*The scheme is currently closed for applications*
DAME is a leading PhD programme funded by Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) and the BBC to produce world class researchers in technologies that support future products and services in online media. Based at QMUL’s School of Electronic Engineering & Computer Science (EECS) and the Institute of Applied Data Science (IADS), DAME students undertake a four year PhD focused on developing cutting-edge research in collaboration with the BBC, our key industry partner.
To maximise impact, we encourage a broad interpretation of both “audience” and “media”. DAME conducts research into topics such as Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, Social Computing, Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Machine Listening, Multimedia Content Delivery and Robotics. Our research remit includes:
- Enhancing the understanding of content consumption and audience interaction
- Enhancing audience experience, e.g. via multi-sensory experiences
- Enhancing audience safety and automatic content moderation
- Automatic content summarisation, annotation and metadata generation
- Building content recommendation and discovery approaches
- Integrating physical and digital audience experiences
- Understanding interaction on online social platforms
- Enabling virtual/augmented reality, including haptic sensing and actuation, soft robotics
- Supporting user generated content and citizen broadcasting
- Measuring the longitudinal impact of content on culture, society and economies
- Enabling and understanding data and citizen journalism
- Understanding and optimising content production
- Intelligent curation of archival material to create custom educational material
The DAME programme has four main pillars:
- Advanced taught modules, a bespoke programme of modules in Year 1
- Researcher development training of the cohort throughout Years 1–4
- Industry placement typically completed in Year 3 or 4
- PhD research project throughout Years 1–4
For each student, a Personal Development Plan (PDP) will be developed at the beginning of Year 1 comprising a rich programme of taught modules, training courses and events. This will take the specific goals of the selected PhD topic and the student’s academic background into account. In the first year, students will be expected to complete one core and three specialist modules among over 30 relevant modules available at EECS. The PDP will be flexible enough to address gaps in students’ academic background and/or avoid repetition by replacing any modules already taken in previous degrees with relevant alternatives.