Faculty of Science and Engineering Dean Research PhD Studentship

LASER - Large Language Models for Academic SEarch and Recommendation

Deadline: June 19, 2023

University of Wolverhampton, UK

Applications are invited for doctoral study in Computer Science, Information Retrieval and Natural Language Processing on the topic of Large Language Models for Academic Search and Recommendation.

Project Description Scientific publications are an important vehicle for understanding the world around us; they contain scientific evidence that informs researchers and decision-makers, with a high impact on society. However, the rapid and large number of publications, in particular on preprint servers, causes an information overload for everybody struggling to keep up with developments in their field. This makes finding relevant information of high quality a challenging task, which requires advanced scholarly search and recommendation solutions. Recent developments in Large Language Models (LLMs) are having a huge impact on Artificial Intelligence (AI) and related fields. LLMs are a type of AI trained on huge amounts of text, with ChatGPT/GPT-4 and Bard as popular examples. LLMs combined with conversational AI provide exciting new possibilities for interactive search and recommendation, but they are also suffering from severe flaws. While there are efforts to combine LLMs with, e.g., neural search, the endeavour of utilising LLMs to tackle information overload in academia has only started and more research is needed.

This PhD studentship will explore how LLMs can be used to improve academic search and recommendation and what their benefits and limitations are. This may include integrating LLMs into search and recommendation services or utilising search to keep LLMs from "hallucinating". A further part of this project is to estimate the quality of publications.

The PhD project provides exciting opportunities for the successful candidate to work with and critically reflect on innovative technologies at the forefront of AI that will shape our digital future. As a further incentive, the PhD candidate will be able to participate in an EU Horizon Europe Staff Exchange project, providing the opportunity to go on fully funded secondments to collaborate with an international network of researchers and industry partners.

For further information regarding the project or an informal discussion please contact Director of Studies, Dr Ingo Frommholz i.frommholz@wlv.ac.uk.

To apply for one of the above PhD Research Studentship applicants must hold a first class/distinction at Master and/or Bachelor level of study. Applications to include one identified project, a full CV (including 2 referee names and contact details), transcripts and a letter of application outlining the motivation for applying (maximum of 2 pages). Applicants from outside UK must provide evidence of English Language requirement as stated in https://www.wlv.ac.uk/research/research-degrees/

Application submission deadline is 10:00am BST 19 June 2023 to FSEPGR@wlv.ac.uk

A shortlist of candidates will be prepared from the pool of applicants, in line with Faculty of Science and Engineering Post Graduate Research (PGR) studentship selection criteria, who will be invited to attend an interview with a panel of academic staff, week commencing 26 June 2023.

Following this process, all successful candidates will be notified to enrol in July 2023 on a PhD degree programme. The studentship award will include tuition fees at home level for the first three years of full-time study including any write-up period fees and research support fees. For further information on fees https://www.wlv.ac.uk/apply/funding-costs-fees-and-support/fees-and-costs/re...

Informal enquiries are welcome and should be directed to the individual Director of Studies mentioned above.

Further information: https://www.wlv.ac.uk/schools-and-institutes/faculty-of-science-and-engineer... (look for the LASER project)