UK: PhD Studentship University of Nottingham -Horizon Digital Economy Research Institute - Horizon Doctoral Training

Deadline: 10th August 2012

The University of Nottingham is engaged in work programmes within CREATe and we seek to align the recruitment of a suitable PhD student to the DTC to work on these themes for a period of 4 years; no disciplinary limitation is specified but candidates are expected to articulate in their application how they would envisage investigating the following problem.
The studentship concerns "Data Mining" - Creative products can not only produce value for the original creator but also for re-users of the work. Text analytics involves using digital methods to copy large amounts of text and study it, while data mining extends to media other than text such as numeric data, imagery, audio, etc. Overall, data mining and text analytics are currently one of the most significant new techniques for deriving extra value, both for entrepreneurs and society, from existing cultural products. Despite the widespread rise of such "big data" techniques and business models, legal problems about their validity persist in UK and EU, especially after EU cases resisting news aggregation and in UK, the recent Meltwater decision.  As a result the Hargreaves reforms suggest a special new data mining exception to copyright may be appropriate. Or an alternative is to send the analytics code to the data and not copy the information wholesale, through the definition of new webservice APIs that data miners could use to extract their value without violating the law. We seek to understand this spectrum of solutions.
Our students will benefit from:

• A fully-funded four-year PhD programme that integrates a leading-edge research project with research training in interdisciplinary skills.
• A personalised pathway through this programme that enables students to gain a balance of skills across key technology areas, future applications and human and societal issues.
• Training in innovation and ingenuity to equip students for careers in industry, from global companies to start-ups.
• A three-month internship.
• Regular seminars and meetings with industry representatives to develop contacts with future employers.
• An enhanced stipend of £15,600 per annum as well as a personal laptop.
• Supervision from international leaders in the associated disciplines.
• Use of over £3m state-of-the-art facilities including positioning and sensing testbeds and transport simulators.
• Career guidance support tailored to individual needs.
• Office and laboratory space on Nottingham's award-winning Jubilee Campus.

The successful candidate will work as part of the cohort from the Horizon Doctoral Training Centre at the University of Nottingham, participating in the DTC training programme to expose them to the multidisciplinary areas of computer science, geospatial science, human factors, business and sociology.  The project will be supervised by a multidisciplinary team.
Further information can be found on the Horizon Doctoral Training Centre website; www.horizon.ac.uk. Informal enquiries may be addressed to Miss E Juggins, tel: 0115 823 2316 or Email: Emma.Juggins@Nottingham.ac.uk
Application forms are available from Miss E Juggins or downloadable from http://www.horizon.ac.uk/Current-Opportunities and should be returned by Email with a detailed CV and a statement of research interests to Emma.Juggins@Nottingham.ac.uk Please quote ref SCI/1180