Academic

Compression Measures for Biological Grammar Acquisition
School of Computing at the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen.

Closing Date: 16 May 2005

Applications are invited for a PhD studentship to work on a project based in the Computing Technologies Centre (a recent 1.5 million pounds, purpose-designed SRIF-funded research centre) in the School of Computing at the Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen, UK. The project will be an integral part of a wider research effort on Machine Learning, which includes the on-going EPSRC "Efficient Biological Grammar Acquisition" project (�110K), and will have the support of the Computational Intelligence research group (see http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/research/cig).

Linguistic methods have provided some interesting results in computational biology. However the hand development of grammars is difficult and, because it requires human expertise, expensive. Thus, given the enormous volume of data arising from genome projects, there is a need to automate the acquisition of grammars. We aim to satisfy this need by developing novel Computer Science methods for biological grammar acquisition. These methods belong to a branch of Computer Science known as Machine Learning/Data Mining and, more specifically, the research field entitled Inductive Logic Programming (ILP). When ILP systems learn, they evaluate the hypotheses that they form using a data compression measure. Unfortunately the compression measures used by the prevailing contemporary ILP systems are not well-suited to biological grammar acquisition. This project aims to rectify this by developing novel compression measures.

You should have at least a 2:1 Honours degree (or equivalent) in Computing or a cognate discipline; or you may have a background in the life sciences and have an advanced MSc in Computing or a cognate discipline. You will be highly self-motivated and a good communicator and programmer. Previous experience or knowledge of one or more of the following would be an advantage: Machine Learning, Data Mining, Logic Programming, Data Compression.

The studentship provides full university fees and a tax-free maintenance allowance of �12,000 per annum. The studentship is available to start from September 2005.

Informal enquiries to: Dr Chris Bryant Tel: +44 (0)1224 262747 URL: http://www.comp.rgu.ac.uk/staff/chb

Applications including a completed application form (available from http://www.rgu.ac.uk/research/degrees), a detailed CV, names and addresses of two referees should be sent to Mr Martin Simpson (m.simpson@rgu.ac.uk), Research Support Office, The Robert Gordon University, Schoolhill, Aberdeen AB10 1RF, UK.

Please quote reference FDT2.

Closing Date: 16 May 2005