Funded PhD / Graduate Teaching Assistant positions at the Dept. of Computing, Edge Hill University, UK

About Us

When Edge Hill was awarded the University of the Year title for 2014/15, Times Higher Education described it as “a great success story…an institution that improves and impresses year after year”. The award recognised our outstanding achievements in student satisfaction, staff engagement, graduate employment and innovation as well as our strengthening research profile, investment and growth. It also celebrated Edge Hill University’s distinct role in “transforming lives” – reflecting a distinctive philosophy of creating opportunity from excellence.

Based on an award-winning campus in West Lancashire, and voted Best University Workplace 2015, Edge Hill University offers a stimulating and empowering environment for ambitious and high performing professionals.

About the Role

Graduate Teaching Assistants hold a unique position in the University, being both registered students and carrying out teaching/teaching support duties (of up to 6 hours per week on a term time only basis per annum subject to the needs of the particular course/module).

Payment for teaching hours will be in the region of £8,300 per annum and each GTA will receive a ‘package’ which includes a combined salary (for teaching/support to teaching as appropriate) and full waiver of postgraduate tuition fees as well as a scholarship of in the region of £5,500 per annum. Limited postgraduate student accommodation is also available on campus (subject to availability and charged at standard rates).

Research proposals are invited in the areas below. Applicants who would like to submit proposals on other research topics are welcome to e-mail the contact listed in their subject area for informal discussion and advice.

Faculty of Arts and Sciences

The Faculty of Arts and Sciences is home to a large and diverse group of disciplines with a track record of excellence in research, much of which crosses traditional disciplinary boundaries. We are particularly keen to continue to build our research capacity, and welcome applications for up to 12 PhD studentships spread across all subject areas in the Faculty. All the studentships will be combined with Graduate Teaching Assistantships (GTAs).

Computing

The Computing Department has been extremely active in knowledge exchange and enterprise. It has an emerging and a fast-growing research environment and reputation. The Department aims now to develop an environment of international excellence in the broad areas of computer and data science and with a particular emphasis on data analytics, data representation and visualisation, interoperable and interconnected distributed technologies and infrastructures.

Research proposals are invited on the following:

• Architectures, resource scheduling and provisioning, quality of service/assurance for  Cloud computing, Future Internet, Internet of Things, Ubiquitous and smart systems
• Augmented and virtual reality, GPU programming, computer vision, visual computing, visual and sense mining, wearable computing, facial expression, gesture or emotions recognition, smart surveillance system
• Cyber security, computer forensics, privacy-by-design, privacy-preservation
• Data/web science, information retrieval, decentralised data analytics, data graphs, data-intensive virtual sensing, self-regulating/self-managed and autonomous systems
• Social mining and analytics, social sensing, semantics, social and network graphs, reduced topologies, smart sensors, virtual sensor analytics
• Text and data mining, machine learning, noSQL analytics, natural language processing, pattern recognition, sentiment analysis, opinion mining, text summarisation, relation/fact/event extraction form text, big textual data

Informal enquiries may be addressed to the Head of Department, Professor Nik Bessis,nik.bessis@edgehill.ac.uk

Students will be expected to:

• Successfully undertake an initial programme of accredited research training.
• Undertake a PhD programme of research under the supervision of an appointed supervisory team.
• Enhance the research culture of the Department in which they are located and the University by participating in events, conferences and training.
• Successfully complete a programme of teacher training.
• Undertake up to six hours teaching a week as directed by the Head of Department.

How to apply

Applicants must complete the online application form, attaching one document containing:

• A ‘Research Proposal’ which should not exceed 2,000 words in length
• A full academic curriculum vitae

Applicants should normally have, or be about to obtain, a Masters qualification in a subject relevant to the studentship for which they are applying.

Interviews will be held between Monday 11 April and Thursday 28 April 2016