PhD Studentship in Mobile Applications to Support Emotion Regulation in Mental Health (Marie Curie ESR)

Marie Curie PhD Studentship in Mobile Applications to Support Emotion Regulation in Mental Health
We are seeking an excellent Early Stage Researcher (ESR) who must be eligible to enrol as a PhD.

Closing Date and Time:?? ?5pm on 15/5/2017

The selected PhD student will be paid a gross annual salary of approximately ?31,400 over a 3 year fixed term contract. They will also be entitled to a mobility allowance of approximately ?6,500 per annum and potentially a family allowance where appropriate. The goal of the research is to investigate the role of self-reports in emotional sense making and self-regulation in mental health. This research will involve working to understand the self-management strategies and needs of people with mental health difficulties, and particularly bipolar disorder. Through the development and evaluation of innovative prototypes, it will look at the refinement and evaluation of different strategies for mobile self-reporting. Evaluations will explore the effectiveness of these strategies with respect to the different motivations for use of self-reports. It will involve work with both patients and clinical collaborators.The successful candidate will:
? benefit from a unique doctoral training programme on personalised health applications and affective health research as part of the AffecTech network.
? receive a salary and mobility allowance for three years.
? be registered for the doctoral (PhD by research) programme within the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin.

Dr. Gavin Doherty and his team have done pioneering work in the area of technology in mental health for over 14 years, developing engaging and novel technologies that are used in the real world. This has included the development of the SilverCloud platform, which has been used to deliver supported mental health programmes to over 95,000 patients.

PhD students will benefit from joint interdisciplinary supervision, secondments in academic and non-academic institutions, and an innovative training programme on foundation of emotion regulation, biosignal analysis and wearable sensors, as well as local courses on transferable and research skills. In Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions, the ESRs will be employed full-time for three years, and paid a competitive salary (adjusted for the host country), including mobility allowance and a family allowance (subject to family situation at the time of recruitment).

Standard duties and Responsibilities of the Post
??? ?Investigate the design space of systems to support emotion self-regulation through user-centered design work with a range of stakeholders.
??? ?Design and implement prototype systems for self-report and supoprting emotional self-regulation.
??? ?Conduct, support and analyse evaluations of prototype systems for self report and emotional self-regulation.
??? ?Participate in project meetings; preparation and presentation of talks, posters and reports to disseminate the research outcomes.
??? ?Contribute to technical project deliverables on behalf of Trinity College Dublin.
??? ?To contribute to a research team through collaborative scholarly work.

Funding Information
The position is very well funded via the prestigious Marie Sk?odowska-Curie programme.
More information about eligibility criteria and Marie Sk?odowska-Curie European Training Networks can be found in: http://ec.europa.eu/research/mariecurieactions/about-msca/actions/itn/index_en.htm

Eligibility
? The candidate must not have resided or carried out his/her main activity (work, studies, etc.) in the host country for more than 12 months in the 3 years immediately prior to his/her recruitment under the project (short stays such as holidays are not counted).
? The candidate must be within 4 years of the diploma granting access to doctorate studies at the time of recruitment and has not yet been awarded the doctorate degree.
? The candidate may be of any nationality (including UK).
? The candidate must work exclusively for the project during the employment contract.
? The candidate must fulfil the conditions to be admitted in the PhD programme in the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin.

Qualifications
Candidates must have (or are expected to obtain by September 2017) the equivalent of a Master?s degree in one of the following fields (or related disciplines): Computer science, Interaction Design, Human-Computer Interaction, Biomedical Engineering. Applicants from relevant disciplines such as Psychology, or Health Sciences will be considered if they also have the sufficient software development skills to construct working prototypes.

Skills & Competencies
Our approach involves building innovative systems which are capable of being used in real clinical environments. The proposed research will require skills in interaction design, and mobile application prototyping and development in particular. Applicants should have a strong interest in human-computer interaction and m-Health.
As the research will involve extensive work with stakeholders through the use of English, as well as the preparation of scientific publications, a high standard of both spoken and written English is required.

