Department of Experimental Psychology
We have a fully funded, three year PhD studentship to study animal camouflage. This position is funded by QinetiQ, and would be based in the Department of Experimental Psychology in the University of Bristol (UK). Due to funding constraints, this position is only available to UK nationals. There would be four supervisors with different expertise:
Roland Baddeley - computational modelling.
Innes Cuthill- Behavioural ecology of camouflage.
Nick Scott Samuel - Psychophysics .
Adam Shohet (QinetiQ)- Applications of camouflage.
The studentship would be to explore the use of a number of techniques to understand how and why animals camouflage themselves, and you would be joining an expanding group, using a mixture of empirical and theoretical approaches.
Avenues that could be explored include:
1) Psychophysics using human observers: manipulating various characteristics of artificial animal camouflage patterns within natural realistic backgrounds and observing which factors affect their visibility.
2) Natural image statistics and the statistics of animal coloration patterns: viewing both backgrounds and animal coloration patterns as textures, and using machine learning techniques to look at the mapping between environmental niche, and the coloration patterns displayed.
3) Looking at the spatio-temporal statistics of animal environments with a view to seeing which aspects of animal coloration will aid in reducing the visibility of a moving animal; and 4) Constructing and comparing various simple ideal observer models of predator/prey detection, and comparing these with observed behaviour.
This list is not exclusive, but as can be seen, the position would be of potential interest not only to a behavioural ecologist that wants to learn vision, but also a more computational person who would like to apply their skills in a really very interesting and exciting area. The list of supervisors includes people with interests and skills in areas ranging from motion perception, to image modelling, to behavioural ecology, to the application of these ideas to designing man made camouflage. The student will be a member of the Bristol Vision Institute, one of the university's prioritised research themes. Bristol has outstanding strength in this field, spanning four University Faculties (Science, Engineering, Medicine and Art) - including the Departments of Experimental Psychology, Biological Sciences, Computer Science, Engineering Mathematics, Mathematics, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Bristol Eye Hospital, Anatomy and History of Art.
To apply, download and fill in the form "Postgraduate research programme - application form" at http://www.bris.ac.uk/prospectus/postgraduate/2008/intro/8. Note that where the form requires you to state the source of funding, put "Already secured - CASE Award funded by QinetiQ" and in the section "Outline of proposed research" put "Not applicable - research proposal written by supervisors". Send the completed application form to the Faculty of Science (NOT the supervisors) at the address given. The web page also has referee forms which you should download, send to your (two) referees, and ask them to send the references directly to the Faculty of Science.
A pdf version of this advert can be found at http://fleeting.psy.bris.ac.uk/Motion%20camouflage.pdf
The last date for applications is April the 25th. The starting date is flexible but has to be BEFORE the end of September (2008). Please, when applying, send a CV and including the names of two referees.
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