An enhanced stipend of £15,000 per annum is offered to a strong candidate for a full time PhD studentship within the Digital Futures Institute, Teesside University. The studentship is funded by Teesside University, and will be for three years, subject to satisfactory progress.

* Please use the PhD full time application form, and state the studentship title and Director of Studies in the personal statement section. Please upload a complete and up to date CV in place of the proposal.*

Significance of the work: The ability to plan, and to reason about the actions we perform is a fundamental aspect of intelligent behaviour. The research field of Automated Planning is a key field within the Artificial Intelligence community. Planning has applications in many varied applications. Examples include planning the activities of non-player characters in computer games and creating activity and path plans in autonomous robotics. Each new practical application contains interesting new features that are either difficult or impossible to model with current planning modelling languages.

The traditional approach to solving such problems has been to add additional syntax to the modelling language. An alternative approach that has recently been developed is known as Planning Modulo Theories. Within this framework, new data types can be added to a core planner in an extensible way. Thus, to allow real-value arithmetic, a module developer adds the specific functions he needs to the system and the planner will be able to solve problems that depend on real numbers.

The successful applicant to this PhD studentship will study in this new research field of Planning Modulo Theories. There are many open questions that you can tackle related to both type-specific modules and the core planning algorithm. The specific topic can be decided based on the successful applicant’s area of interest.

Director of Studies: Dr Peter Gregory
Supervisory Team: Dr Julie Porteous, Prof Marc Cavazza

Click here to view the Digital Futures Institute pages, where you will find further information about the Institute, and details of current projects.
Click here to view the latest issue of Teesside University’s Research and Business Magazine, for an overview of research within Teesside University.

Entry Requirements:

Applicants should hold or expect to obtain a good honours degree (2.1 or above) and/or Masters level qualification in a relevant discipline. The successful applicant will have strong programming skills, knowledge of AI planning and a good mathematical background.

Although we can accept applications from non-EU students, the funding will only cover a home/EU student fee. The difference between the home/EU and non-EU student fee would be payable by the applicant. 

You can apply online for this opportunity. 

For administrative enquiries, please contact Lorraine Smeltzer (PGRAdmissions<στο>tees.ac.uk)

For academic enquiries, please contact Peter Gregory (p.gregory<στο>tees.ac.uk).

We envisage that interviews will take place in April 2015. The successful applicant will be expected to start in May or October 2015.