PhD studentship position in Speech Quality at University College London

[Mark Huckvale <m.huckvale@xxxxxxxxx>]

PhD Studentship in Performance-based Measures of Speech Quality

Closing date for applications: 1 December 2009
Required start date: September 2010, but an earlier start is possible
Duration: 3 years, subject to satisfactory progress
Stipend: £15,000 per annum
Tuition Fees: The studentship also provides payment of tuition fees at
the UK/EU rate

The goals of this PhD research project are to develop new behavioural
measures of listening effort which can be used to assess the quality of
distorted or noisy speech signals. Such measures would provide objective
means of studying the effect of communication channels on listening
effort, and would complement existing measures such as word
intelligibility rate and mean-opinion score. These new measures could
then be used to evaluate a range of signal processing strategies
proposed to encode, clean or enhance speech signals, which have wide
application in telecommunications and hearing-aid design. Further
information.

Candidates should have a good first degree in Psychology, Speech &
Hearing Sciences, Engineering, or Life-Sciences. They should have
experience in research methods and have demonstrated success in
undertaking a personal research project. Knowledge and skills in speech
and hearing science would be beneficial.

The studentship is funded by Research in Motion through a donation to
Dr. Mark Huckvale. The PhD project would be jointly supervised by Dr.
Huckvale and Gaston Hilkhuysen within the Research Department of Speech,
Hearing and Phonetic Sciences, in the UCL Division of Psychology and
Language Sciences. The student would collaborate with members of the
Centre for Law-Enforcement Audio Research (www.clear-labs.com), which is
a joint research centre of Imperial College London and University
College London, funded by the UK Home Office.

Students will formally register for the PhD programme in September 2010.
For candidates who can start earlier, we may be able to offer an
internship position at the same rate as the student stipend, starting as
early as January 2010.

Please note the studentship is only available to UK and European
candidates. Non-EU candidates can be only considered if they have lived
in Europe for more than 3 years on a non-student visa.

Application is by a letter of application and a CV, sent to:

      Natalie Wilkins
      Speech, Hearing and Phonetic Sciences
      University College London
      Chandler House
      2 Wakefield Street
      London WC1N 1PF
      United Kingdom.
      n.wilkins@xxxxxxxxx

Shortlisted candidates will be required to complete a graduate student
application form and supply references from two referees. For more
details, contact Mark Huckvale (m.huckvale@xxxxxxxxx).

--
Mark Huckvale, Director MSc Speech and Hearing Science
Speech, Hearing & Phonetic Sciences, University College London
www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/mark