MyWorld PhD Scholarships 2022 – UKRI Strength in Places Programme

Introduction

MyWorld is a £46m R&D programme, awarded to the University of Bristol, under the leadership of Professor David Bull, with £30m from the UKRI Strength in Places Fund (SIPF) and a further £16m committed from an alliance of more than 30 industry and academic organisations. SIPF is a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) flagship competitive funding scheme that takes a place-based approach to research and innovation funding with the aim of creating significant local economic growth. It is a major intervention by UK Government to explore the potential of devolved R&D funding.

There are now a number of opportunities for outstanding candidates to join the MyWorld team as PhD students, who are expected to start from Sept 2022. Opportunities for innovation and investigation exist across the MyWorld portfolio, including content acquisition and post-production, content delivery and interactivity, and audience understanding.

Role Description

All posts will cover student stipend at a basic rate of £15,609 per annum (2022 rates) with possibility of enhancement by up by £3,000 in some cases. Fees for home (UK-based) students are covered in all cases. Several awards cover fees for EU students and some cover overseas students.

Appointees will be expected to integrate within the MyWorld team, to conduct internationally-leading research, and to contribute to the wider objectives and activities of the programme.  Many of the awards will involve collaboration with our industry partners and would offer the potential of career development through internships as part of the PhD.

Research Focus

The Visual Information Laboratory in Bristol Vision Institute (BVI) and the MyWorld Programme combine to make the University of Bristol a powerhouse for the development of visual media communications. The work of these groups in this area has been supported by world-leading organisations such as Netflix, BBC, BT, NTT and YouTube. The research focus of these PhD studentships will be linked to the strategic objectives of MyWorld, promoting new technology research that underpins the delivery of future experiences and services. Applications are invited in the following areas:

  • Content Acquisition and Post-Production: AI methods in post-production – video denoising, colorisation and enhancement; low light fusion and autofocus ; virtual production technologies; intelligent and automated cinematographies (including drone cinematography); camera tracking and SLAM methods in virtual production; Building interactive worlds – enabling the metaverse; creating re-useable assets for virtual production.
  • Content Delivery and Interactivity: perceptually optimised video compression; dynamic optimisation of streamed video; energy-efficient video coding; new architectures and tools for emerging AoM standards; machine learning methods for video delivery; perceptual video quality metrics; transcoding methods for user generated content; volumetric video coding; coding beyond compression, media network optimisation.
  • Audience Understanding: Methods for assessing quality of experience and immersion; biometrics, and fusion of these, for audience understanding; motion magnification for user engagement; creation and exploitation of visual field maps.
  • Experimental Productions: Enabling the metaverse; building environments for virtual rehearsal; building and evaluating immersive natural history experiences.

Application Procedure and Selection Process

  • All candidates should submit a full CV and covering letter to myworldrecruitment@myworld-creates.com (FAO: the contact of the research topic that you are applying for) by the deadline.
  • Formal applications for PhD are not essential at this stage, but can be submitted via the University of Bristol homepage (clearly marked as MyWorld funded):
  • A Selection Panel will be established to review all applications and to conduct interviews of short-listed candidates.
  • Candidates will be invited to give a presentation prior to their formal interview, as part of the final selection process.
  • All posts will remain open until filled.

Contact

For an informal discussion about the scholarships, please contact:

Job Description Document

Detailed role description and research topics can be found in the [JD document] and at