PhD Studentship - Multimodal AI for Health and Emotional Assistance

Project advert

This studentship is offered as part of wider Manchester Metropolitan University’s investment in our future thought leaders. This represents an opportunity to join the Faculty of Science and Engineering’s growing doctoral research community committed to excellent research with impact.

This project forms an exciting research opportunity to join Manchester Met’s AI, Digital and Cyber-Physical Systems theme for improving life quality. The world population is ageing rapidly. Home care robots are seen as a solution to the challenges posed by the rapidly growing elderly population and increasing healthcare costs. However, most robots only offer some physical assistance and lack emotional support.

This project aims to address these limitations by building a health and emotion analysis and assistant system using multimodal AI methods to process vision, language, and audio signals with an application to human- robot interactions to understand and respond to human actions.

The successful candidate will join the energetic human-centred computing group led by Professor Moi Hoon Yap.

Project aims and objectives

The project aims to design innovative deep multimodal learning methods to understand human emotions. It will address the following key questions:

• How can large-scale unlabeled videos be effectively utilized?
• How to design more effective multimodal learning methods using advanced technologies?
• How can true emotions be detected when individuals conceal them?
• How to integrate multimodal emotion understanding algorithms on a robot?

Funding

The student will be in receipt of a stipend payment; the Research Council minimum rate (set by UKRI) £20,780 for 2025/26.

Home and Overseas students can apply. Home fees are covered. Eligible overseas students will need to make up the difference in tuition fee funding. 

Specific requirements of the candidate

The qualifications, skills, knowledge and experience applicants should have for this project, in addition to our standard entry requirements.

Candidates must have a strong motivation for research and excellent programming skills. Expertise of developing computer vision and machine learning algorithms would be desirable, with an interest in image analysis.

Qualifications

• A high-grade undergraduate degree (first class or upper second) in Computer Science or MSc in a related field

Skills

• Knowledge of software development and programming
• Good communication and writing skills
• Developing image analysis/machine learning algorithms would be beneficial
• Able to work as part of a joint team for deep learning and robotics

How to apply

Interested applicants should contact Dr.Xinqi Fan (x.fan@mmu.ac.uk) for an informal discussion. 

To apply you will need to complete the online application form for a full-time PhD in Computing and Digital Technologies (or download the PGR application form).

You should also complete the PGR thesis proposal and Narrative CV (supplementary information) form addressing the project’s aims and objectives, demonstrating how the skills you have map to the area of research and why you see this area as being of importance and interest. 

If applying online, you will need to upload your statement in the supporting documents section, or email the application form and statement to PGRAdmissions@mmu.ac.uk. 

Closign date: 19 May 2025

Entry: October 2025

Please quote the reference: SciEng-XF-2025-Multimodal AI

Manchester Metropolitan University fosters an inclusive culture of belonging that promotes equity and celebrates diversity. Please ensure that you take into account our Inclusive and Diverse Culture Strategy when preparing an application.

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