PhD Studentship: An AI Driven Approach for Aiding Towards the Mental Wellbeing of Online Social Network Users

The University of Exeter’s Department of Computer Science is inviting applications for a PhD studentship to commence on 23 September 2024 or as soon as possible thereafter. For eligible students the studentship will cover Home or International tuition fees plus an annual tax-free stipend of at least £19,237 for 3.5 years full-time, or pro rata for part-time study. The student would be based in the Innovation Centre in the Faculty of Health and Life Sciences/Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy at the Streatham Campus in Exeter.

Project Description:

An early and efficient detection of people experiencing elevated mental health needs along with identifying the possible aetiological factors is pivotal. While manual intervention for such course of action involves various practical challenges, the recent proliferation in the number of online social network users facilitates real-time analysis of user’s daily posts such as tweets using advanced AI driven techniques. Online social networks generate large-scale user behavioural data that can be exploited to assess their mental health. The main approach is to mine online social behaviours through in-depth analytics of social media data, with an emphasis on the detection and classification of different types of represented mental health needs such as anxiety, mood, and trauma, by analysing naturally occurring emotions and linguistic behaviours. Herein, this project develops an intelligent model based on Artificial Intelligence techniques that can autonomously detect and infer users’ mental health needs, ultimately aiding towards efficient decision making to ensure users’ mental wellbeing.

The studentship will be awarded on the basis of merit for 3.5 years of full-time study to commence on 23^rd September 2024.

International applicants need to be aware that you will have to cover the cost of your student visa, healthcare surcharge and other costs of moving to the UK to do a PhD.

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