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A PhD studentship is available to develop novel methods for reasoning about the trustworthiness and information content of obfuscated data. Entities operating within a coalition may be wary of providing other coalition members with high fidelity data at all times for various possible reasons. Therefore, before providing others with this data, they may obfuscate it in order to reduce its accuracy. In such a situation, two questions need to be answered: (i) as an information provider, what type of obfuscation is required in order to ensure that an information consumer (gathering data from multiple sources) cannot discover information that you are trying to prevent them from discovering? and (ii) as an information consumer, how can you work out the quality of an information provider given that you are receiving obfuscated data? As a PhD student working at the University of Aberdeen as part of the International Technology Alliance (ITA), you will be investigating these questions.
You should have at least an upper second-class honours degree (ideally a first class degree), or a combination of qualifications and/or experience equivalent to that level, with a strong mathematical background. Additionally, the successful candidate should have: (i) excellent programming skills; (ii) excellent communication and technical writing skills because you will be expected to work with other technologists and collaborate with external partners on a regular basis, as well as present your work in scientific conferences; and (iii) a willingness to travel.
The other supervisor on this project is Professor T Norman (Uni of Aberdeen, Computing Science). The project partners include UCLA and IBM in both the US (T J Watson Research Center) and UK (Hursley).
Funding Notes:
Tuition fees will be paid at UK/EU rates, for 2011/2012 this is £3,600 (pro-rata). A maintenance grant will also be paid at standard EPSRC rates, which for 2011/2012 is £13,590 (pro-rata). The studentship is funded by the International Technology Alliance project (www.usukita.org). The studentship is funded at this level for 3yrs.
Applications from International applicants can be accepted provided they can confirm that they can meet the difference between UK/EU and International Tuition fees from their own resources. For the academic year 2011/2012 this will be £9,600 (pro-rata).
References:
C. Burnett, T. J. Norman, and K. Sycara. Bootstrapping trust evaluations through stereotypes. In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems, pages 241–248, 2010.
N. Oren, T. J. Norman, and A. Preece. Subjective logic and arguing with evidence. Artificial Intelligence, 171(10–15):838–854, 2007.
Application Procedure
Formal applications can be completed online: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/postgraduate/apply. You should apply for Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Computing Science, to ensure that your application is passed to the correct College for processing. Please note, you should apply at least 4 days before the deadline to allow us to contact you for further information, if required. All applications received up to, and including the closing date, will be processed. It should be noted that you will be required to provide a research proposal along with your application and supporting documentation.
Informal academic enquiries should be directed to Dr Nir Oren (n.oren@abdn.ac.uk), with a copy of your current CV. All general enquiries should be directed to the Graduate School Admissions Unit (cpsgrad@abdn.ac.uk).