Further Information for Candidates
School of Computer Science and Statistics:? www.scss.tcd.ie
Principal Investigator?? ?www.scss.tcd.ie/Gavin.Doherty

About the AffecTech Project
AffecTech is a network funded by the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 Marie Sk?odowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks (grant agreement No 722022). It provides a cutting-edge multidisciplinary doctoral training programme dedicated to the design, development and evaluation of personal technologies for affective health bringing together human-computer interaction researchers, biomedical engineers, and clinical psychologists from across Europe. It aims to advance the understanding of how wearable technologies can empower people to understand their emotion and develop adaptive emotion regulation strategies responsible for modifying emotional responses in daily life. The network brings together eleven institutions in order to contribute to the development of:
? Wearable systems for capturing emotion regulation
? Applications for understanding emotions and their regulatory processes
? Interactive tools for training adaptive emotion regulation strategies
? Theoretical contributions to emotion regulation research in everyday life

The AffecTech Consortium comprises: Lancaster University, UK; Kungliga Tekniska Hoegskolan, Sweden; Trinity College Dublin, Ireland; University of Oxford, UK; Universita Di Pisa, Italy; Universitat Jaume I De Castellon, Spain; Universita Cattolica Del Sacro Cuore, Italy; Bogazici Universitesi, Turkey; Philips Electronics, Netherlands; The Leeds Teaching Hospitals National Health Service Trust, UK; Plux – Wireless Biosignals, Portugal.

About Trinity College Dublin, the University of Dublin
Founded in 1592, Trinity offers undergraduate and postgraduate programmes across 24 schools and three faculties: arts, humanities, and social sciences; engineering, maths and science; and health sciences. Spread across 47 acres in Dublin?s city centre, Trinity?s 17,000-strong student body comes from all 32 counties of Ireland, and 16% of students come from outside the country. Of those, 40% are from outside the European Union, making Trinity?s campus cosmopolitan and bustling.

As Ireland?s leading university, the pursuit of academic excellence through research and scholarship is at the heart of the Trinity education. Trinity is known for intellectual rigour, excellence, interdisciplinarity, and research-led teaching.
Trinity accounts for one-fifth of all spin-out companies from Irish higher education institutions, helping to turn Ireland into an innovation-intensive, high-productivity economy. That culture of innovation and entrepreneurship is a defining characteristic of our campus as we help shape the next generation of job creators.

The Old Library, which houses the Long Room, in Trinity is the largest research library in Ireland, with a collection of six million printed items, 500,000 maps, 80,000 electronic journals, and 350,000 electronic books. Some of the world?s most famous scholars are graduates of Trinity, including writer Jonathan Swift, dramatist Oscar Wilde, philosopher George Berkeley, and political philosopher, and political theorist Edmund Burke, as well as Nobel prize-winners such as scientist Ernest Walton and writer Samuel Beckett.

World University Rankings (April 2017)
??? ?Trinity is Ireland?s No.1 University in the QS World University Ranking, THE World University Ranking and the Academic Ranking of World Universities (Shanghai).
??? ?Trinity is ranked 98th in the World, and 35th in Europe, in the 2016/2017 QS World University Ranking across all indicators.
??? ?Trinity is ranked in the Top 100 for Graduate Employability in the QS 2017 Rankings.
??? ?Trinity is in the Top 50 most innovative universities in Europe according to Reuters.
??? ?Between 2010 and 2015, Trinity was ranked the top university in Europe for entrepreneurship according to Pitchbook?s independent analysis. 2
Internationalisation
??? ?Trinity is ranked 52nd in the world in the THE World University Ranking for international outlook.
Equal Opportunities Policy

Trinity College is an equal opportunities employer and is committed to employment policies, procedures and practices which do not discriminate on grounds such as gender, civil status, family status, age, disability, race, religious belief, sexual orientation or membership of the travelling community.
On that basis we encourage and welcome talented people from all backgrounds to join our staff and student community.
Trinity College?s Diversity Statement can be viewed in full at https://www.tcd.ie/diversity-inclusion/diversity-statement

Application Procedure
Candidates should submit a cover letter together with a full curriculum vitae including details of qualifications and evidence of standard of English, and the names and contact details of 3 referees (with email addresses) to:

Name / Title: Dr. Gavin Doherty
Email Address: Gavin.Doherty@tcd.ie
Contact Telephone Number: +353 1 896 3858 (please make an appointment to call)