Identification of Point of Sale Insights by Mining Social Media

A fully funded PhD scholarship is available with the Human-in-the-Loop Analytics (HiLA) program at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. https://www.monash.edu/graduate-research/partnerships/hila-grip

HiLA is a Graduate Research Industry Partnership (GRIP) that has been established to allow Monash University and its Industry partners to collaborate on common research objectives.
https://www.monash.edu/graduate-research/partnerships/grip
With the support of Monash’ partners, HiLA PhD scholarships are provided with significant benefits beyond other scholarships on offer. These benefits include:

A fully funded PhD scholarship with Monash University that is available for domestic (Australian) and international students. The 3 to 3.5 year award covers all course fees and a $30,000 AUD per year tax-free stipend;
An internship with the Industry partner - where PhD candidates will spend a portion of their candidature located on site and being supported by the partner;
Access to real world problems supported by real world data;
Where the industry partner is located overseas or interstate, travel and accommodation (when working on site with the partner);
Travel and incidental support for conferences;
Enrollment in the HiLA professional development program;

All HiLA PhD scholarships will commence in Semester 2, 2019.

SUPERVISION:
The successful candidate will be supervised by Dr Xiaojun Chang and Prof. Wray Buntine
from the Faculty of Information Technology.

PROJECT DETAILS:
The specific project centers around the following research opportunity:

What drives people to purchase products at the Point of Sale (PoS)?

This research project will explore machine learning techniques for mining social media data (text, photo and video) along with considering Patties Foods demographics and product data. Using machine learning techniques the PhD candidate will search for insights into questions such as “What makes food popular? What are the preferences of different demographics? Which elements most successfully drive sales?”
The intent is to find patterns in the data that may generate new insights into consumer preferences as applied to Patties product categories and Patties demographics.

As a Graduate Research Industry Partnership project, the candidate will have access to knowledge and resources from Monash University and our industry partner Patties Foods. The applicant will also have access large scale proprietary datasets. It also provides the opportunity for research to be tested and implemented in solving real-world problems during the project cycle.

APPLICATION PROCESS
Candidates must fill out the online to Request to Apply form, which can be found at:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdUiAswykQg43s8qIoLfq1eKfiGCZrgnkeoT7IQXOlhdJ8TIg/viewform

Please make sure you indicate that the PhD Topic is: Identification of Point of Sale Insights by Mining Social Media

In addition to filling out the form, a copy of your academic transcripts and CV should be emailed to [Email Address Removed].

Applicants must possess a Bachelor’s or equivalent degree with first-class Honours, and/or a distinction in a research Masters degree with relevant experience (e.g., data analysis, artificial intelligence, social informatics, psychology, human-computer interaction or data visualisation). Review of applications will begin immediately and short-listed candidates will be contacted for more information and invited to interview. The successful candidate will be invited to apply to Monash with the deadline for applications being the 31st June 2018.

International students that can demonstrate English proficiency are encouraged to apply.