Funded PhD Studentship in Linked Data, Food and the Environment
Supporting sustainable food choices with Linked Data and the Semantic Web
Aston University - Aston Business School in collaboration with Talis Systems Ltd

The Operations and Information Management Group at Aston Business School, Aston University is offering a fully funded CASE studentship for a suitably qualified individual to undertake a PhD research project in collaboration with Talis Systems.

The project will explore how Linked Data and Semantic Web technologies can provide greater transparency about food production and provenance, thereby supporting consumers in choosing food with a lower environmental impact.

    * The Research Topic:

The environmental impact of human activities is an increasingly significant topic of debate in the scientific and political communities, as well as among the general public. As this debate continues there is a growing desire for access to richer, more detailed, and more reliable information upon which individuals, organisations and entire communities can act in order to reduce their environmental impact.

The goal of this project is to understand the various facets of energy usage throughout the food production and supply chain, and develop systems that increase the availability and transparency of this information to consumers, thereby helping to inform purchasing decisions, reduce energy usage, and increase sustainability of the sector. These systems may encompass novel data capture, analysis and mining, or visualisation aspects, or combinations of the above.

From a technical perspective, this research will exploit Linked Data and Semantic Web technologies, currently seeing widespread uptake among government and industry players, to enable the integration, analysis and exploitation of vast quantities of data pertinent to energy usage in the food supply chain. While the focus will be on the domain of food production and energy usage, the technology, methods, and insights developed will be applicable across a wide range of industry sectors.

The student will be supervised by Dr. Christopher Brewster at Aston University, in close collaboration with Dr. Tom Heath at Talis Systems. The student will join Aston Business School which is one of Europe's leading Business Schools, with the majority of its research rated world-class or internationally excellent in the RAE2008 and accredited by AASCB, AMBA and EQUIS.

The PhD student will also spend extended periods of time working closely with Talis Systems, working on site and collaborating particularly with their research team

    * The Non Academic Partner

Talis is a well established and innovative software company headquartered in Solihull, near Birmingham, UK, and recognised as world leaders in the research, development and commercial exploitation of Linked Data and Semantic Web technologies. Expanding on its position as UK market leader in provision of academic and public library solutions, Talis has developed new businesses based around the Talis Platform, an open technology platform providing robust, foundational infrastructure for rapid development of a new generation of semantically rich applications and services.

    * Applications

Informal enquiries may be address to Dr. Christopher Brewster (C.A.Brewster@aston.ac.uk).
Further details are available here: http://www.aston.ac.uk/~brewstca/CASE_Studentship_July2010.html  

Further information on the application procedure, application forms, and programme structure are available at http://www1.aston.ac.uk/aston-business-school/programmes/research/phd-mphil-in-management/.  Please send the completed application form to Dr Christopher Brewster (C.A.Brewster@aston.ac.uk)  quoting ref no: R100157. The closing date for receipt of completed application forms is  31 July 2010.