Doctoral Studentship
Department of Computer Science
University of Oxford Supervisor: Professor Shimon Whiteson
Start Date: October 2015 (later start maybe possible)
The Machine Learning Group at Oxford University's Department of Computer
Science is offering a fully funded D.Phil studentship which will pay fees at
home/eu rate for three years and provide a stipend of at least £14057 for three
years.
The aim of this project is to develop a new class of reinforcement learning and
sample-based decision-theoretic planning methods that overcome fundamental
obstacles to the efficient optimisation of control policies for autonomous
agents. Creating agents that are effective in diverse settings is a key goal of
artificial intelligence with large potential implications in robotics,
e-commerce, information retrieval, traffic control, etc.
In particular, the project will develop a new approach that simultaneously
optimises both policies and the distributions over stochastic events that are
sampled from when evaluating those policies, with the aim of greatly reducing
the currently prohibitive computational cost of evaluating policies.
The focus of the project is on policy-search methods for reinforcement learning
as well as closely related methods for sample-based decision-theoretic
planning. Techniques such as stochastic optimisation, Bayesian optimisation,
and Bayesian quadrature are expected to play a key role. The project will
involve both theoretical work as well as an extensive empirical analysis on
challenging tasks from robotics and information retrieval.
We will consider applicants with a strong background in computer science or a
closely related area. Excellent mathematical and programming skills are
essential. Strong communication and organisational skills are also important. A
background in machine learning and/or decision-theoretic planning is a plus.
Applicants must in addition satisfy the usual requirements for studying for a
doctorate at Oxford, see selection criteria here:
http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/graduate/courses/dphil-computer-science
Please apply online here:
https://apply.graduate.ox.ac.uk/urd/sits.urd/run/siw_ipp_lgn.login?process=siw_ipp_app_crs
by 17th July quoting CS-SW-2015 as the studentship code.
If you have any questions about the studentship or the application process
please email:
julie.shepp...@cs.ox.ac.uk
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