Connectionists: PhD studentship at Manchester

[Gavin Brown]

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A three-year, fully-funded PhD studentship is available in the AI group
at the University of Manchester, UK.  The following project is
suggested, though additional studentships are available in the general
area of Machine Learning.  Application details below.

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"Interactions between Learning Classifier Systems and Ensemble Systems"

For best generalisation ability, an ensemble of predictors must exhibit
a "diversity" of errors---for majority voting ensembles, how to define
this concept remains an open research question.  The problem can be seen
as one of credit assignment, judging how much a particular predictor
contributes to the overall classification error.  In spite of the
shortage of theoretical results, ensembles typically show significant
performance improvements over single predictors.

Learning Classifier Systems (LCS) use evolutionary computation
techniques to generate groups of rules---the decisions of these rules
are combined by a weighted voting mechanism.  Recent works in the
literature have extensively studied credit assignment in LCS, providing
significant insights---in spite of this and other contributions, LCS
remain underused in the wider ML community.

The aim of the project is to transfer theoretical results and empirical
techniques between these two fields, providing both with new insights
into how to understand their learning systems, and new mechanisms for
solving their datasets.  A priority is to replace current heuristics
with theoretically justified mechanisms, so there will be a significant
(but not exclusive) emphasis on the mathematical elements of the project.

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Applicants should hold a first or upper second class degree in computer
science, mathematics, physics, or similarly numerate disciplines.
Additional research experience such as during a Master's degree will be
seen as a significant advantage.  A solid background in programming
(e.g. Java/C++) is also essential.

For further details and informal discussions, email Dr Gavin Brown:

     Email: gavin.brown at manchester.ac.uk
     Web  : http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~gbrown/

Those interested in the position should send detailed CVs, including:
     1) full academic history,
     2) description of motivations and research interests,
     3) contact details for two referees,
either by email (preferable) or to the following address:
     Dr Gavin Brown
     University of Manchester
     School of Computer Science,
     Kilburn Building,
     Manchester,
     M13 9LP

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