Ph.D. funding in Social signal processing in mobile scenarios

The goal of the PhD project is to develop automatic approaches for assessing the quality
of rapport in mobile phone conversations. The methodology is based on detection and
analysis of “social signals”, nonverbal behavioural cues aimed at conveying relational
information during social interactions.
In particular, the project will make use of several sensing devices embedded in mobile
phones (microphones, accelerometers, capacitive sensors) to detect the physical
evidence of rapport (prosody, movement, grasp). Statistical models will then be used to
infer the quality of rapport based on the evidence at disposition.

The post is available from 1 January 2010 for three years and would suit applicants
with a good honours or Masters degree in computing science, physics, mathematics and
any other domain with deep mathematical background. Openness to disciplines like
psychology and sociology are highly appreciated. The student will be supervised by
Professor Rod Murray-Smith and Dr. Alessandro Vinciarelli in the School of Computing
Science at Glasgow, working alongside a postdoctoral researcher and having close
contact with Nokia Research Centre in Tampere and the European Network of
Excellence on Social Signal Processing (www.sspnet.eu. The studentship will fully fund
a UK or EU student, paying home fees plus the EPSRC standard living allowance
(currently £13,200/year).
The closing date for applications is 5th December, 2010.

Applications should include a CV, two academic references and a covering letter.
Applications should be sent to Alessandro Vinciarelli (vincia(at)dcs.gla.ac.uk),
Department of Computing Science, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, G12 8QQ, UK.

Informal enquiries to: Dr Alessandro Vinciarelli, email: vincia(at)dcs.gla.ac.uk
Web: www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/~vincia