Three open PhD position in Data Analytics / Big Data at University of Basel

Applications are invited for three PhD positions in computer science / environmental sciences associated with the interdisciplinary research project "WeObserve: Integrating Citizen Observers and High Throughput Sensing Devices for Big Data Collection, Integration, and Analysis", which is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation within the National Research Program "Big Data".
General description.
In collaboration with the Department of Environmental Sciences and The Swiss Ornithological Institute we investigate methods for data collection, integration, and analysis in cases where heterogeneous sources need to be combined, and their application for monitoring geographical and ecological processes.
Specific contributions.
The central technical challenges are:
Data collection & integration: to seamlessly combine high throughput sensing devices which produce very large volumes of data and cover large areas, Citizen Observers which provide semantically rich data, but with varying levels of precision and substantial sampling bias, and specific high resolution sensing devices that need to be manually deployed.
Data analysis: to use machine learning methods for estimating spatio-temporal models and to detect hidden patterns in heterogeneous data collections.
Applications: on the practical side, we focus on two applications, namely soil degradation monitoring (with specific emphasis on erosion and landslide monitoring in alpine regions) and bird monitoring (based on citizen observatories and radar data).
Prerequisites.
Candidates should have a Master's degree in computer science, environmental sciences, applied mathematics, physics or related fields. They are interested to work in an interdisciplinary research environment and have good communication skills (English).
Successful candidates will be awarded a fellowship with a competitive salary. Applications with a full CV, short statement of research interests and names of at least one referee should be submitted in electronic form with the subject line "PhD in Data Analytics" - followed by the specialization "Data collection & integration", "Data analysis", or "Applications" to:
volker.roth-AT-unibas.ch
Volker Roth
Department of Mathematics and Computer Science
University of Basel, Spiegelgasse 1,
CH-4051 Basel, Switzerland
Submission deadline: Jan 31, 2017