PhD Studentships

Energy-efficient collective decisions in robot swarms

Centre for Machine Intelligence

This project explores mechanisms for effective collective decision-making in space-embedded tasks, drawing on animal behaviour and neuroscience to develop robotic algorithms. It builds on advances in understanding how simple local rules enable coordinated group behaviour, linking insights from animal collectives and neural systems. With a focus on the speed-value-energy tradeoff, the research will contribute to collective behaviour theory and robotics, using a state-of-the-art augmented reality system to experiment with hundreds of robots.

Supervisor: Prof James Marshall

Deadline: Thursday 27 February 2025

Find out more and apply here.

Enriching function and disability data with natural language processing

Centre for Machine Intelligence

This project aims to advance NLP methods for analysing functional health information in real-world healthcare settings. As global ageing increases disability rates, understanding functional limitations is crucial for personalised care, yet such information is often poorly recorded and difficult to analyse. AI, particularly NLP, offers potential for extracting function-related data from free-text medical records, enriching clinical measures, and improving accessibility to care. This research will develop NLP models to handle the complexity of functional information, design evaluation strategies, compare NLP-based and manual approaches, and integrate unstructured and structured data for a more comprehensive understanding of functional status.

Supervisor: Dr Denis Newman-Griffis

Deadline: Thursday 27 February 2025

Find out more and apply here.

Difference and power in the time of responsible AI

Centre for Machine Intelligence

This project explores the complexities of "responsible AI," a term encompassing ethical, fair, and trustworthy AI governance. Critics argue that responsible AI discourse often fails to address all stakeholder concerns equally, reinforcing existing power imbalances shaped by historical inequities such as racism, sexism, and colonialism. With different groups experiencing AI’s benefits and harms in varied ways, there is a growing need to critically examine how responsibility is defined and enacted. Applicants are encouraged to propose interdisciplinary and innovative research that addresses these power dynamics, with potential approaches including social network analysis, discourse analysis, decolonial perspectives, and policy studies.

Supervisor: Dr Susan Oman

Deadline: Thursday 27 February 2025

Find out more and apply here.