PhD Studentship in Biodiversity Informatics (UK, Natural History Museum & Open University)

[David Morse]

           PhD Studentship in Biodiversity Informatics

         A language for link types in taxonomic databases

The Natural History Museum and the Open University have been awarded
jointly a BBSRC Research Committee Studentship that is available from
October 1999. It forms part of an ongoing and active collaboration
between computer scientists at the Open University and taxonomists at
the Natural History Museum in the area of taxonomic information systems.
The project will be supervised jointly by Dr D. McL Roberts (NHM) and Dr
D.R. Morse (OU).

The aim of the studentship is to establish a formalism for describing
the links (the relationships) between taxonomic names, documenting the
metadata which the links represent, in order to provide an audit trail of
nomenclatural changes. Our hypothesis is that from a detailed
investigation of the rules of taxonomic nomenclature, we should be in a
position to capture the fundamental semantic structure of a link
language. We will explore the most appropriate data and knowledge
modelling approaches in the light of the link language semantics we have
developed. We expect that the student will draw upon research in the
artificial intelligence, natural language processing and information
systems communities.

For further information on the project, please get in touch with either
supervisor, as follows:

Dr Dave Roberts, Department of Zoology, The Natural History Museum,
Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, United Kingdom.
Email: dmr at nhm.ac.uk    Phone: +44 (0) 171 938 8790

Dr David Morse, Computing Department, Maths & Computing Faculty, The
Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, United Kingdom
Email: d.r.morse at open.ac.uk    Phone: +44 (0) 1908 858463

Candidates should have or expect to gain a first or upper second class
degree. They should have a sound background in computer science; some
experience of or interest in the biological sciences, especially natural
history, will be an advantage. Application is by full curriculum vitae,
including the names and addresses of two referees.

--
Dr David R. Morse, Senior Research Fellow,
Computing Department, Faculty of Mathematics and Computing,
The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes MK7 6AA, UK.
Email: D.R.Morse at open.ac.uk | Phone: +44 (0)1908 858463 | Fax: +44 (0)1908
652140