Department of Statistical Science

Applications are invited for a fully-funded PhD studentship to conduct research in a branch of probability or statistics, commencing in September 2013. This funding is provided by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

The studentship will be four years in duration and covers tuition fees at the UK/EU rate plus a stipend of £15,590 per annum for eligible UK residents. EU nationals who have not been ordinarily resident in the UK for 3 years prior to the start of the studentship may still qualify for a fees only award.

The studentship may only be awarded to applicants liable to pay tuition fees at the UK/EU rate (i.e. it cannot be used to part-cover overseas tuition fees).

• Further Information

Applications are invited for two PhD Teaching Assistantships to conduct research in a branch of probability or statistics, commencing in September 2013.

The Teaching Assistantships will be 3.5 years in duration and cover tuition fees at the UK/EU rate plus a stipend of £15,590 per annum (based on the standard EPSRC rate). The Teaching Assistants will spend 6 months of their time teaching (spread across the 3.5 years) and devote the remainder to undertaking their research.

International students may also apply, but will need to source additional funding to meet the difference in cost between UK/EU and overseas tuition fees.

• Further Information

Applications are invited for PhD Studentships in Statistics: “Big Data” and its applications to Social Network Dynamics, Behavioural Finance, Business Analytics, Computational Retail and Healthcare, starting in September 2013.

The studentships are funded by the UK PhD Centre in Financial Computing and are tenable for 48 months (1 year Masters study followed by 3 years of applied research). The full award covers living expenses as well as tuition fees (subject to eligibility).

Successful applicants will work with Professor Patrick Wolfe and colleagues in Computational Finance to develop methods of modelling and inference for graphs and networks, including time series analysis and other aspects of “Big Data”. The scale and nature of such datasets necessitates new analytical-computational approaches to statistical modelling, putting these problems at the forefront of contemporary statistical theory and practice.

For more information please email Professor Wolfe (p.wolfe AT ucl.ac.uk).

• UK PhD Centre in Financial Computing
• Professor Patrick Wolfe

Advancing Statistical Methodology to Infer Influence in Social Media

This project involves rigorously defining metrics to establish the strength of influence between participants of social media, using primarily probabilistic generative model-based approaches. The project builds on and extends existing research on inferring influence networks, with particular emphasis on identifying topics and contexts in which an individual is influential. This part of the work will probably touch upon topics from natural language processing and probabilistic topic models.

The project will also consider the issue of lnfluence maximization, in other words given an influence network find k nodes such that when this set of nodes activate, the spread of information from these networks is maximised. This problem is NP hard, often considered as a submodular optimisation problem, thus requiring sophisticated approximate algorithms to find the aggregate value of any set of individuals.

The studentship is funded by a UCL Impact award held by Professor Mark Girolami in collaboration with PeerIndex. The award is tenable for 36 months and covers tuition fees plus a stipend of £15,590 per annum (based on the standard UK Research Council rate with London weighting). The award may be used to support UK and EU nationals only (i.e. it cannot be used to part-cover overseas tuition fees).

• Further details

UCL Graduate Research Scholarships (GRS) and Overseas Research Scholarships (ORS) aim to attract high-quality students to undertake research at UCL. Up to 15 GRS and approximately 40 ORS are available annually to prospective and current UCL research students.

Applicants will be considered for a GRS, and overseas fee payers will also be considered for an ORS . You only need to complete one application form to be considered for both of these funding schemes, provided you fulfil the relevant eligibility criteria.

Since a combined selection panel will consider ranked applications forwarded by all UCL departments, competition is stiff.

• UCL Graduate Research Scholarships
  
• UCL Overseas Research Scholarships
  

The China Scholarship Council (CSC) offers maintenance funding for postgraduate research students from China studying in the UK. The Department of Statistical Science may support a limited number of CSC applications from academically talented students by providing a scholarship that covers their PhD tuition fees.

In order to be eligible for the scheme, prospective students should apply for admission to the MPhil/PhD Statistical Science no later than mid-January and indicate clearly on the application form that the CSC is a potential source of funding. Applicants would then be informed by the end of February whether or not they will be considered for the tuition scholarship. This will provide enough time for them to complete the CSC scholarship online application form with the confirmation that they are to receive the tuition scholarship if awarded the CSC support.

• China Scholarship Council

The UK Centre for Financial Computing offers a number of 3 and 4 year PhD Scholarships, jointly funded by UCL and leading companies in the financial and business sectors.

Students interested in pursuing topics in financial computing, which include a strong overlap with areas of statistics, can be nominated by the Department of Statistical Science (subject to eligibity).

Interested students should register with the Centre and also apply for admission to the MPhil/PhD Statistical Science, indicating clearly that the UKCFC is a potential source of funding.

• UK PhD Centre in Financial Computing
• How to apply
  

The Centre for Mathematics and Physics in the Life Sciences and Experimental Biology (CoMPLEX) at UCL offers 3 and 4 year scholarships to students interested in multidisciplinary research degrees in the medical and life sciences, which may have a strong overlap with areas of statistics.

Interested students should apply directly to the Centre. It may be advantageous to discuss research topics with staff members in the Department of Statistical Science so that they may be identified as potential supervisors at the time of application.

• CoMPLEX
• How to apply
  

The Security Science Doctoral Research Training Centre (SECReT) at UCL offers 4 year PhD scholarships to students interested in multidisciplinary security- or crime-related research degrees, which may have a strong overlap with areas of statistics.

Interested students should apply directly for admission to the Department of Security and Crime Science. It may be advantageous to discuss research topics with staff members in the Department of Statistical Science so that they may be identified as potential supervisors at the time of application.

• UCL SECReT
• How to apply
  

The UCL Impact Awards fund PhD students for up to four years in partnership with organisations such as private companies, charities, and government institutes. In exceptional cases, UCL units may also serve as funding partners. Although typically a potential supervisor applies for such an award, it may be advantageous to have an admitted MPhil/PhD student already identified as the beneficiary.

• UCL Impact Awards