PhD Scholarship in Human and Automatic Speaker Characterisation
Faculty of Information Sciences and Engineering, University of Canberra

A PhD Scholarship is offered for a maximum of 3 years in the area of speaker recognition and characterisation. The value of the stipend in 2011 is A$31,860 per annum, which corresponds to the current base level of the Australian Postgraduate Award (APA) plus a top-up of A$9,000 per annum. In the following years the stipend will be indexed to the base level of the APA plus the A$9,000 top-up. The award is tax-free in Australia.

Applications close 15 September 2011

The University of Canberra, the Technical University of Berlin and Deutsche Telekom AG are undertaking a joint research project in the field of speaker recognition and speaker characterisation. The project will evaluate both human and automatic speaker recognition and speaker characterisation performance over different channels, and it will provide a framework of speech quality factors for high-quality voice services.

The successful candidate will have a good honours degree or equivalent with research experience in speech or speaker recognition, digital signal processing and pattern recognition. He or she will conduct research towards the aims of the project under the supervision of Prof. Michael Wagner of the University of Canberra and Prof. Sebastian Möller of the Technical University of Berlin. The position is based at the University of Canberra, but will involve a substantial period, or periods, of time at the Technical University of Berlin. The continuation of the Scholarship is contingent upon satisfactory progress according to the rules for higher-degree-by-research (HDR) students at the University of Canberra and is limited to three years.

At the University of Canberra, the candidate  will be working within the Biometrics Research Group (formerly the National Centre for Biometric Studies), a research group working on biometric technology, applied to a range of authentication and forensic applications and including speech and image processing.   At TU Berlin, the candidate will be hosted at the Quality and Usability Lab (www.qu.tu-berlin.de), which is part of Deutsche Telekom Laboratories, and will be integrated into a highly vibrant multidisciplinary research group dealing with all aspects of human-machine interaction.

General information for prospective HDR students at the University of Canberra can be found at www.canberra.edu.au, and further information may be obtained from michael.wagner@canberra.edu.au and from sebastian.moeller@telekom.de. Both Prof. Wagner and Prof. Möller will also be available for direct contact at Interspeech 2011 in Florence.

Applications including a CV are to be sent by email to michael.wagner@canberra.edu.au.