Course summary

The School of Computer Science welcomes highly motivated and well qualified graduates to join us to work towards a doctorate. Our work is regularly presented in international conferences and journals, indicating the high standards we achieve in research. At Birmingham, we work closely in small teams of researchers embedded within a broad and lively research culture. This combination means you get the necessary focus, while keeping an eye on the bigger picture in which your work is placed. The School’s staff and research students are loosely organised into informal research themes. Researchers are free to contribute to one or more themes and each theme organises its own activities. Cross-disciplinary research is a major feature of the school, and links exist with, for example, psychology, medicine, language studies and electronic engineering. Supervision is arranged on an individual basis in order to closely match the interests of the student with those of the supervisor. We can only offer supervision in the areas in which we have academic expertise. Most of our students are full-time, but a small number are part-time, usually working for UK companies. The supervision process usually takes the form of weekly meetings, (although the frequency will vary according to need), where ideas are exchanged, help is offered and written work is discussed.