Research Associate
University of Kent – School of Computing
Location: Canterbury
Project: “PRoCEED: A Platform for Responsive Conversational Agents to Enhance Engagement and Disclosure”
https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BSC289/research-associate
Application deadline: 9th June 2019
THE OPPORTUNITY
We are looking for a Research Associate (RA/Post-doc) to join a new interdisciplinary UK EPSRC-funded project entitled “PRoCEED: A Platform for Responsive Conversational Agents to Enhance Engagement and Disclosure”. The RA will work as a part of the University of Kent team, led by Dr Jason R.C. Nurse, and be based in the School of Computing in Canterbury, UK. The RA will also be a part of the Kent Interdisciplinary Research Centre in Cyber Security (KirCCS), a cross-faculty and cross-discipline research centre at the university. The University of Kent is one of 17 UK government recognised Academic Centres of Excellence in Cyber Security Research (ACEs-CSR).
The post start date is 1st September 2019, it is fixed-term for 18 months, and the deadline for applications is 9th June 2019.
THE PROJECT AND THE RA’S RESPONSIBILITIES
The PRoCEED project aims to engage in a comprehensive and systematic research study to understand how the characteristics of conversational agents can influence how users engage and disclose sensitive/pertinent information (this could be about security aspects, health etc.). Through this research, it will produce a substantial and evidence-based platform that can support and improve trust and confidence in deployed agents, and thereby increase their effective use. This project involves academics from the University of Kent, University of East Anglia, Cranfield University and Oxford Brookes University. There are also several project partners from industry and government.
The RA at Kent will be responsible researching, and providing an in-depth understanding of, what constitutes sensitive information and also identifying the critical factors that can impact a user’s perceived trust in a conversational agent. This will involve:
- designing and conducting a series of user studies, involving both large-scale experiments/surveys and in-person interviews,
- analysing data collected from user studies and other experiments using quantitative and qualitative data analysis techniques,
- presenting research outcomes from the project at academic venues and conferences.
APPLICATION PROCEDURE AND CONTACT POINTS
For more information about the position, application procedure or interview, please visit: https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BSC289/research-associate.
For informal queries, please contact Dr Jason Nurse (j.r.c.nurse@kent.ac.uk).