We offer the widest choice of research projects in informatics in the UK.
The following list of topics is meant to serve as a source of ideas, and is neither exhaustive or complete and you are welcome to propose a novel topic.
Research students are hosted within one of our six research Institutes. You will need to know which Institute you are applying to. We have given an overview of the main research areas associated with each Institute in the table below. Explore the Institute websites for more specific suggested topics, you can also use the our research explorer.
Edinburgh Research Explorer
List of Informatics projects which have grant-funded scholarships available for PhD candidates.
Informatics Institutes
| Institute |
Main research areas |
Website |
Subgroups |
| Artificial Intelligence and Its Applications Institute |
- Knowledge representation and reasoning
- Automated and interactive theorem proving
- Decision making in autonomous agents and multi-agent systems
- Human-computer interaction
- Facilitating collaboration in data-intensive research
- AI for privacy, fairness, and ethical reasoning
|
AIAI website |
|
| Institute for Adaptive and Neural Computation (ANC) |
- Cognitive or Computational Neuroscience
- Machine learning
- Bioinformatics
|
ANC website
Suggested topics
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|
| Institute for Language, Cognition and Computation (ILCC) |
- Computational approaches to language, communication, and cognition
- Natural language processing and computational linguistics
- Information extraction, retrieval and presentation
- Educational and assistive technology
- Visualisation
- Spoken language processing
- Human-computer interaction
- Social media analysis
- Knowledge graph
|
ILCC website
Suggested topics
|
Centre for Speech Technology Research (CSTR)
|
| Institute for Computing Systems Architecture (ICSA) |
- Compilers and architecture
- Parallel computing
- Wireless networking
|
ICSA website
Suggested topics
|
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| Institute of Perception, Action and Behaviour (IPAB) |
- Computer Vision and Graphics
- Robotics
|
IPAB website
Suggested topics
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| Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science (LFCS) |
- Theory and foundations of computer science
- Formal models and methods for design, verification, and performance analysis
- Database theory and practice
- Algorithms and computational complexity theory
- Logic, semantics, and programming languages
- Cyber Security and Privacy, foundational and applied
|
LFCS website
Prospective students
Suggested topics in Security and Privacy
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