Phd Studentship: School of Engineering

Mixed reality for built environment assessment

Humans experience the built environment through interacting sensory modalities, producing complex sensations hard to predict. Design practice often isolates a single sense due to limited multisensory data. This project aims to develop mixed reality to enable multisensory assessment of built environments, generating insights to inform designs that support health, well-being, and help people thrive.

Project Detail:
This project offers the opportunity to work at the intersection of mixed reality, psychophysics, and engineering to address key challenges in the built environment to support human health and well-being.

You will collect visual, auditory, and vibrational data from real environments and develop mixed-reality simulations to enable controlled studies of multisensory perception. Working with human participants, you will gather subjective feedback through questionnaires and record physiological responses such as heart rate and skin conductance.

By integrating environmental and human-response data, the project will generate insights into how people perceive their surroundings, informing next-generation, human-centred design standards and construction guidelines. These advances are timely, addressing issues such as excessive noise and vibration in buildings, which are estimated to induce 16,600 premature deaths annually in Europe.

The project is well-suited to students interested in working with human participants, with an engineering background and a strong enthusiasm for emerging mixed reality technologies.

Scholarship:

The award will cover the UK tuition fee level, plus a tax-free stipend, currently £21,805, paid at the prevailing UKRI rate for 3.5 years of full-time study.

*International candidates are welcome to apply, but must be able to cover the difference in the fee levels.

Eligibility:

The candidate should hold a strong 2:1 Bachelor’s or a Master’s degree in Civil Engineering, Computer Science, Human Factors or a related discipline. The project will suit those with a keen interest in mixed reality and working with human participants, as well as skills in programming (C++ or C#) and simulation development (Unity or Unreal).

How to apply:

Candidates should submit an expression of interest by sending a CV and supporting statement outlining their skills and interests in this research area via the 'Apply' button above. If this initial application is successful, we will invite you to submit a formal application.

Candidates must fulfil the University of Warwick entry criteria and obtain an unconditional offer before commencing enrolment.

Should your application for admission be accepted, you should be aware that notification of acceptance for the PhD does not constitute an offer of financial support. Successful scholarship candidates will receive an official communication from the School of Engineering to confirm their award.

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