[alife] PhD Scholarship: Multi-agent spatial modeling of foot-and-mouth disease

[Hussein A. Abbass]

UNSW and CSIRO Collaboration

A Competitive PhD Scholarship:
$26K tax free per annum

Topic: Multi-agent spatial modeling of foot-and-mouth disease

Location: School of Physical, Environmental and Mathematical Sciences (PEMS)
and the Defence and Security Applications Research Centre (DSA), University
of New South Wales, Canberra Campus, Australia

The deliberate introduction of an exotic animal disease, such as
foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) into Australia, in order to exact economic
damage, is considered a plausible bioterrorist scenario. Being able to
realistically model the course of such an induced epidemic would provide
veterinary and defence authorities with a useful tool to understand how it
might develop and assist in evolving control strategies. A natural framework
for such epidemic disease modelling uses a network of farms based on
established contact structures. Although such models have been successfully
developed for some human diseases, this approach cannot readily be applied
to a FMD outbreak due to the lack of much of the requisite data. As data
capture is unlikely to improve in the foreseeable future, the challenge is
to develop sophisticated models which accept imperfect input data. The PhD
student will investigate potential complex systems models for this problem.

The Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL) at CSIRO and the School of
Physical, Environmental and Mathematical Sciences (PEMS) at the University
of New South Wales at ADFA campus in Canberra, are calling for nominations from
suitable students to join a team of world-class researchers looking at
fundamental and applied research of complex adaptive systems approaches. The
candidate will be located in Canberra, with potential visits to the AAHL
laboratory in Geelong, Victoria. The candidate will be supervised by Dr. Amy
Griffin (UNSW-ADFA) and co-supervised by Dr. Peter Durr (CSIRO) and A/Prof.
Hussein Abbass (UNSW-ADFA).

Applicants should have a first-class honours or equivalent in geography,
geomatics, mathematics, information technology, physics, or other relevant
areas. The applicant should possess basic computer programming skills. The
DSA has licenses for a number of multi-agent system software packages,
therefore low level programming may not be required. 

Applications should include a detailed CV (please include a summary of your
transcript) and a cover letter detailing the relevance of the applicants'
background to the project. 

Queries should be emailed to Dr Amy L. Griffin, a.griffin at adfa.edu.au.
Deadline for applications is January 15th or until the position is filled
for a possible starting date of March 2007.