Design of Experiments for Learning from Online Networks

We are recruiting new Doctoral Researchers to our EPSRC funded Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) PhD studentships starting 1 October 2024. Applications are invited for the project title Design of Experiments for Learning from Online Networks

Successful applicants will receive an annual stipend (bursary) of £21,237, including inner London weighting, plus payment of their full-time home tuition fees for a period of 42 months (3.5 years).

You should be eligible for home (UK) tuition fees there are a very limited number (no more than three) of studentships available to overseas applicants, including EU nationals, who meet the academic entry criteria including English Language proficiency.

You will join the internationally recognised researchers in the Department of Mathematics research and PhD programmes | Brunel University London

This PhD will develop novel methods to perform experiments on networks, combining the areas of Design of Experiments (DOE) and Network Science.

Focus will be on online experiments: consider the motivating example of optimally allocating adverts to social media users to maximise learning about relative strengths of the adverts. This is essentially A/B testing on a network, where an optimal strategy for deploying treatments is needed in real-time to maximise learning.

DOE is a statistical research area that allows scientists to maximise the amount of information gathered in an experiment: DOE helps to optimise the scientific method.

Network science is a growing academic discipline. Scientists from many areas analyse everything from transportation networks to protein interaction networks.

In networked experiments, the relationships between experimental units have a large effect on how we design experiments, and here we develop statistical theory and methods to optimise such experiments on large online networks.

There is some recent work on designing experiments on online experiments – and strong overlaps with “Active Learning” in the Machine Learning community. However, the general area of improving online experiments is relatively underdeveloped, at least with any academic rigour

This project, with the right candidate, could lead to

• Theoretical results which optimise online network experiments, together with outputs in academic journals
• Proof-of-concept Software to design experiments in real time
• Knowledge Transfer with industry- e.g. marketing and social media companies- to allow products to be developed incorporating this work.
• Patentable technology

The main areas of impact are in marketing- particularly online social media- but this can also be used for large networks in areas such as public health, where the “marketing” is of a health intervention. Online marketing is clearly a multi-billion pound industry. Even small theoretical advances could, in time, lead to a large reward.

Please contact Dr Ben Parker at ben.parker@brunel.ac.uk for an informal discussion about the studentships.

Eligibility

Applicants will have or be expected to receive a first or upper-second class honours degree in an Engineering, Computer Science, Design, Mathematics, Physics or a similar discipline. A Postgraduate Masters degree is not required but may be an advantage.

Skills and Experience

Applicants will be required to demonstrate the following skills;

• A good understanding of statistical theory, particularly statistical inference is necessary. It would be advantageous to have experience or interest in one of more of: Network Science, Design of Experiments, Computer Science (Algorithms), or Operational Research.
• Strong programming skills (or a desire to develop them) will be required, use of R is preferred, although any background in computing, particularly computational statistics, will be desirable.

You should be highly motivated, able to work independently as well as in a team, collaborate with others and have good communication skills.

How to apply

There are two stages of the application:

1.Applicants must submit the pre-application form via the following link

https://brunel.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/epsrc-dtp-24-25-pre-application-form-brunel-university-lon

by 16.00 on Friday 5th April 2024.

2.If you are shortlisted for the interview, you will be asked to email the following documentation in a single PDF file to cedps-studentships@brunel.ac.uk within 72hrs.

• Your up-to-date CV;
• Your Undergraduate degree certificate(s) and transcript(s) essential;
• Your Postgraduate Masters degree certificate(s) and transcript(s) if applicable;
• Your valid English Language qualification of IELTS 6.5 overall (minimum 6.0 in each section) or equivalent, if applicable;
• Contact details for TWO referees, one of which can be an academic member of staff in the College.

Applicants should therefore ensure that they have all of this information in case they are shortlisted.

Interviews will take place in April/May 2024.