Sitekit Labs in collaboration with Stirling University and MIT Media Lab has created a new Ph.D. research post that will study new application of common sense computing to enable development of next generation semantic web applications.

The researcher will develop and apply novel software agent and natural language processing based technologies for blending a so-called OpenMind database with any given ontology, and hence build a novel, intelligent software engine that can auto-categorise or auto-tag documents. The software will enable the development of future semantic web applications whose design and content can dynamically adapt to the user.

This Ph.D. project is carried out in collaboration with researchers from MIT Media Lab (USA) who have pioneered the concept of "Common Sense Computing" which will be further developed and researched in this project in the context of semantic web mining. The post will be based in the Isle of Skye (Scotland), as part of an industrial placement and is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC).

Academic supervisor will be Dr. Amir Hussain, Reader in Computing Science from Stirling University. The industrial supervisor for this Ph.D. project is Chris Eckl from Sitekit Solutions Ltd. Catherine Havasi and her colleagues from the MIT Media Lab, Boston will be academic consultants to the project.