[Corpora-List] PhD study opportunity for UK residents.

[Justin Washtell]

Dear all,

One PhD studentship is available in the area Natural Language Processing
and Social Media. The studentship is co-funded by an EPSRC Doctoral
Training Grant at the School of Computing at the University of Leeds (
www.comp.leeds.ac.uk) and the company 365 Media (365media.com). Application
deadline is 20. August. 2013. The university contact is Dr. Katja Markert (
markert at comp.leeds.ac.uk).

The main purpose of the project is to explore the links between social
media and more traditional news outlets, using Natural Language Processing
as well as general data aggregation/data mining methods.

Social media (such as Twitter, Facebook etc.) is by now often faster in
spreading events
and information than traditional news outlets. On the other hand, social
media
react to news, and particular news will cause (sometimes quite unexpected)
substantial
ripples on social media sites.
In particular, the project aims at one or both of the following:

(i) Predicting today's news from yesterday's tweets (or equivalents).
(ii) Predicting today's tweets from yesterday's news, therefore predicting
news impact.


Although concerned with the general case of how to capture and model the
interplay between these media, the studentship will concentrate on one or
two case studies, which will provide a direct application link in interplay
with interests at 365 Media.
These might encompass the business sector (e.g. mergers and acquisition),
political events (e.g. elections, protests, coups), entertainment (e.g.
film reviews, celebrity scandals), or other things of high public interest
(e.g epidemics, severe weather).

The PhD candidate should have or expect to obtain a first class or good 2.1
honours degree or an Msc with at least Merit in computer science or a
related field. Experience in data mining and/or natural language processing
recommended.
The studentship will start from 1 October 2013 or as soon as possible
thereafter. The successful candidate must fulfil the eligibility criteria
for EPSRC funding through UK/EU nationality and residency status (See
http://www.epsrc.ac.uk) and is therefore only open to UK and EU students.
EU students who do not fulfil the EPSRC UK residency requirements are only
eligible for a fees-only award.

Funding Notes:

The studentship is funded for 3.5 years and covers Home/EU fees and
maintenance at the standard EPSRC rate (currently £13,736 per annum).
Please note, due to funding restrictions this studentship is open only to
UK/EU students who have been resident in the UK for a minimum of three
years prior to starting their PhD studies

References:

The School of Computing is among the 10 best Computing departments in the
UK according to the 2008 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). An impressive
80% of staff is rated internationally excellent or world leading. This
clearly confirms the School’s position as one of the leading computing
departments in the UK and a leader in the field internationally.

365 Media is a US company whose UK subsidiary is the project partner. 365
Media provides data mining, cleansing and enriching services to all kinds
of content consumers. Their UK R&D operation is focused on the intelligent
automation of these services, particularly where natural language is
concerned. In addition to mentoring and opportunities for direct
collaboration, 365 Media will be able to provide substantial support to the
student in the form of specialized software tools, high
quality datasets, and data processing (e.g. harvesting and annotation)
services relevant to the research area.

Formal applications for research degree study should be on line through the
University website. Detailed information of how to apply online can be
found at: www.leeds.ac.uk/students/apply_research.htm
For informal enquiries and discussion prior or concurrent to application
please contact Dr. Katja Markert, NLP group leader.

Kindest regards.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/corpora/attachments/20130808/2831876d/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
_______________________________________________
UNSUBSCRIBE from this page: http://mailman.uib.no/options/corpora
Corpora mailing list
Corpora at uib.no
http://mailman.uib.no/listinfo/corpora