PhD Studentship: Simulating Person-specific Cognitive Processes from Expressive Behaviours for Mental Health Assessment (Funded)

The University of Exeter’s Department of Computer Science invites applications for a funded PhD studentship to commence on 21 September 2026, or as soon as possible thereafter. For eligible students, the studentship will cover Home or International tuition fees plus an annual tax-free stipend of at least £21,805 for 3.5 years full-time, or pro rata for part-time study. The student will be based in the Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy, at the Streatham Campus. The studen...

Opportunity details

The University of Exeter’s Department of Computer Science invites applications for a funded PhD studentship to commence on 21 September 2026, or as soon as possible thereafter. For eligible students, the studentship will cover Home or International tuition fees plus an annual tax-free stipend of at least £21,805 for 3.5 years full-time, or pro rata for part-time study. The student will be based in the Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy, at the Streatham Campus. The studentship is funded by the University Startup Package and supported by the University and the Department of Computer Science. Mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder are commonly assessed through self-report questionnaires and clinical interviews. While valuable, these methods can be subjective, time-consuming and difficult to scale. Meanwhile, mental health states may also be reflected in how people express, perceive and respond to the world through facial behaviour, speech, gaze, affective dynamics and interaction patterns. This PhD project will develop personalised AI models for computational mental health by simulating the latent cognitive processes underlying individual expressive behaviours. The project builds on recent work showing that person-specific cognition can be computationally approximated by learning personalised neural architectures or model weights that reproduce an individual’s facial reactions to audio-visual stimuli. Rather than treating the learned model as a simple behaviour classifier, this project will use it as a representation of an individual’s internal cognitive-response mechanism for downstream mental health inference. The central hypothesis is that depression, anxiety and bipolar disorder are associa...

Eligibility

For eligible students, the studentship will cover Home or International tuition fees plus an annual tax-free stipend of at least £21,805 for 3.5 years full-time, or pro rata for part-time study. Candidates should have a background in computer science, AI, machine learning, affective computing, computational psychology or related areas. Strong programming skills are essential.

Requirements

For eligible students, the studentship will cover Home or International tuition fees plus an annual tax-free stipend of at least £21,805 for 3.5 years full-time, or pro rata for part-time study. Candidates should have a background in computer science, AI, machine learning, affective computing, computational psychology or related areas. Strong programming skills are essential.

Funding and benefits

Funding eligibility: UK Students, International Students. Funding amount: £21,805. UK or International tuition fees and an annual tax-free stipend of at least the UKRI minimum stipend

How to apply

The University of Exeter’s Department of Computer Science invites applications for a funded PhD studentship to commence on 21 September 2026, or as soon as possible thereafter.

Open the official application information

Verify the deadline and final conditions on the official provider page before submitting an application.