Jayne V Woodside

The SUSTAIN Centre for Doctoral Training is offering a fully funded PhD studentship for the APPETITE Project, which aims to combine artificial intelligence and machine learning with human nutrition to transform dietary assessment and health research. The project will investigate the use of AI technologies in nutritional science, including enhancing traditional food data collection, identifying novel biomarkers, and developing automated dietary assessment tools using food images. The research will utilize multimodal large language models to emulate nutrition experts' workflows, focusing on image-based food analysis and nutrient calculation. The appointed PhD student will gain specialized skills in nutritional sciences (dietary assessment tools, biomarker identification, data cleaning, statistical analysis) and computer sciences (large-scale data handling, neural network implementation, high-performance computing). Applicants must have an Honours degree (minimum 2:1) in Computer Sciences (with expertise in AI/Machine Learning) or Life Sciences (with expertise in dietary assessment). The studentship covers all tuition fees, provides a tax-free stipend at UKRI rates, and includes a Research Training Support Grant of £3,000 per year for travel, training, and consumables, plus additional funding for outreach and development activities. The project is based at Queen's University Belfast and SUSTAIN CDT partner institutions in the UK. The application deadline is October 2026. Interested candidates should apply via the SUSTAIN CDT website and ensure they meet the eligibility criteria.