GTA Funded PhD: Foundational AI Model for Facility Data

The University of Leicester's Department of Computer Science is offering a GTA Funded PhD position focused on developing foundational AI models for facility data. This unique opportunity combines doctoral research with graduate teaching assistantship responsibilities, allowing students to fund their PhD through part-time teaching work. Approximately 80% of your time will be dedicated to cutting-edge research, while 20% will involve teaching duties such as lab demonstrating, with comprehensive training provided to enhance your teaching and professional skills. The research project aims to create physics-informed, uncertainty-aware, and domain-agnostic techniques for extracting data embeddings, which are essential for foundational AI models. The goal is to establish a mathematically principled framework for STFC facilities, enabling robust data representation for a variety of domain- or beamline-specific tasks, including scattering and spectroscopy. The project emphasizes rigorous representation learning methods, leveraging symmetry, Bayesian uncertainty, and domain adaptation, and will feature experimental case studies from major STFC experiments such as Diamond, CLF, and ISIS. Key research areas include Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Quantum Computing, Internet of Things, and Networks. The successful candidate will work under the supervision of Professor Ashiq Anjum, an expert in the field, and will be encouraged to engage with the supervisor prior to application to discuss suitability and eligibility. Funding for this position is provided through a GTA Studentship, covering UK tuition fees and a combined teaching and stipend payment of £20,780 per year for four years. International students are welcome to apply but must be able to pay the difference between UK and overseas tuition fees, which is £18,864 per year for 2025/6 entry. Applicants should possess a strong undergraduate or master's degree in Computer Science, Mathematics, Physics, or a closely related discipline, with experience or a keen interest in AI, machine learning, or data science. The application deadline is February 21, 2026. For further information and to apply, candidates should contact Professor Ashiq Anjum and review the application advice provided by the university. For more details and to apply, visit the University of Leicester's funded opportunities page or the FindAPhD listing. Application advice is available via [email protected].