This is a fully funded three year PhD studentship in collaboration with ARUP. The overall aim of the project is to explore ways in which navigation services can be personalised and made more context-aware. This studentship will provide a very exciting opportunity for a dedicated individual to advance their knowledge and skills in this cutting edge area.

This project will address several questions related to the interplay of technology and real world in creating personalised services, and the nature and usability of technology and the interaction mechanisms used. The balance that has to be achieved between ambience and ubiquity and intrusiveness will also be an important issue to consider. In this way, the project will direct future research in two ways: first, by developing better and more user-friendly navigational models and second, by directing design of buildings and urban environments to make them interactive and accessible.

The Department of Geomatic Engineering at University College London has many leading researchers working in the areas of global positioning systems, geospatial interoperability and mobile location based services. The research will be supervised by Dr Pragya Agarwal at UCL and the student will join the GIS Research Group. The Department of Geomatic Engineering also runs a highly successful Masters in Geographic Information Science and the successful candidate will also have the opportunity to attend relevant modules on this course. The studentship is part funded by ARUP, a global design business and consulting firm, and the student will also have the opportunity to work closely with researchers in ubiquitous computing at ARUP as part of this project.

Candidates will be British nationals with a good first degree, and preferably a Masters degree, in geoinformatics, geography, computer science or related fields. The project will require programming skills for development of interactive systems and interfaces, some prior knowledge of GIS and also relevant interest and/or experience in designing and carrying out human subject experiments, whether in the field or a lab.

Applications should be sent in form of detailed CV along with names/addresses of two referees to Dr Pragya Agarwal at pagarwal[at]ge.ucl.ac.uk. Informal queries regarding the studentship can also be addressed to Dr P Agarwal. Closing Date: 15 January 2007.