[Australia] Postgraduate Scholarship in Emotionally Intelligent ICTs for Social Innovation at La Trobe University

Two Year Postgraduate Scholarship in Emotionally Intelligent ICTs for Social Innovation

School of Business La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia

As part of an Open Innovation Research Program with global electronics corporation NEC Japan, Masters by Research scholarships are available for deserving candidates.

Background
Sensemaking is an emerging paradigm for understanding social dynamics in organisations. It postulates that the process of translating the personal interpretation, knowledge or meaning into a specific behaviour, decision or action is moderated by interaction of an individual`s rational with their affective characteristics. It proposes to significantly alter the analysis and interpretation of data about people, internet users and employees in an organisation. In general, emotional systems in humans influence many cognitive processes including decision making, focus and attention, goal generation and categorization, all of which are important for design of human-centred intelligent systems.
In this context, ICTs which form an integral part of organisations can be used as effective tools for social innovation. It is envisaged that emotionally intelligent ICTs would play a pivotal role in design of sustainable organisations in the 21st century by improving the quality of life at work (e.g., through design of emotionally cohesive and culturally fit teams) and at home, by provision of emotionally intelligent health care and health promotion systems (especially for the elderly) to help control spiraling health care costs, and by facilitating travel and e-tourism through emotionally intelligent e-tourism systems.

The postgraduate students will be expected to work on the following research projects

1. Human-centred intelligent system for constructing emotionally cohesive and culturally fit teams.
2. Emotionally intelligent persuasive dialog system for health promotion.
3. Emotionally intelligent health care (nurse) robot for pre and post-operative care.
4. Emotionally Intelligent e-tourism system for holiday destination planning and sight seeing.

The postgraduate students will be supervised by a research team consisting of researchers from La Trobe university and NEC Corp., Japan. The research team is headed by La Trobe`s Associate Prof. Rajiv Khosla. An annual stipend of up to AUD 25,000 per annum for 2 years is available from Jan 2009 for deserving candidates. The annual stipend includes a research internship for 6 months each year (i.e., in 2009 and 2010) at NEC`s technologically advanced research lab in Japan.

Eligibility Requirements:
The prospective candidate must have completed a four-year undergraduate degree in Information Systems, Computer Science or equivalent with an average of 80% or above. Interested candidates can contact Associate Prof. Rajiv Khosla (r.khosla@latrobe.edu.au) directly with your CV, academic transcripts, .and relevant R&D experience. The candidates must also include a covering letter with a brief description outlining the research project they are interested in and relevant skills for the project.

Knowledge in areas like emotional intelligence, natural language processing, affective computing and human-centred e-tourism would be a benefit.