Program Overview

2. How you learn

All our courses are designed around a set of key principles based on engaging you with the world, collaborating with others, challenging you to think in new ways, and providing you with a supportive environment in which you can thrive.

Your supervisory team will include a Director of Studies and one or more second supervisors with expertise and interest in your research area. You’ll carry out much of the work independently, demonstrating the initiative, motivation and commitment you’ll need to succeed. Your supervisors will help you to define your research programme, agree any associated training requirements, and provide direction while encouraging you to develop as an independent researcher.

You learn through

You’ll be able choose from research areas such as sensor networks, data mining, biometrics, self-adaptive systems, authentication and authorisation, software development process, text analysis, assistive technology, robotics, machine intelligence, conceptual structures, human-computer interaction, computer vision, IoT, visualisation, sentiment-aware fake news detection on online social networks, improving software development practises, and exploring the learning of numbers using robotic hands.

You’ll learn to follow the highest standards of research methodology by demonstrating an understanding of theoretical and analytical studies, and suitable research methods.

Course leaders and tutors

Marjory Da Costa Abreu

Senior Lecturer

Staff profile for Marjory Da Costa Abreu, PhD, MPhil, BSc, SFHEA, Senior Lecturer

Applied learning

Networking opportunities

You’ll be part of the University's community of researchers, with the opportunity to attend and/or contribute to a range of discipline, college and university-wide presentations, training and conferences.

We recognise that research students arrive with a diversity of skills and experience – so we provide flexible training and development opportunities covering a range of research-related skills. These include transferable skills, research ethics and integrity (mandatory), data management and career planning. Your development needs are identified and agreed with your supervisory team at the start of your degree and reviewed and updated as appropriate.

We offer two interdisciplinary conferences on the themes of 'method' and 'impact' – focusing on discussions of research practice and pathways to impact, and providing a supportive training ground to test an emerging thesis.