Fully Funded PhD Scholarship: Privacy & Recommender Systems

Applications are invited for a PhD research position in the School of Computer Science and Statistics (SCSS), Trinity College Dublin (TCD). TCD is the leading university in Ireland and SCSS is the top ranked Computer Science department.

Recommender systems try to predict your preferences based on observed behaviour by yourself others, e.g. the "people who liked this also like that" kind of recommendations used by online services from amazon to dating. Search, such as google search, is another example of a recommender system. These systems tyically make use of so-called collaborative filtering and potentially quite sensitive personal data such as your browing or shopping history. At TCD we are working on developing new types of recommender system that have both better performance than existing approaches and yet are much more private, requiring essentially no individually identifying information. Areas of interest include:

• Privacy-enhanced statistical machine learning methods
• Recommender systems, including private search
• Highly scalable optimisation algorithms

Relevant analytic tools include methods from Bayesian statistics, stochastic optimisation, decision and queueing theory.

The successful applicant will enter a vibrant, stimulating research environment and gain a unique education from leading researchers, positioning them well for their career development. The SCSS has an active international visitor programme and provides the opportunity for international and industry exchange visits. In our structured PhD programme leading international researchers provide specialist postgraduate modules to support our research students.

For more information on the research group and its activity, please visit www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/

Candidate Profile

Graduates applying for this position should have the following:

• B.Sc., M.Sc. or equivalent in Mathematics, Computer Science, Engineering or a related field
• Excellent academic results (first-class honours or equivalent)
• Excellent level of spoken and written English
• Be motivated to tackle challenging research problems

Stipend

These postgraduate scholarships are open to Irish, EU and international students and carry a stipend of €18,000 (tax free).

To apply, candidates should submit a detailed CV, transcripts of undergraduate grades and the names and contact details of two referees for letters of recommendation to Prof. Doug Leith, email: doug.leith@tcd.ie.

Positions to remain open until filled.