studentship

Fully-funded PhD scholarship in user experience design

Applications are sought from passionate, creative and outgoing students interested in using their skills and interests in tabletop gaming in application to research in computer science, Human Computer Interaction, and User Experience design. This exciting PhD project will see the worlds of TTRPG and computing coincide to produce meaningful interactions to support the design, development and deployment of technology, whether from the software level, or at the pipeline level in support of those who will become developers and designers.

Tabletop Role Playing Games (TTRPG) allow the player to immerse themselves in a world where anything can happen — within the rules. You can become someone new, fight demons, play out exciting and speculative storylines, all with the help of your party. This ability to place yourself in the life of another person (or ethereal being) resonates with principles of User Experience Design (UX) where usability experts strive to understand the impact their application or interface might have on a hypothetical audience. There is also the potential for this technique to be used in computer science education, to enable students to explore real world design and programming processes, and the ethical challenges that ensue with the creation of new software and hardware.

The difficulty in eliciting requirements from users, especially users with complex interaction needs, is well-established in literature (Ferreira et al., 2019; Heumader et al., 2018; Pacheco et al., 2018). The process is one that is primarily an ongoing act of interpretation in which user ‘wants’ are translated from interviews, observation, focus groups and such into actionable ‘needs’ that can then be addressed in further design and development. The literature thus makes a distinction between ‘gathering’ requirements – as in collecting together feedback – versus ‘eliciting’ requirements, which is a a more participatory form of ongoing interpretation. As noted by Pacheco et al. the process is highly contextual and its complexities are influenced by everything from the project, the organisation, the environment, and the prior-experiences and skill-sets of all involved parties. It is also dependent on the requirements elicitation techniques employed.
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Fully-funded PhD scholarship in Privacy and Trust on the Web

As part of their efforts to enhance privacy and trust on the Web, many applications need to be able to determine whether or not a relationship exists between different entities. For example, it is desirable for web browsers to be able to determine that two domain names are under the same administrative control, such that cookies and other data can be safely shared between them. While determining these relationships might be easy for humans, it is impossible to do so algorithmically.

This project will explore approaches to the defining and enforcing organisational boundaries on the Internet. These approaches will consider the technical challenges, balancing those with user behaviour and expectations, and regulatory considerations. This will include identifying use cases, evaluating and measuring existing and proposed approaches, and developing and implementing novel techniques. Where appropriate, this will involve engagement with standards development organisations, including the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). Continue reading

Interdisciplinary PhD studentship available with Management

Dr Tristan Henderson has a St Leonards interdisciplinary PhD studentship available, to be co-supervised by Professor Kirstie Ball of the School of Management. The area of study is to do with ethical values and data science. The student will be part of CRISP (Centre for Research into Information, Surveillance & Privacy), a collaborative research centre involving St Andrews, Edinburgh and Stirling. As an interdisciplinary project, we welcome and will consider applications from students with a wide variety of backgrounds, from computer science to management to technology law and anything in between. More details can be found on the CRISP website.

Funded PhD Research Studentship in Constraint Programming

Dr Chris Jefferson at the School of Computer Science is offering funding for a student to undertake PhD research in Constraint Programming.

He is looking for a highly motivated research student with an interest in Artificial Intelligence and Algorithms. The studentship offers costs of fees for UK or EU students and an annual tax-free maintenance stipend of about £13,726 per year for 3.5 years. It might also be possible to fund non-EU students on an equivalent basis, so students of any nationality are encouraged to apply. Students should normally have or expect at least an upper-2nd class Honours degree or Masters degree in Computer Science or a related discipline.

Research topics of interest to Dr Jefferson include the automatic generation of propagation algorithms (http://caj.host.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/pubs/statelessprop.pdf), the automated creation of combinatorial puzzles (http://caj.host.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/pubs/combination.pdf), or advances in Computational Group Theory. Dr Jefferson is also interested in any student suggested projects in the area of Constraint Programming.

For further information on how to apply, see our postgraduate web pages (http://www.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/prospective-pg).

Candidates should address general queries to pg-admin-cs@st-andrews.ac.uk, or specific queries on the research topics to caj21@st-andrews.ac.uk. The application process will require an interview (by phone or voice-conference if appropriate).

The closing date for applications is June 5th 2014 and we aim to make decisions on studentship allocation by June 20th 2014.