelling, decision support, heuristic optimisation and data fusion.
Billions of pounds are spent annually on building and maintaining assets such as roads, pavements and parkland. The research student will play a key role in a project which will pave the way for a new generation of computerised planning systems which fuse data from a wide range of sources, ranging from mobile phones to sophisticated sensor vehicles, and leverage advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Operational Research (OR) techniques to use that data to produce management information and plans/schedules which yield substantial productivity improvements and cost savings
Academic Supervisor: Professor Peter Cowling who takes up a Chair at the University of York this summer
Project: RE-ENGINEERING LEGACY APPLICATIONS FOR SCALABLE DEPLOYMENT VIA CLOUD SERVICES, Science Warehouse
- Full Project Details
Science Warehouse have a dedicated Research team as part of the Development department that looks into new technologies and techniques to improve our systems. The re-engineering project is focused on taking our current code base, applications and architecture and updating them. The aim is to bring them in line with the latest thinking in code design and architecture, and to allow the system to easily scale and evolve in future. The software is primarily written in Java with an Oracle database and deployed via the Internet as Software as a Service (SaaS).
Research will be required into establishing the most appropriate architecture and data storage methods as well as implementation work in refactoring existing code and moving the application to the new architecture. There will be significant flexibility in exploring and investigating different architectural solutions and platforms. A key part of the research will be to propose alternatives for, e.g., migrating to the cloud.
Academic Supervisor: Professor Richard Paige
Project: BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE FOR GOVERNANCE & COMPLIANCE, Neural Insights
- Full Project Details
Neural Insights is a leading strategic management consulting firm. It combines deep industry knowledge with specialised expertise in strategy, technology, operations, risk management, and applied business intelligence.
The project will combine research with practical implementation. It will require research into methodologies, processes, architectures, and technologies for modeling and interpreting data related to a firm’s GRC, its internal operating model processes and the external risk profile. It will also require practical work on integration, visualization and implementation using industry standard platforms.
Academic Supervisor: Professor Richard Paige
Project: MODELLING GEOGRAPHIC CHANGES USING COMPUTER SCIENCE AND SOFTWARE ENGINEERING TECHNIQUES, Ordnance Survey,
- Full Project Details
The research will involve investigating the manner in which geographic objects (with particular reference to settlements, roads and buildings) change over time and how this may be modelled. The challenge, as will be the case even more so with historical objects, is that the extents of settlements in particular are often ill determined and where there is a well defined official boundary the social boundaries may be quite different.
Furthermore the Research needs to consider the relationship between places through time. For example what is the relationship between Winchester and Venta Belgarum the Roman town that occupied the area now called Winchester. Is this Winchester by another name or something different ? In modern times similar issues exist, what for example is the relationship between localities that are either absorbed or displaced by the construction of a new town or estate ? The focus of the research is not to necessarily resolve the issues of how these relationships change, but rather how to represent them.
Academic Supervisor: Professor Helen Petrie and Dr Chris Power
Project: INTERFACES FOR OPHTHALMOLOGICAL HEALTH CARE PERSONNEL, Moorfields Eye Hospital, NHS
- Full Project Details
This project will explore how to design and implement interfaces for medical personnel to use in the diagnosis and referral of patients. Key areas of interest are how to collect requirements from ophthalmologists and other relevant personnel from different hospitals, health care trusts or even countries, all of whom, have similar skills and knowledge but differ in their practices and procedures. Emphasis will be on how to use these requirements to create interfaces that support specific roles in the health care context in a flexible way and then evolve those interfaces to better support the work of specialists in different contexts.
Academic Supervisor: Professor Helen Petrie and Dr Chris Power
The industrial supervisor at Moorfields is Mr Bill Aylward, MD
Project: INTERFACE DRIVEN SECURITY AND PRIVACY, Moorfields Eye Hospital, NHS
- Full Project Details
This project will explore the development of interactive systems in an environment where security and privacy issues drive the way in which data can be accessed through the interface. In the current NHS data access scheme, all patient records are accessed through a single data service. The project will investigate how to provide access to this service in such a way that interface designers and developers need not know about the complexity of the data security scheme. In addition, the student will investigate how user task descriptions could be used to automatically configure data access to the secure data service.
Academic Supervisor: Professor Helen Petrie and Dr Chris Power
The industrial supervisor at Moorfields is Mr Bill Aylward, MD