PhD Computing

The School of Computing, based at the Jordanstown campus, is comprised of two focused research groups in Pervasive Computing and Artificial Intelligence. The School is home to two industrially focused Innovation centres, BT Ireland Innovation Centre (BTIIC) and the Connected Health Innovation Centre (CHIC). Computer Science at Ulster continues to be in the top 25% in the UK for research power. In the recently published national assessment of research quality, REF2014 (Research Excellence Framework), with 90% of our Research Environment being rated as world- leading or internationally excellent with the quality of its 4* and 3* publications ranking the submission at 17th out of 89.

In Pervasive Computing, research is focussed on sensor-based technologies, connected health, data analytics, computer vision, and next generation networks, systems and services, with applications in activity recognition, assistive technologies for healthcare and independent living, healthcare modelling and bioinformatics. Research in Artificial Intelligence is focussed on machine learning, pattern recognition, logic and reasoning, knowledge engineering and ontology, decision support systems, and semantic analytics, with applications in text mining, intelligent document analysis, biometrics and video-based scenario and event recognition, and food authentication.

The main research themes in artificial intelligence are the following: data engineering; knowledge engineering; semantic analytics (making sense of unstructured data such as image, video, spectra and text); biomedical informatics; and mathematical modelling and optimisation.

Applications include work on multimodal biometrics (including face/palmprint/iris recognition); text and video information retrieval; food authentication; reliable decision support (e.g. medical and transport); soft sensor design; software complexity metrics; text mining to extract argumentation structure and application to document reuse and software defect analysis; remote sensing data analysis and anomaly detection; mathematical and computational modelling of complex systems; and biomedical applications.

PhD graduates are recognised by employers to hold valuable transferrable skills, as the nature of the degree trains candidates in creativity, critical inquiry, problem solving, negotiation skills, professionalism and confidence. The most recent Ulster survey of PhD graduates found that 92% had secured employment within the first year since graduation (HESA Destination of Leavers Survey 2015), and while two thirds end up in the Higher Education or Research sectors, the range of skills acquired equips the remainder for employment in a wide range of contexts.