FULLY FUNDED Engineering Doctorate (EngD) in Large Scale Complex IT Systems (LSCITS): Interface Driven Security and Privacy, sponsored by Moorfields Eye Hospital

Moorfields Eye Hospital is one of the world’s leading eye hospitals, providing expertise in clinical care, research and teaching, and education. Their main focus is the treatment and care of NHS patients with a wide range of eye problems, from common complaints to rare conditions, which require treatments not available anywhere else in the UK. They treat people at their main hospital base in London’s City Road and at 12 other sites in and around the capital, which enables us to provide expert treatment closer to patients’ homes. Moorfields is also a postgraduate teaching centre and a national centre for ophthalmic research involving, with the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, the largest ophthalmic research programme in the world. The EngD project will be in collaboration with Moorfields consultants who have particular expertise in eye problems and interests in socio-technical software and systems engineering with emphasis on human-computer interaction and interface issues.

This project will explore the development of interactive systems in an environment where security and privacy issues drive the way in which data can be accessed through the interface. In the current NHS data access scheme, all patient records are accessed through a single data service. The project will investigate how to provide access to this service in such a way that interface designers and developers need not know about the complexity of the data security scheme. In addition, the student will investigate how user task descriptions could be used to automatically configure data access to the secure data service.

Outcomes for the student in this project will include an in-depth understanding of resource oriented architectures and user interface design and development techniques. The student will be exposed to other computing concepts such as role based access control and security protocols. Further, the student will gain insights into modern health informatics environments working with Moorfields Eye Hospital in London.

Applicants should have completed a previous degree in computing with knowledge of the following areas:

• User task analysis and modelling
• System modelling techniques (such as UML)
• User centred design
• Familiarity with object oriented design and development
• Database query languages
• Knowledge of service oriented architectures or resource oriented architectures would be an additional asset


The industrial supervisor at Moorfields is Mr Bill Aylward, MD. The academic supervisors are Professor Helen Petrie and Dr Chris Power.

The ideal candidates will have a strong background in computer science, project-specific skills as indicated above, and good communication skills. Prior relevant commercial / industrial experience would be advantageous, e.g., working with or for the NHS.

Applicants should be highly motivated and have a minimum of an upper second-class honours degree in Computer Science or related discipline (e.g. Electrical Engineering).