PhD Studentship: Secure By Design Datasets – Distillation and Privatisation for Future Collaboration

The sharing of data assets is a major administrative challenge, often causing a roadblock to collaboration and research. This is especially true in sensitive domains like the Nuclear sector, where researchers can struggle to find the data needed to train machine learning models.

This project will develop an AI-driven “secure-by-design” approach to dataset privatisation and distillation, enabling the sharing data assets within the NDA estate, as well as other agencies and academic partners. To achieve this, a framework will be developed that can run on the NDA secure infrastructure, to create a purely synthetic dataset that both obfuscates and compresses while remaining as true as possible to the sensitive historical data.

Academic Institution
This is an opportunity to join the Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing at the University of Surrey. This is the largest such UK institute and is ranked 1st for Computer vision research in the UK and 3rd in Europe (csrankings.org). The supervisory team includes award winning and world renowned academics, with the applicant joining a large and tightly knit research team of 10+ peers working on various related topics (http://personalpages.surrey.ac.uk/s.hadfield/).

Industrial Sponsorship and Research Impact
This project is funded by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (https://ndagroup.careers/about-the-nda-group/). NDA are a government organisation broadly responsible for the safe and sustainable management of historical nuclear sites and materials. This studentship is an ideal opportunity to start-up a career in this important, innovative and growing sector. The project plan includes two separate funded internships, deploying research solutions at sites within the NDA estate, as well as numerous outreach and scale-up activities. This is designed to ensure that the student see’s real-world impact from the developments during their PhD studies, and to put them in the best possible position to transfer their research skills into industry after the studentship.

Supervisors: Dr Simon Hadfield and Dr Nimet Kaygusuz

Entry requirements
Open to candidates who pay UK/home rate fees. See UKCISA for further information. Starting in October 2025. Later start dates may be possible, please contact Dr Simon Hadfield once the deadline passes.

You will need to meet the minimum entry requirements for our PhD programme.

You will also need to pass any relevant DBS, BPSS, ATAS or other required checks to achieve the necessary security clearance to undertake this project.

How to apply
Applications should be submitted via the Vision, Speech and Signal Processing PhD programme page.

In place of a research proposal, you should upload a document stating the title of the project that you wish to apply for and the name of the relevant supervisor.

Funding
Standard EPSRC stipend (£20,780 rising annually), all tuition fees covered, sizeable travel and equipment budget (£14,400). Funding is available for 4 years.

Application deadline: 1 April 2025

Enquiries: Contact Dr Simon Hadfield

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