Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Social Networks PhD Positions in Dublin

The Dynamics Lab (http://geary.ucd.ie/dynamicslab) at UCD CASL and the Geary Institute in University College Dublin, in collaboration with the newly established IBM Dublin Research Lab (http://www-05.ibm.com/ie/ibm/overview2.html) , is seeking PhD candidates and postdoctoral fellows to work in the area of "Extreme Scale Social Network Simulations".

Sucessful candidate(s) are likely to have prior training in the computer and/or mathematical sciences or the business/social sciences combined with excellent computational skills.

The successful applicants will be funded by the IRCSET Enterprise Partnership Scheme.  Interested candidates should send their CV by 20th September 2011 to Dr Diane Payne at the Dynamics Lab, CASL and Geary Institute, UCD (Diane.Payne@ucd.ie) and  Dr Georgios Theodoropoulos at IBM Dublin Research Lab (geortheo@ie.ibm.com).

For further information and enquiries please contact Dr Diane Payne (Diane.Payne@ucd.ie) and Dr Georgios Theodoropoulos (geortheo@ie.ibm.com)

General Overview

Social systems that need to be analyzed and modelled are becoming increasingly more complex in their structure and interdependencies. This coupled with the increasing capacity of scientific computation, as well as the various modelling techniques, challenges researchers to move towards extremely large scale social systems. Data are being collected and organized into databases at finer levels of granularity and these micro-data can now support individual-based simulations. Likewise computational power is advancing rapidly, so that researchers can now run large-scale micro-simulation models that would not have been computationally executable just a couple of years ago.

The Dynamics Lab at UCD, in collaboration with IBM, is particularly interested in exploring various ICT applications for research on governance and policy modelling within extremely large social networks.  This collaboration links to IBM’s Exascale programme which has the aim to create and evaluate novel ideas to advance the design of extreme scale systems and applications.

Some potential areas for research focus include:
1.      Social Networks and Distributed Collective Decision Making
2.      Self-Organisation through Social Networks for Effective Emergency Response
3.      Social Media, Civil Unrest and Collective Political Mobilisation
4.      Political Blog Communication, Opinion Formation and Leadership

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