[Air-l] PhD studentship in 'Digital UK Data' available at Chimera, University of Essex, UK

[Ben Anderson]

Please forward as you see fit.

Please note that qualification for this form of award is dependent on  
the candidate being a UK national or a non-UK EU national having been  
resident in the UK for three or more years prior to appointment.

regards
Ben

http://www.jobs.ac.uk/jobfiles/AF147.html

"PhD Industrial CASE Studentship
Digital UK Data: Re-using data from personal health and wellbeing  
technologies for social research
Institute for Socio-technical Innovation & Research (Chimera)
Applications are invited for this PhD studentship, jointly sponsored  
by the EPSRC and British Telecommunications plc (BT), and supervised  
by Dr Ben Anderson. The studentship provides an opportunity to carry  
out research and industrial training in a three-year programme  
leading to a PhD.

One of the greatest challenges facing governments and society today  
is improving the health of the population while reducing the costs  
and burden on health sector resources. Empowering people (and  
organisations) to take greater ownership of their health, wellbeing  
and lifestyle is an essential precursor to achieving that goal.  
Today's emerging telecare technologies are early enablers for such  
empowerment and, over the coming years, assistive technologies will  
become commonplace as society grows more conscious of long-term  
health and lifestyle.

Implicit in the growing use of assistive technology is the wide scale  
deployment of technologies that capture data on relevant human  
activities and behaviours, ostensibly for the purposes of the health  
and lifestyle related services. However, that behavioural data  
contains an information richness that has value in a diversity of  
sectors in addition to health. The objective of this research program  
is to explore the potential academic, commercial and policy value of  
analysis of this data for purposes other than pure healthcare.  
Attention will be given to issues of confidentiality, security, data  
protection and ethics as well as potentially experimenting with new  
analytic and data visualisation techniques. Part of the research will  
also assess the potential value of such analyses to a range of market  
sectors and carry out investigative fieldwork with appropriate  
households using mixed- method approaches. It is anticipated that  
behavioural data collected in the University's innovative i- Dorm  
facility (see http://digital-lifestyles.essex.ac.uk/) and through a  
number of innovative BT trials will also be available for  
experimental analysis.

Whilst the successful candidate will be based at Chimera at Adastral  
Park, Suffolk, time will also be spent working within the BT 2010  
research activity (who are also located at Adastral Park) gaining  
industrial experience and access to unique datasets and technologies.  
Chimera also supports full interaction with departments and research  
activities on the main University of Essex campus at Colchester. For  
further information about Chimera, please see: http://www.essex.ac.uk/ 
chimera

The studentship offers funding for a period of three years for  
research towards a PhD starting as soon as possible, on or after, 1  
October 2006. It covers fees and a tax-free stipend of around £17,300  
in the first year, rising in future years.

Applications are invited from graduates with a first or upper second  
class degree (or equivalent) in Sociology, Human and Health Sciences,  
Management, Law, Computer Science or other demonstrably relevant  
programme. Candidates with an additional Masters level qualification  
in a relevant area are encouraged to apply.

Desirable experience, skills and attributes of the post holder would  
also include one or more of the following:

     * Socio-technical, legal or ethical issues of information and  
communication technologies
     * Experience of qualitative and quantitative data collection and  
analysis
     * An interest in behavioural data visualisation

Please note that qualification for this form of EPSRC award is  
dependent on the candidate being a UK national or a non-UK EU  
national having been resident in the UK for three or more years prior  
to appointment.

For informal enquires, please contact Dr Ben Anderson, e-mail:  
benander at essex.ac.uk

Formal applications should be in writing to:
Mrs A. Lealman,
Chimera, University of Essex,
pp1 Ross Building,
Adastral Park,
Ipswich,
Suffolk

Applicants should supply a full CV, a covering letter which should  
explain their suitability for the studentship and a 1 page statement  
of their proposed research in response to the above information.

The closing date for applications is Friday 11 August 2006 "


----
Dr Ben Anderson
Deputy Director, Chimera, University of Essex
+44 (0) 7710 187 806
http://privatewww.essex.ac.uk/~benander