Industry funded PhD Scholarship in spectral imaging

Spectricity is a fabless company creating spectral sensing solutions for high-volume and mobile devices, using CMOS technologies. The company was incorporated in 2017, and is backed by venture capital. Its work builds on an exclusively-licensed patent portfolio from IMEC, a world-leading R&D and innovation hub in nano-electronics and digital technologies. The UCD Spectral Imaging Research Group is a multidiscplinary research team led by Professor Aoife Gowen in the UCD School of Biosystems and Food Engineering (SBFE). We use spectral imaging to improve understanding of biological systems and develop algorithms for the analysis of spectral imaging data.

This research project, funded by Spectricity and offered at the UCD Spectral Imaging Research Group, addresses the key question: “if a mobile phone was capable of spectral imaging, how would that change how we handle our food/plants?". The successful candidate will work with the multidisciplinary teams in UCD SBFE and Spectricity to explore this topic through:

1. selecting and evaluating several end use cases for smartphone spectral imaging in the fields of food quality/safety, plant health and/or biomedical applications such as skin health

2. acquiring and comparing spectral imaging data with off-the-shelf high-end hyperspectral cameras (e.g. HYSPEX cameras) and portable cameras in the 400-1000 nm wavelength range.

3. developing basic image processing and spectral chemometric algorithms for the selected applications.

4. investigating the impact of uncontrolled illumination (e.g. sunlight, LED, fluorescent lighting) on stability of the spectral algorithms.

5. quantifying the reliability, accuracy of the application in realistic consumer scenarios.

The ideal candidate will have excellent skills in one or more of the following: biosystems and food engineering, optical engineering, spectroscopy, chemometrics, computer science, agricultural technology, mathematics, physics or similar. Knowledge of basic software and modelling languages, such as MATLAB, is highly desirable. Excellent scientific, organisational and project management skills, acommitment to research, excellent problem-solving skills, the ability to work independently and as part of a multi-disciplinary team and excellent interpersonal and communications skills will all be necessary. Applicants who have not passed English as a subject in the Irish Leaving Certificate Examination must provide evidence of equivalent competence in English language through their school leaving examination or matriculation examination or by achieving the minimum standard in the IELTS English language test. An average score of 6.5 over all components and a minimum of 6.0 in each band on the Academic Version of the IELTS is required.