Postgraduate Research

PhD and MPhil projects are available across a range of areas including Software Engineering, Computational Intelligence and Cognitive Science, Knowledge Modelling and Visualisation & Distributed Security Architectures.  PhD projects are usually for 3 years (full time) and MPhil projects for 1 year (full time).  Part time study is also possible.  For further information see the School of Computing & Mathematics website.

• Computational Intelligence and Cognitive Science
• Knowledge Modelling
• Software Engineering

Some specific topics, based on our recent research, are outlined below, however, this is a fast moving discipline and we are happy to discuss other projects in the areas listed above.

Software engineering

• Empirical evaluation of software development techniques, processes and tools
• Distributed databases
• Evidence-based research and practice

Knowledge Modelling

• Critical reassessment of expert reasoning
• Cognitive and computational modelling of judgements
• Computational models of complexity and innovation

Computational Intelligence & Cognitive Science

• Capturing expertise for more effective automated interrogation of large datasets
• Development of models that improve medical diagnosis and prognosis
• Development of software tools for the estimation and simulation of human performance
• Extending the capabilities of neuro-evolutionary systems
• Determining requirements for open-ended evolution, and analysing emergent behaviours
• Robots (analytical and cognitive)
• Biologically inspired robotics (particularly biological mechanisms of robot navigation)
• Human-computer interaction
• Computer vision
• Modelling of complex (non-linear systems)
• Data mining
• Novel methods of teaching computer programming

Visualisation and Distributed Security Architectures

• Visualisation methodologies for building large scale distributed systems
• Digital encryption technologies augmented with biometrics