PhD in Engineering: Human Factors and User-Centred Design for Intelligent Infrastructure Systems

Award summary

100% home tuition fees covered and a minimum tax-free annual living allowance of £19,237 (2024/25 UKRI rate).

Overview

Remote condition monitoring is a key technology for ensuring the continuous availability of rail assets. When coupled with analytics and machine learning, it is possible to deliver complete solutions that move asset owners from reacting to faults, to proactively planning maintenance and renewals. However, human expertise is still key to effective decision-making, all the moreso as assets are pushed into new states by factors such as climate change and extreme weather. Unless RCM and II solutions are designed to actively support the cognitive processes of their operators, which includes but is not limited to Human-Machine Interface (HMI) design, they will fail to fully enable resilient operations.

This PhD will draw upon pre-existing work and expertise at the Future Mobility Group, Newcastle University. The research will capture the decision making needs of those responsible for monitoring and actioning real-time infrastructure data. The PhD will develop the state of the art in human factors for remote condition monitoring by:

• Observing and analysing decision-making behaviours with RCM-type solutions within coordinated team activities
• Mapping these behaviours to existing decision-making models, thus identifying strategies for user-centred design
• Identify specific aspects of RCM HMI that need closer investigation, such as presentation of human-automation decisioning
• Iteratively develop and validate prototype RCM HMIs

PhDs will join Newcastle University’s Future Mobility Group, with secondments and field work with the relevant Network Rail teams. Opportunities to interact with the National Research Hub for Decarbonised, Adaptive and Resilient Transport Infrastructrures (DARe) will also be available dare.ac.uk.

Number of awards: One

Start date: April or September 2025

Award duration: 3.5 years

Sponsor: Network Rail

Supervisors: David Golightly

Eligibility criteria

You must have, or expect to gain, a minimum 2:1 Honours degree or international equivalent in a subject relevant to the proposed PhD project (civil/environmental/mechanical engineering, computing science).

Applicants whose first language is not English require an IELTS score of 6.5 overall with a minimum of 6.5 in all sub-skills.

The studentship covers fees at the Home rate (UK and EU applicants with pre-settled/settled status and meet the residency criteria). International applicants are welcome to apply but will be required to cover the difference between Home and International fees.

How to apply

You must apply through the University’s Apply to Newcastle Portal

Once registered select ‘Create a Postgraduate Application’.

Use ‘Course Search’ to identify your programme of study:

• Search for the ‘Course Title’ using the programme code: 8090F
• Research Area: Mechanical and Systems Engineering
• Select ‘PhD Mechanical Engineering (full time)' as the programme of study

You will then need to provide the following information in the ‘Further Details’ section:

• A ‘Personal Statement’ (this is a mandatory field) - upload a document or write a statement directly in to the application form.
• The studentship code ENG147 in the ‘Studentship/Partnership Reference’ field.
• When prompted regarding your research proposal - select ‘Write Proposal’. You should then type in the title of the research project from this advert. You do not need to upload a research proposal.

Contact details: David Golightly David.Golightly@newcastle.ac.uk

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