Subject: [AUDITORY] PhD studentships in AI for Sound (CVSSP, University of Surrey, UK) From: Mark Plumbley <0000005fa4625f04-dmarc-request@xxxxxxxx> Date: Fri, 16 Jul 2021 08:17:41 +0000Dear List, Please forward the PhD opportunities below to potential candidat= es. I would particularly like to encourage applications from women, disable= d and Black, Asian & Minority Ethnic candidates, since these groups are cur= rently underrepresented in our area. Many thanks, Mark Plumbley ---- The AI for Sound project (https://ai4s.surrey.ac.uk/) in the Centre for Vis= ion, Speech and Signal Processing (CVSSP) at the University of Surrey is of= fering the following PhD studentships in AI for Sound, available from 1 Oct= ober 2021: (1) Automatic sound labelling for broadcast audio (2) Information theoretic learning for sound analysis (UK applicants) Application Deadline: 1 August 2021=20 CVSSP also has a number of ongoing PhD studentship opportunities for outsta= nding PhD candidates in all aspects of audio-visual signal processing, comp= uter vision and machine learning, including for research related to machine= learning and audio signal processing.=20 We also welcome enquiries from self-funded and part-funded candidates. For informal enquiries on opportunities related to AI for Sound, please con= tact Prof Mark Plumbley (m.plumbley@xxxxxxxx). Further information how to apply below. ----- ** PhD studentship opportunities in AI for Sound project ** (1) Automatic sound labelling for broadcast audio The aim of this project is to develop new methods for automatic labelling o= f sound environments and events in broadcast audio, assisting production st= aff to find and search through content, and helping the general public acce= ss archive content. The project will undertake a combination of interviews = and user profiling, analysis of audio search datasets, and categorisation b= y audio experts to determine the most useful terminology for production sta= ff and the general public as user groups. The project will develop a taxono= my of labels, and examine the similarities and differences between each gro= up. The project will also investigate the application of a labelled library= in a production environment, examining workflows with common broadcast too= ls, then integrating and evaluating prototype systems. The project will al= so investigate methods for automatic subtitling of non-speech sounds, such = as end-to-end encoder-decoder models with alignment, to directly map the ac= oustic signal to text sequences. Working with BBC R&D, the student will dev= elop software tools to demonstrate the results, especially for broadcasting= and the management of audiovisual archive data, and benchmark the results = against human-assigned tags and descriptions of audio content. Using archiv= e data provided by BBC R&D, the student will engage with audio production a= nd research experts through Expert Panels, and potential end users through = Focus Groups. As part of this PhD, you will have the opportunity for close = day-to-day collaboration with the BBC as a member of the R&D Audio Team. Application Deadline: 1 August 2021 More information and how to apply: https://www.surrey.ac.uk/fees-and-fundin= g/studentships/automatic-sound-labelling-broadcast-audio (2) Information theoretic learning for sound analysis (Funding Eligibility: UK applicants only) The aim of this PhD project is to investigate information theoretic methods= for analysis of sounds. The Information Bottleneck (IB) method has emerged= as an interesting approach to investigate learning in deep learning networ= ks and autoencoders. This project will investigate information-theoretic ap= proaches to analyse sound sequences, both for supervised learning methods s= uch convolutive and recurrent networks, and unsupervised methods such as va= riational autoencoders. The project will also investigate direct informatio= n loss estimators, and new information-theoretic processing structures for = sound processing, for example involving both feed-forward and feedback conn= ections inspired by transfer information in biological neural networks. Application Deadline: 1 August 2021 More information and how to apply: https://www.surrey.ac.uk/fees-and-fundin= g/studentships/information-theoretic-learning-sound-analysis ** Other PhD studentships in the Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Proce= ssing (CVSSP) ** CVSSP also has a number of PhD studentship opportunities for outstanding Ph= D candidates, including for research related to machine learning and audio = signal processing. For more information see https://www.surrey.ac.uk/centr= e-vision-speech-signal-processing/postgraduate-research-study and scroll to= "PhD studentship opportunities at CVSSP" For informal enquiries on opportunities related to AI for Sound, please con= tact Prof Mark Plumbley (m.plumbley@xxxxxxxx). -- Prof Mark D Plumbley Head of School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering Email: Head-of-School-CSEE@xxxxxxxx Professor of Signal Processing University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey, GU2 7XH, UK Email: m.plumbley@xxxxxxxx PA: Kelly Green Email: k.d.green@xxxxxxxx