PhD Position at the Centre for Policy Modelling on:
Data-mining, Visualisation and Agent-Based Modelling
Stipend: £13,290 per annum + applicable fees for 3
years
Applications are invited to apply for this
fully-funded doctoral position at the Centre for Policy Modelling, to
investigate some of the potential synergies between data-mining, visualisation
techniques and agent-based modelling. This studentship is within the umbrella
of the SCID project (scid-project.org), funded by the Engineering and Physical
Sciences Research Council’s Cross-disciplinary Interfaces Programme, 'Complexity
Science in the Real World'. This project is in association with the University
of Manchester's Institute for Social Change and its Department of
Theoretical Physics. This is a high-profile and ambitious project
that aims to develop a new approach to using simulations to gain understanding
of important social issues. The project is from September 2010 to August 2015
so the funding will end August 2015.
The period of study will involve the development
of techniques to apply data-mining, visualisation and agent-based simulation in
innovative and complementary ways drawing on the evidence and data from the
SCID project, which is centered around 3 areas: diversity, homophily and social
trust, socio-political integration, and socio-economic inequality. Thus the
data and target of the techniques and approaches developed would be to do with
one of these areas.
The data and evidence will be provided by experts at
the Institute for Social Change. The central challenge of the PhD will be to
find synergies between data-mining, visualisation techniques and agent-based
modelling, for example: visualising the output from simulations, using
data-mining techniques to inform the specification of agent-based models, or using
data-mining to locate “phases” in the behaviour of simulations. Depending on
the exact area identified for investigation this studentship will be jointly
supervised with the department for computer science.
Applicants should preferably have a Masters-level degree
in a relevant discipline, preferably with an element of computer science
or computational social science. The candidate should thus have a reasonable
level programming and/or simulation experience. The candidate has to be an EU
national and not already have a PhD.
The CPM is a world-leading research centre in social
simulation. Since its inception in 1992 it has developed its unique blend
of trans-disciplinary research, crossing the areas of: artificial intelligence,
complexity science, philosophy and computational social science (to get an idea
of its scope browse its discussion
papers). It has built up a reputation and track-record over that time
being involved in a number of EU and UK projects (Ocopomo,
EMIL, Nania,
NeWater, GIACS,
CAVES, CCDEW, FIRMA,
IMIS). The CPM is a happy,
informal but creative lab. For more information about the work of the
Centre see its website at http://cfpm.org
For informal discussions about the post, contact Bruce
Edmonds on +44 (0) 161 247 6479 or email bruce@edmonds.name.
To apply, send a CV with a covering letter to Bruce
Edmonds, Centre for Policy Modelling, MMUBS, Aytoun Building, Aytoun Street, M1
3GH, UK. Closing date for applications: 16h March 2011.
The University is committed to an Equal Opportunities
Policy.
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