Vacancies

I'm always interested in talking to motivated students about possible PhD positions. Note however, that I typically hire students with an MSc or a track record in research. Please get in contact if you are interested in joining my group!

Funding
There are a number of fully funded PhD options for strong candidates at the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. Deadlines for applying are typically between November and January for a start date in September the following year. Due to how PhD funding is distributed in the UK, there are fewer options for non-UK/Irish students, and thus the process is even more competitive for international students. Funding options include the Centres for Doctoral Training in:
(i) Biomedical Innovation
(ii) Machine Learning Systems
(iii) Designing Responsible Natural Language Processing
(iv) Dependable and Deployable Artificial Intelligence for Robotics
(v) or directly from the School of Informatics
(vi) but there are also other national and international funding schemes, e.g., the NUI Travelling Studentship for Irish students.

I also accept students via the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS), but this does not provide scholarships directly and thus you also need to apply to the Informatics funding above.

Projects
There are several active research directions at the moment that I'm looking to collaborate with students on. Some examples of these include, but are not limited to:
(i) autonomous scientific discovery (see here )
(ii) human-in-the-loop machine learning, e.g., explainability, machine teaching, etc. (see here and here)
(iii) 3D vision and robotics (see here and here)
(iv) AI for ecology and conservation (see here and here)
but I'm also very much open to new ideas and directions.

Applying
Before going through any formal application process, please send me an email (oisin (dot) macaodha (at) ed.ac.uk) with the keyword phd-enquiry in the subject. It is also very helpful if you can tell me a bit about why you want to do a PhD, why you want to work in my group, and what topics you are interested in. Please also include an up-to-date CV and a transcript with your grades. Communicate your own interest and passion for research, and do not overly rely on AI tools to do that for you.

I apologise in advance if I do not respond to your email. I get many emails, and as much as I would like to, I cannot reply to every one. However, do not be discouraged by this, or low response rates in general, your passion enthusiasm will pay off one day.