[humaine news] PhD studentship on Intelligent Virtual Agents

[Dautenhahn, Kerstin]

PhD Studentship

Science and Technology Research Institute
University of Hertfordshire
http://www.herts.ac.uk/

Applications are invited from candidates with excellent first degrees in
computer science to join a project on Intelligent Virtual Agents as research
student for a three year period.

Successful candidates may be eligible for a research studentship award from
the University (equivalent to £13,290 per annum bursary plus the payment of
the standard UK student fees).

Applicants selected for these studentships will be supervised by Prof.
Kerstin Dautenhahn and her collaborators and will work as part of the
Adaptive Systems Research Group at University of Hertfordshire.
http://adapsys.feis.herts.ac.uk/

Contact for informal inquiries: Prof. Kerstin Dautenhahn
(E-mail:  K.Dautenhahn at herts.ac.uk)

Virtual autonomous characters have become increasingly popular in computer
games, and have attracted a large amount of research effort. Different from
pre-scripted virtual agents that have been used in traditional computer
games, these new characters are required to be autonomous and show aspects
of intelligent behaviour. Such characters have been developed in a variety
of research projects. The research group at UH has been involved in previous
EU projects (e.g. eCircus) where story-telling virtual environments were
populated by intelligent and interactive agents.

The PhD project will focus of the topic of socially intelligent virtual
agents, based on our previous work that developed a virtual environment
where child users can explore and learn about social relationships. The goal
of this work is to enhance children¹s knowledge of social networks and
friendships, and allow them to develop skills that explore options of how to
cope with such issues. Such social interactions among the agents need to be
modeled in order to provide a ³human-like² appearance and behaviour of the
virtual agents. The main part of this PhD project is to develop the model of
the virtual environment, the characters, and social interactions in the
virtual environment, as well as visualizations of the social interactions.
This involves significant programming. The system will be tested iteratively
with potential users in order to study the effectiveness of the system as a
virtual learning environment (VLE). Human-computer interactions need to be
studied and analysed in iterative cycles of development, and lessons learnt
need to reflect on the enhanced design of the VLE.

Applicants are required to have a strong first degree or Master¹s degree in
Computer Science. An additional background/interest in human-computer
interaction, cognitive science or psychology is highly desirable. Excellent
programming skills are essential (including C++ and Java), and a general
interest in interdisciplinary research and willingness to collaborate with
researchers from other disciplines is required. The ideal candidate will be
self-motivated with good writing and communication skills.

The Science and Technology Research Institute provides a very stimulating
environment, offering a large number of specialized and interdisciplinary
seminars as well as general training opportunities.

Note, all applications must be made formally via our Research Office as
specified in the advert above, quote Reference 12 for the topic of
³Intelligent Virtual Agents².
An application form can be obtained from Mrs Lorraine Nicholls, Research
Student Administrator, STRI, Faculty of Engineering and Information
Sciences, University of Hertfordshire, College Lane, Hatfield, Herts, AL10
9AB, UK. Tel: +44 (0) 1707 286083, email: l.nicholls at herts.ac.uk. The
short-listing process will begin on 20 November 2009. Interviews will be
held in the second week in December 2009.