Horizon Centre for Doctoral Training in Creating Our Lives in Data, University of Nottingham. Four year PhD Studentship in partnership with Rail Safety and Standards Board. (SCI1889)

Qualification: PhD
Location: Nottingham
Funding for: UK students, EU Students
Funding amount: Enhanced stipend of £17,000, and all fees paid for Home/EU
Hours: Full time
Closes: 8th July 2019

We are recruiting a PhD student to carry out research in partnership with the RSSB.  Depending on the selected theme, candidates are expected to have a background in Human Factors, Engineering, Psychology or Computer Science, with an excellent first degree and an enthusiasm for transdisciplinary research. The studentship is only available to UK/Home and EU students resident in the UK for a minimum of 3 years.

Our EPSRC funded Creating Our Lives in Data programme, aims to establish technologies and methods to enable producers and consumers in the Digital Economy to co-create smarter products in smarter ways, to re-establish trust in the use of personal data. 

The Centre brings together leading figures from computing and engineering as well as social sciences, business and humanities from the University of Nottingham; plus researchers from the Centre for Computing and Social Responsibility at De Montfort University. We are co-funded by EPSRC and over 40 industry, third sector and international partners.

Our students are innovating applications across sectors including consumer goods and food, creative industries, transport, high value products, and health and wellbeing – seeking out new synergies between them. We do not expect every student to be an expert in every area: our aim is to train people to work in transdisciplinary teams, ready to become future leaders in industry, the third sector and academia.

Our innovative four year PhD programme combines research, technical and professional skills training, an internship with a partner organisation, and opportunities for international exchanges. 

There are several possible themes, depending on your area of interest, e.g.:

Customer location / crowdsourcing – understanding customer density at locations via crowdsourcing/mobile 

Social media use and influencing behaviour during disruption – social media as precursors to prevent crisis situations  

How can we make rail’s digital technology more accessible to the elderly generation/ageing population

How can we support staff in a more automated rail environment (i.e. driver, signaller); how does performance vary in such an environment; and what systems do we need to put in place to support higher levels of automation? 

Monitoring rail drivers’ fatigue (physiology)

Routine collection of human performance data for rail drivers (specifically, learning about human reliability)

The student will benefit from:

A fully-funded four-year PhD programme that integrates a leading-edge research project with research training in transdisciplinary skills.

An internship with our partner.

An enhanced stipend of £17,000 per annum, a personal laptop and additional resources to support your study.

A cohort of high achieving PhD researchers.

A world class research environment with a proven track record of successful Horizon CDT graduates.

See: https://cdt.horizon.ac.uk for further details about our programme and how to apply.

Academic interviews: 18th/19th July 2019 (provisional date).

Closing Date: 08 Jul 2019
Category: Studentships