MSc by Research Studentship: Detection and Analysis of Advanced Phishing Attacks (DAAPA)

2026 Year, full-time MSc by Research studentship

Eligibility: UK nationals and ILR holders only

University fees and bench fees: Home student fees paid by university/ £1,700 bench fees paid by university

Interviews: TBC

Start date:  September 2026

Project Title: Detection and Analysis of Advanced Phishing Attacks (DAAPA)

Director of Studies: Prof. Rachel Harrison

Supervisors: Dr Manny Niri

Requirements:

Entry requirements: 

Applicants should have a first or upper second-class honours degree from a Higher Education Institution in Computing, Computer Science or acceptable equivalent qualification.

Please note that this opportunity is only open to UK nationals and those who hold ILR. 

English language requirements: Excellent written and oral communication required

Project Description:

In this project our aim is to develop a novel, context-aware, domain-specific NLP framework that protects systems against real-world, low-volume Business Email Compromise and spear-phishing attacks. The objectives are:

1. To identify and characterise the distinct linguistic and pragmatic and AI-generated stylistic features utilised in contemporary advanced phishing attacks across diverse corpora.
2. To develop and curate a large-scale, high-fidelity dataset of malicious and benign communications.
3. To design and implement the Domain-Adapted Transformer Model incorporating Hybrid Linguistic-Contextual and Anomaly-based features.
4. To evaluate the model against traditional and general deep learning models using comprehensive de facto metrics.
5. To develop an interpretability mechanism to attribute classification decisions to specific linguistic features, and so enhance model trustworthiness and operational utility

Application process

When completing your application Online via the above 'Apply' button - please note the following:

Title: MSc by Research Studentship – Detection and Analysis of Advanced Phishing Attacks (DAAPA)

Please be advised that the selection process may involve an interview.

Select the following course: MSc by Research in Computing

Please include the following documents:

• Details of two referees or two full reference letters (at least one from an academic source)
• A research proposal
• Copies of your previous degree certificates and transcripts
• A scan of your passport
• A CV
• A cover letter

Applications must be completed by Friday 6th July 2026.

For informal inquiries about the project/application process contact Dr Matthias Rolf (mrolf@brookes.ac.uk) or Prof. Rachel Harrison (rachel.harrison@brookes.ac.uk).

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