Subject: Reminder: Funded PhD: Machine transcription of wildlife bird sound scenes - deadline Monday From: Dan Stowell <dan.stowell@xxxxxxxx> Date: Wed, 7 Jan 2015 13:59:30 +0000 List-Archive:<http://lists.mcgill.ca/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=AUDITORY>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@xxxxxxxx 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/