Reminder: Funded PhD: Machine transcription of wildlife bird sound scenes - deadline Monday

[Dan Stowell <dan.stowell@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear all,

A funded PhD place is available to work with me on bird sounds and
machine learning. Full details below, or at
<http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/AJY293>. Please share this with friends and
colleagues!

Best
Dan Stowell




Fully-funded PhD studentship: Machine transcription of wildlife bird
sound scenes


Applications are invited from all nationalities for a funded PhD
Studentship starting July/August/September 2015 within the Centre for
Digital Music (C4DM) at Queen Mary University of London, to perform
cutting-edge research in "machine listening" - machine learning applied
to sound. The PhD topic is "Machine transcription of wildlife bird sound
scenes".

RESEARCH PROJECT: The goal of the project is to develop computational
techniques for automatic transcription of sound recordings involving
multiple birds. This has parallels with automatic transcription of music
or of spoken conversation. The aim is to produce a system which, given a
sound recording as input, outputs a transcript describing when each bird
enters/leaves the scene, when it vocalises, and its species and other
characteristics. The successful candidate will research and develop
signal processing and machine learning methods suitable for noisy and
multi-source audio recordings, and apply them to large databases of
animal sound recordings. There is scope to tailor the project to the
interests and skills of the successful candidate.

SKILLS: Candidates should have a first class honours degree or
equivalent and/or a strong MSc degree in computer science, mathematics,
physics, bioinformatics, computational biology or engineering. Good
programming skills in either Python, Matlab, R or similar are essential,
as is a passion for sound and/or nature. Knowledge of machine
learning/data mining methods is desirable, but not essential if the
candidate otherwise demonstrates good technical/mathematical skills.
Knowledge of birds and animal behaviour is also desirable but not
essential.

SUPERVISION: The candidate will be supervised by Dr Dan Stowell
<http://www.mcld.co.uk/research> and will join a group of around 60
full-time PhD students, post-doctoral researchers and academics in the
C4DM (c4dm.eecs.qmul.ac.uk). The candidate will also interact with
colleagues in the School of Biological and Chemical Sciences (SBCS)
studying animal behaviour and vocal communication.

Informal enquiries can be made by email to Dr Dan Stowell:
dan.stowell@xxxxxxxxxx

This studentship is available to candidates of all nationalities. It is
funded by the university for 3 years and will cover student fees and a
tax-free stipend starting at £15,863 per annum.

To apply, please follow the online process
<http://www.qmul.ac.uk/postgraduate/apply> by selecting "Electronic
Engineering" in the "A-Z list of research opportunities" and following
the instructions on the right-hand side of the web page. Make sure to
state in your application that you are applying for the PhD with Dr Dan
Stowell.

Please note that instead of the "Research Proposal" we request a
"Statement of Research Interests". Your statement should answer two
questions: (i) Why are you interested in the topic? (ii) What relevant
experience do you have? Your statement should be brief: no more than 500
words or one side of A4 paper. In addition we would also like you to
send a sample of your written work. This might be a chapter of your
final year dissertation, or a published conference or journal paper.
More details can be found at: www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/phd/apply.php

The closing date for the applications is Monday 12th January 2015.

Interviews are expected to take place during the week of 9th February 2015.




-- 
Dan Stowell
EPSRC Research Fellow
Centre for Digital Music
Queen Mary, University of London
Mile End Road, London E1 4NS
http://www.mcld.co.uk/research/