I have a PhD studentship available for anyone wishing to work on using the Semantic Web and linked data to improve the process of scientific publishing.

I want to expand on the work that we have done with Kcite (n.d./) which links between different articles, and consider how we would link to and from both raw data and ontological resources. We will do this in a practical, real-world environment: we will be extending Wordpress server-side; all the tools that we generate we will be released as we go into the “wild”; we will be active at supporting users so that we can incorporate feedback. We will be targetting the academic blogosphere, in addition to working with the content on http://knowledgeblog.org.

If you are interested, please feel free to email me directly. The full details of the advert are below.

Advert

http://www.ncl.ac.uk/postgraduate/funding/search/list/cs024

The linked data initiative seeks to increase the machine computability of the web, but it is hard for authors to generate linked-data. We will investigate ways of publishing scientific knowledge where authors, readers and computational agents all gain advantage from additional semantics and machine computability. We will investigate representation of graph data and deep linking to ontological resources.

This project will feed into Knowledgeblog (http://knowledgeblog.org) which is both a high traffic (100k+ page reads) academic site in its own right, as well releasing its software for third party use by the academic blogosphere. Combined with exemplars using real data where possible, this will provide two valuable routes to evaluate and assess the representations in a real-world environment.

Value of the Award of Eligibility

Depending on how you meet the EPSRC criteria (http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/funding/students/pages/eligibility.aspx.) you may be entitled to a full or partial award. A full award covers tuition fees at the UK/EU rate and an annual stipend of £14,790 (2012/13). A partial award covers fees at the UK/EU rate only. The studentship is not available for candidates from outside of the EU.

Person Specification

You should have either a First class honours degree in Computing Science, Mathematics, or other relevant science or engineering subject, or a or 2.1 in Computing Science, Mathematics or other relevant science or engineering subject and a distinction level Masters degree in a related subject. Equivalent experience will also be considered.

How to Apply

Apply through the University’s online postgraduate application form insert the reference CS024 and select ‘PhD COMP’, with programme code 8050F, as programme of study. Mandatory fields need to be completed and a covering letter, CV and (if English is not your first language) a copy of your English language qualifications attached. The letter must state the title of studentship, quote reference CS024 and describe how your research interests fit with the topic of the research projected outlined (max. 2 pages). If you already have published research papers a list of these providing bibliographic details should be included in the letter.

You should also send your covering letter and CV to the Postgraduate Secretary at cs.pg@ncl.ac.uk.

Further Information

For further details, please contact Phillip Lord (phillip.lord@newcastle.ac.uk), 0191 222 7827