[alife] Funded PhD: Cooperation and Collective Behaviour in Complex Agent Networks

[Richard A Watson]

Dear ALifers,

Complexity Science PhD position: Cooperation and Collective Behaviour in Complex Agent Networks
Supervisor: Dr Richard Watson (raw at ecs.soton.ac.uk)
Fully Funded PhD project in Complex Systems Simulation
(please circulate as appropriate)

Fully-funded PhD opportunity for UK/EU students for DSTL sponsored project on 'The Principles of Distributed Intelligence in Self-Organised Multi-Agent Networks' at the Institute for Complex Systems Simulation at the University of Southampton. To start October 2012.

Project:
This project addresses intriguing questions relevant to diverse domain areas:

• How do people co-create social structures that facilitate cooperation?
• Can coevolving species in an ecosystem co-create networks of ecological interactions that are stable and energy efficient?
• How can we engineer the components of a complex infrastructure to enhance global function without centralised control?

The project investigates principles of cooperation between semi-autonomous agents (e.g., people, species, components of a complex system or organisation) where complex interactions between agents can be characterized as a network of relationships. It aims to utilise understanding of such systems to develop practical methods to enhance, steer and control cooperation and coordination in engineered, social and mixed systems to produce desirable ‘intelligent’ behaviours at the system level or enhance global efficiency and effectiveness. This employs computational principles familiar in connectionist models of intelligence (neural networks) to understand how individuals change network connections or the structure of inter-agent relationships over time.

We are looking for:
Applications are invited from UK/EU candidates with good first or Masters degrees in Computer Science, Mathematics, or other relevant disciplines, to work as a research (PhD) student within the Doctoral Training Centre of the Institute for Complex Systems Simulation (ICSSS) at the University of Southampton, for a 4 year period under the supervision of Dr Richard Watson.

The candidate should be interested in working in a highly inter-disciplinary project utilising inspiration and techniques from: social evolution theory (evolution of cooperation, evolution of social structure), game theory/games on networks, complex dynamical systems, network science/adaptive networks, computational neuroscience/connectionist models of memory/cognition, decentralised optimisation methods (problem decomposition and modularity), amongst others.

About the ICSS Doctoral Training Centre at Southampton

The ICSS PhD programme includes an initial 12-month taught component followed by three years of doctoral research and offers the opportunity to pursue research within a growing community of like-minded cross-disciplinary students (~80 students as of Oct 2012) and an environment of broad supervisory expertise: see http://www.icss.soton.ac.uk/programme/index.html, http://www.aic.ecs.soton.ac.uk/

The successful candidate will receive a research studentship award of £16,500 per annum, plus the payment of the standard UK/EU student fees.

How to Apply

This project has been funded by DSTL and the successful candidate will be a fully funded student of the ICSS Doctoral Training Centre. Applications from UK home and EU students are eligible. The student will commence in October 2012.  Applications will be considered until the position is filled.

Interested students should contact Richard Watson (raw at ecs.soton.ac.uk) immediately.

Formal applications should be made by following the instructions on the DTC web page (www.icss.soton.ac.uk/apply.html) and quoting “DSTLRW”.

For some background on the project see:
http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/271443/

Best,
Richard.
P.S. See you in Michigan next week!
--
Dr Richard A. Watson
Electronics and Computer Science
Southampton University
Rm. 1055 - Bld 16.
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/people/raw
Tel: +44 (0) 2380 592690