The Web Science and Social Computing Group at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, lead by Carlos Castillo, is inviting applications for PhD students interested in crisis informatics and algorithmic discrimination, and in general on social computing applications that address issues of social significance.
The crisis informatics student will seek to deepen our understanding of how community-generated content in social platforms can be used to improve emergency/disaster response, and to improve the resilience of societies. A student willing to pursuit this topic must have an orientation to practical problems, excellent programming skills, and be motivated to create new applications to use time-sensitive, sometimes life-saving data.
The algorithmic discrimination student will seek to deepen our understanding of how algorithms can embody and sometimes exacerbate biases against less advantaged groups in society. A student willing to pursuit this topic must have an excellent background on statistics, data mining, or machine learning, good data management skills, and be motivated to work in applications for education, justice, medicine, and other areas in which algorithms are used in the public sector.
Both positions are funded through DTIC fellowships.
If you are interested in pursuing a Ph.D. within our group:
Applicants must fulfil the admission requirements of DTIC, which can be summarized as:
- Holding a master's degree in a relevant field.
- Being proficient in English.
- Have previous experience, interest, and/or publications in related topics.
How to apply
If you are interested in pursuing a PhD within our group:
First, please read carefully the information about our Ph.D. Programme in ICT, in particular all the formal admission requirements.
Second, please complete this expression of interest form.
We will contact you a few days after you complete the form for a phone interview and possibly a follow-up assignment (a brief literature critique or data analysis task that you will do on your own). Upon completion of the interview and the assignment, and depending on your placement with respect to other candidates, the group will provide you a commitment letter indicating if funding will be provided.
You will then attach this commitment letter to the rest of your documents for the application.
Important dates
- Expression of interest: as soon as possible.
- Applicants will be considered from July 1st, 2018, on a rolling basis.
- Application to DTIC/UPF: September 14th, 2018.
- Notification from DTIC/UPF: September 28th, 2018.
- Commencing: October 1st, 2018.
- Exceptionally, candidates can postpone commencing in justified cases, but must start during the calendar year 2018.
For more information click "LINK TO ORIGINAL" below.