Development of mobile image analysis tools for food quality and safety.

Project description: We are seeking highly motivated applicants for a multidisciplinary 3-year PhD studentship funded by the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Innovative European Training Network (MCSA-ITN-ETN-2016) programme through the EU project FoodSmartPhone (www.foodsmartphone.eu ). The successful candidate will research computational methods for developing intelligent image analysis tools on mobile phones for food quality and safety. This is an exciting opportunity to receive research training in the context of a collaborative effort between highly regarded research teams in two different disciplines: analytical chemistry and computer vision. The project will focus on the development of algorithms and software for analysis of food quality and safety parameters. We aim to translate ligand binding assay concepts from biochemical analytics into dedicated image analysis and application requirements for Android and IOS operated smartphones. We will also explore secure data handling methods for storing and transmitting the analytical results from the user to a web-server for further evaluation whereby the student will be required to acquire knowledge in and perform some chemistry, imaging and web service work.

Supervisors: The student will work under the supervision of Dr Huiyu Zhou (Institute of Electronics, Communications & Information Technology, School of Electronics, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) and Prof. Christopher Elliott (Institute for Global Food Security, School of Biological Sciences). Technical and advisory supports can be further provided by other members of the supervision team (Dr Cuong Cao and Dr Katrina Campbell (Institute for Global Food Security, School of Biological Sciences, Queen’s University Belfast).

Requirements: The successful applicant must meet the MSCA-ITN eligibility criteria. Please ensure that you qualify before applying, as ineligible candidates cannot be considered:
1. Applicants should NOT have resided or performed their main activity (work, studies, etc) in the country of the host institution for more than 12 months in the 3 year period immediately prior to the start date of the PhD research.
2. Applicants for the ESR PhD positions should be in the first 4 years (full-time equivalent) of their research careers and not yet have been awarded a doctorate. This 4 year period is measured from the date of obtaining the degree which would formally entitle to embark on a doctorate.
3. Applicants MUST be able and willing to travel to mandatory and voluntary training at the partner organisations located within Europe involved in this MCSA-ITN-ETN-2016 project.

In addition, the successful applicant should have:
1. First class degree in a numerate subject (such as computer science, computer engineering, computational biology, applied mathematics, physics), preferably a Masters level degree.
2. Strong programming skills such as Java, C++ or C Sharp.
3. An interest in, or exposure to, image processing and web services.
4. An interest in biochemistry.
5. An interest in smartphone-based point-of-care diagnostics.