UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Natural Language Processing

FOUR YEAR PHD WITH INTEGRATED TRAINING
FULLY FUNDED
SEPTEMBER 2022

Tailored doctoral training comprising both taught courses and a doctoral dissertation.

Application Deadlines:

Cohort 2022: applications are now welcome for September 2022 entry

Early application is actively encouraged and, to ensure full consideration for funding, completed applications must include all supporting documents, where stated.

Deadlines:

• International Fees - 26 November 2021
• UK / Home Fees - 28 January 2022

Natural Language Processing is transforming the way humans communicate with each other and with machines. The rapid proliferation of online news, social media and scientific articles has created an exploding demand for NLP systems that enable people to derive critical insights from massive streams of data in many languages. The UKRI Centre for Doctoral Training in Natural Language Processing based at the University of Edinburgh, is jointly run by the School of Informatics and the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences.

Its aim is to equip students with the fundamental skills for advanced research in NLP and language science, giving them foundations in:

• Linguistics
• Machine learning
• Statistics
• Algorithms
• Programming;
• Working with other modalities such as vision
• Design, ethics and responsible innovation as they apply to NLP systems.

Cohort 2019 Students

Programme

The four-year integrated training programme will give you a solid foundation in the challenge of working with language in a computational setting and its relevance to critical engineering, scientific and ethical problems in our modern world.

It also offers training in the key software engineering and machine learning skills necessary to solve these problems.

The programme aims to develop future leaders and produce cutting-edge research in both methodology and applications.

The CDT provides a collaborative working environment with researchers in NLP, speech, linguistics, cognitive science and design informatics from across world-leading University of Edinburgh.

Students will:

• be supervised by a body of over 60 world-class faculty
• benefit from cutting edge computing and experimental facilities (149 GPUs, eye-tracking, speech, virtual reality and visualisation labs)
• have access to liaison and intern opportunities with blue chip, dynamic industry partners.
• receive training in responsible innovation, public engagement and entrepreneurship
• enjoy a collaborative, diverse and inclusive environment

Each student will take a set of courses tailored to complement their existing expertise. Also, in the first year, they will undertake both an individual and a group research project with different supervisors to gain breadth and experience of different working styles.

Funding

Students will receive full funding for all four years, plus generous budget for travel, equipment and research costs.

Supervisory Support

Our CDT faculty has attracted international recognition for excellence: Visit web.inf.ed.ac.uk/cdt/natural-language-processing/people for the full list of faculty drawn from:

Informatics | Linguistics | Psychology | Design

Peer Support

“It's a really valuable thing to be able to learn from each other.”

“My CDT colleagues are from a far wider variety of backgrounds than I thought would be the case.”

“I'd assumed I'd be the only one starting after working and the only non-computer scientist, but everyone has different prior experience and different skills.”

“There's a lot of support available in the department and around the university as a whole. Everyone wants you to succeed and there are many places to ask for help if you need it.”

Apply

For full details please visit edin.ac/cdt-in-nlp

Mirella Lapata – Director of CDT in NLP