[agents] doctoral studentship at University of Bath/Smoke and Mirrors

[Julian Padget]

The Centre for Digital Entertainment at the University of Bath has a
studentship to fill, the details of which are set out below.  For
further information, please contact: Julian Padget at the Department of
Computer Science, University of Bath, Bath BA2 7AY, UK,
jap at cs.bath.ac.uk.

--Julian Padget.

DYNAMIC RESOURCE ALLOCATION FOR OPTIMIZATION OF VISUAL EFFECTS
PRODUCTION

Applications are invited for a doctoral position in the Centre for
Digital Entertainment (CDE), a collaboration between the University of
Bath and Bournemouth University, and the visual effects company Smoke &
Mirrors (London).

The position, supported by a 4 year studentship, leading to the award of
an Engineering Doctorate (Eng.D), is fully funded by the EPSRC and
offers the opportunity to conduct research in an industrial context.
The successful applicant will spend about 25% of their time in Bath and
75% at Smoke & Mirrors in London.  

Apply online at: http://www.digital-entertainment.org 

PROJECT 

The aim of the project is to research how to carry out rapid resource
allocation (digital goods and services) subject to business rules, in
order to balance constraints such as time to delivery, quality of
product, load-balancing and external factors.

More specifically, the issues are how to:
* organize, store and retrieve broadcaster format specifications and
media delivery methods. 
* optimize the scheduling of hardware, personnel, and software to
maximize business objectives
* automate third party tools (trans-coding, conversion, down/up sampling
packages) 
* manage media assets and meta data 
* store and manage personnel information
* store and retrieve additional company information
* discover and evaluate changes to the rules governing business
processes

It is expected the work will involve research into (at least)
intelligent agents, workflow management, optimization,
planning/reasoning under uncertainty, resource-oriented architecture and
semantic web technologies.

ELIGIBILITY FOR FUNDING

The programme is open to anyone, but access to the fees and the
maintenance stipend is subject to EPSRC-specified constraints on UK
residency.  Please read the following carefully:

1. UK residents (including non-citizens who have lived in the UK for
three years, NOT for educational purposes) receive fees and stipend.
2. EU nationals who have been in full-time education in the UK for three
years before the start of their Doctorate receive fees and stipend.
3. EU nationals who have lived in an EU country (not the UK) for three
years prior to applying receive fees only.
4. Overseas students from countries outside of the EU are eligible for
neither fees nor stipend. You must be able to show in advance that you
can support yourself and pay your own fees throughout. However, we can
accept a small number of exceptional international applicants each year
who do not have resident status. They will receive a maintenance grant
and fees at the Home student level but will need to pay the difference. 

THE CENTRE FOR DIGITAL ENTERTAINMENT (CDE)

This is a doctoral training centre established by the University of
Bath, Bournemouth University and a numerous industry partners across the
computer animation, games and visual effects industries. The CDE has
been awarded £6.3 Million initial funding from the Engineering and
Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC). 

The CDE focuses on providing research-level skills as well as technical
and management expertise to people heading into the specialist
industries of computer animation, games, visual effects, visualisation
and simulation. 

See http://www.digital-entertainment.org  for more details.