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Research Degrees

PhD research student applications are welcomed by the BSEL Research Group all year round.  Research students are valued members of our thriving, research-intensive team. We are particularly interested in supervising students' research in any of the broad range of topics listed below. Please note that the topic list is not exhaustive, so feel free to contact a member of BSEL with your ideas. 

Some candidate PhD topics that group members are interested in supervising in the future may include, but are not limited to:

  • Software Architecture
  • Software Fault Analyses
  • Understanding of Defects in Software
  • Refactoring and Bad Smells
  • Effort Estimation in Software Projects
  • Search Based Software Engineering
  • Human Aspects of Software Engineering
  • Metrics and Patterns in Software Projects
  • Data Analytics for Software Engineering

See below a list of available PhD projects in Computer Science that includes projects in our area:

Description
Supervisor
Funding
Explaining model decisions through dialogue
As Machine Learning and AI models underpin many of the recommendation/decision tools used to in day-to-day life these need to be transparent and explainable. The aim of this research is to explore, de...
Self Funded
Natural Language Processing for Business Intelligence
For over a decade, the Intelligent Data Analysis Research Group has been working in an extensive area of artificial intelligence and data science. Recent projects include medical imaging, bioimaging, ...
Self Funded
Deep Learning for Medical Imaging
For over a decade, the Intelligent Data Analysis Research Group has been working in an extensive area of artificial intelligence and data science. Recent projects include medical imaging, bioimaging, ...
Self Funded
Development of resilient hospitals through enhanced built environment design and research
Approximately one-fifth of the confirmed COVID-19 cases and the majority of the infected frontline healthcare workers were associated with healthcare-acquired infections during the first wave of the C...
Self Funded
Intelligent, Interpretable and Adaptive Design of Steel Structures using Deep Learning and NLP
The overall aim of this research is to develop a smart design assistant which is able to intuitively perform the design of complex steel structures to Eurocode Standards. Design errors are common, cos...
Self Funded
Disruptive Digital Experiences
Digital experiences deliberately go beyond simply communicating information - they seek to strongly engage, involve, and emotionally affect the user using digital means. A huge array of interactions a...
Self Funded
User experience in Extended Reality environments and applications
Extended Reality (XR), which covers Virtual Reality (VR), Augmented Reality (AR) and Mixed Reality (MR), is already in the rise with applications from manufacturing to health to gaming, to name but ju...
Self Funded
Building Information Model Development Using Generative Adversarial Networks
Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN’s), are an approach to generative modelling using deep learning methods, such as convolutional neural networks. Generative modelling is an unsupervised learning ta...
Self Funded
Energy and CO2 Awareness during Software Design and Development
An ever-critical topic is the emergence of Green Software Engineering and how software engineering influences the environment. This project aims to advance the state of the art by defining an approach...
Self Funded
A Machine Learning Approach for Migrating to Microservices
This project aims to advance the state of the art by defining an approach that uses machine learning techniques to automate the migration of monolithic software into microservice architecture. The pur...
Self Funded