I am keen to supervise PhD students who have similar research interests to mine; i.e., Pattern Recognition, Machine Learning and Machine Perception. You can find my current PhD Research Project Suggestions for your reference. You are always welcome to propose your own research project for your PhD studies. For the further information on my research interests and previous work (up to 2005), please also refer to my feature article "On the Dyanmic Pattern Analysis, Discovery and Recognition" appearing in IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society E-Newsletter, Issue 12, September 2005, which briefly overviews most of my previous research work. Also you can visit my Publication page for more detailed information.

If you are interested in working with me for your PhD studies at The University of Manchester, you are encouraged to contact me informally for the first instance. Prior to contacting me, however, all applicants should first check the funding information below to see if you meet the requirements and are following a proper inquiry procedure.

When you contact me, you'll need to send me your CV and other background materials of yours (e.g., your transcripts at different levels and selected publications if you have). Once we have an agreed research topic, you can kick off your formal application via our Online Application website. For the formal application, you can find the detailed information from The School PhD Student and The University Research Student pages. During the application process, please direct all non-acadmic quaries, e.g., English language qualification for overseas students, to our CS School Admission Office.

Funding Information for Prospective Applicants

• UK/EU Applicants

  At the University of Manchester, there are various financial support opportunities for a prospective UK/EU PhD student. In School of Computer Science, qualified UK and EU applicants will be awarded a full studentship including tuituion fee and maintenance for our normal three-year PhD programme. Since 2011, our school has also had Doctor Training Centre (DTC) for Computer Science, which offers you a four-year PhD programme. In addition, the University offers alternative scholarship, e.g, President's Doctoral Scholar Award. You can access to the The University Postgraduate Funding page to find the latest funding information as well as checking your eligibility. If you have any questions to funding, please don't hesitate to direct your inquires to our CS School Admission Office.

  If an EU/UK applicant applies for only the DTC studentship, the DTC policy will not allow you to have a supervisor until you complete all training courses in your first year of PhD studies. Unless you clearly intend to work with an individual academic staff member for your PhD studies, you are advised NOT to contact him/her during the APPLICATION process!

• International (non-EU) Applicants

  For an international, i.e., non-EU, student of the 1st class honour degree or equivalent, our school may offer you a scholarship that covers approximately 75% of the full tuition fee each year over three years in terms of the current tuition fee (2011). Note that normally we can offer NOTHING beyond this scholarship.

  The following information is especially for a non-EU applicant who needs a FULL studentship including tuition fee and maintainance. Our university recently lanuched a new President's Doctoral Scholar Award for 100 elite students including qualified overseas (non-EU) applicants. For your information, "elite" means that one has been rated to top 3% in his/her UG/PGT classes in terms of academic performance, won non-trivial academic award(s), published paper(s) in prestigious journals/top conferences and so on. If you believe that you're an elite student, you can apply for this highly competitive scholarship. Occasionally, there are also some chances of full scholarships sponsored by industrial partners or other organisations. If a non-EU student needs a FULL studentship, you should first check with The School Postgraduate Funding and The University Postgraduate Funding pages or directly consult with our CS School Admission Office for the latest funding availability information.

  Unless you believe that you meet the criteria of a full scholarship offered by our school, faculty or university to a non-EU applicant or you have your own funding to support yourself, please DON'T make any inquiry to me in order to avoid wasting your time!

Current and Previous PhD Students of Mine in Manchester

As a sole or main supervisor, I am currently supervising the following PhD students:

• Ahmad Salman (2007-present)
  Learning Speaker-Specific Characteristics with Deep Neural Architectures
  
  
• Jonathan Roberts (2009-present)
  Automatic Personalized Video Game Content Generation with Machine Learning
  
  
• Darren Hau (2010-present)
  Speech Information Component Analysis with Biologically Inspried Deep Learning
  
  
• Georgios Charopoulos (2010-present)
  Speech Emotion Detection
  
  
• Stella Podgornik (2011-present)
  Automatic Analysis and Detection of Speech Related Disorders in Early Childhood
  
  
• Tamas Madl (2012-present)
  Spatial Memory and Navigation in a Physically Embodied Cognitive Architecture
  
  
• David Buckley (2012-present)
  Machine Learning for Video Game Development
  
  
• Mate Toth (2012-present)
  Speech Emotion Analysis, Modelling and Recognition
  
  

Previous Students under my supervision in Manchester have been awarded a PhD degree:

• Arslan Shaukat (2005-2009)
  Emotional State Anaysis and Recognition from Speech Signals
  
  
• Shihai Wang (2005-2009)
  Boosting Learning Applied to Facial Expression Recognition
  
  
• Yun Yang (2006-2010)
  Clustering Ensemble and Applications to Temporal Data Clustering