[Opt-Net] (Deadline: Jan 31st) PhD Scholarship on Multi-criteria Decision-Making and Optimisation at the University of Manchester, UK

[Manuel López-Ibáñez]

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PhD Scholarship on Multi-criteria Decision-Making and Optimisation at the 
University of Manchester, UK
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This PhD scholarship offers three years’ funding, including tuition fees and 
annual stipend of approximately £15,000 for candidates commencing their studies 
in September 2018. The successful candidate will receive a generous research 
support and conference allowance, and have access to a robust doctoral research 
training programme, dedicated research resources, training in transferable 
skills, visiting speaker seminar programme, and associate with existing 
research centres and groups. Students are encouraged to undertake training and 
development in teaching and deliver teaching/research assistantship duties on a 
paid basis to further enhance their experience in preparation for their future 
careers.

The Project
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In many strategic problems in logistics, managements, planning, and 
manufacturing, a Decision Maker (DM) must find solutions that optimise 
multiple, conflicting criteria and decide among them, which nowadays often 
involves the DM interacting with some automated process implemented as a 
Multi-criteria Decision-Making and Optimisation (MCDMO) algorithm. In reality, 
decision-making is influenced by human factors (cognitive biases, fatigue, 
mistakes) that have been thoroughly studied in behavioural economics and 
psychology. The design of algorithms able to cope with these human factors 
remains an open challenge.

This project aims to devise realistic, general “simulations” of DMs (machine 
DMs) that explicitly model these human factors as configurable parameters, 
independent of specific preferences. Machine DMs will enable the empirical 
analysis of algorithms with respect to particular human factors. Parameters of 
machine DMs may be explicitly set to mimic human behaviours (e.g. risk-averse 
vs. risk-seeking). The ultimate goal is the development of the next generation 
of data analytics and decision support methods that adapt to the human factors 
prominent on particular problem scenarios, thus helping humans to make better 
decisions.

Entry Requirements
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Applications are sought from exceptional UK, EU and international students with 
an outstanding academic background, ideally in Computer Science, Mathematics, 
Operations Research, Data Science, Business Analytics, Industrial Engineering, 
Economics, or other discipline within business and operations management. The 
successful candidate must have a strong programming background 
(C/C++/Java/R/Python) and good analytical and communication skills. An 
understanding of multi-criteria decision-making and/or mathematical and 
heuristic multi-objective optimization techniques is highly desirable.


More information:
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http://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/BGK717/phd-scholarship-quantitative-models-of-realistic-human-decision-makers-for-data-analytics-and-optimisation

-- 
Dr Manuel López-Ibáñez | Lecturer at the Decision and Cognitive Sciences 
Research Centre | Alliance Manchester Business School | The University of 
Manchester | F29, Booth St East, Manchester M13 9SS, UK | +44 (0) 16130 68996 | 
http://lopez-ibanez.eu