Computer Science: Fully Funded EPSRC and Swansea University PhD Scholarship: Exploring high-resolution temporal correspondence in video instance segmentation (RS432)

Funding providers: Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and Swansea University's Faculty of Science and Engineering

Subject areas: Computer vision, artificial intelligence

Project start date: 

• 1 January 2024 (Enrolment open from mid-December)

Project supervisors: 

• Dr Lin Wu (l.y.wu@swansea.ac.uk), Swansea University
• Professor Xianghua Xie, Swansea University
• Hao Chen, Zhejiang University, China
• Professor Mohammed Bennamoun, University of Western Australia, Australia

Aligned programme of study: PhD in Computer Science

Mode of study: Full-time

Project description: 

Video instance segmentation aims at simultaneous detection, segmentation and tracking of object instances in videos. Given a test video, the task requires not only the masks of all instances of a predefined category set to be labelled but also the instance identities across frames to be associated. Existing methods follow a detection and association paradigm, which essentially performs spatial priors’ estimation and a temporal stitching afterwards. This may hinder VIS in the occlusion and long-term videos. High-resolution (HR) features appear to be helpful to identify small and or occluded objects in static images. Thus, it is interesting to explore this valuable information that may benefit VIS. At the same time, HR feature fusion at temporal level to facilitate the long-term VIS remains open challenge. This project is motivated to design a latent space where HR features of instances can be properly fused at their temporal evolution. The research results will be also applied to related video-based tasks such as optical flow estimation, 3D reconstruction and 3D object detection.

Candidates must hold an Upper Second Class (2.1) honours degree or an appropriate master’s degree with a minimum overall grade at ‘Merit’ in Computer Science, Mathematics or a closely related discipline. If you are eligible to apply for the scholarship (i.e. a student who is eligible to pay the UK rate of tuition fees) but do not hold a UK degree, you can check our comparison entry requirements (see country specific qualifications). Please note that you may need to provide evidence of your English Language proficiency. 

Due to funding restrictions, this scholarship is not open to applications from international students (unless eligible to pay UK tuition fee rates as defined by UKCISA regulations). 

If you have any questions regarding your academic or fee eligibility based on the above, please email pgrscholarships@swansea.ac.uk with the web-link to the scholarship(s) you are interested in. 

This scholarship covers the full cost of tuition fees and an annual stipend of £18,622.

Additional research expenses will also be available. 

To apply, please complete your application online with the following information:

1. Course choice – please select Computer Science / PhD / Full-time / 3 Year / January

   In the event you have already applied for the above programme previously, the application system may issue a warning notice and prevent application, in this event, please email pgrscholarships@swansea.ac.uk where staff will be happy to assist you in submitting your application.

2. Start year – please select 2024
3. Funding (page 8) –

• ‘Are you funding your studies yourself?’ – please select No
• ‘Name of Individual or organisation providing funds for study’ – please enter ‘RS432 - PhD Comp Sci’

*It is the responsibility of the applicant to list the above information accurately when applying, please note that applications received without the above information listed will not be considered for the scholarship award.

One application is required per individual Swansea University led research scholarship award; applications cannot be considered listing multiple Swansea University led research scholarship awards.

We encourage you to complete the following to support our commitment to providing an environment free of discrimination and celebrating diversity at Swansea University: 

• Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Monitoring Form (online form) 

As part of your online application, you MUST upload the following documents (please do not send these via email):

• CV
• Degree certificates and transcripts (if you are currently studying for a degree, screenshots of your grades to date are sufficient)
• A cover letter including a ‘Supplementary Personal Statement’ to explain why the position particularly matches your skills and experience and how you choose to develop the project.
• Two references (academic or previous employer) on headed paper or using the Swansea University reference form. Please note that we are not able to accept references received citing private email accounts, e.g. Hotmail. Referees should cite their employment email address for verification of reference.
• Evidence of meeting English Language requirement (if applicable).
• Copy of UK resident visa (if applicable)
• Confirmation of EDI form submission (optional)

Informal enquiries are welcome, please contact Dr Lin Yuanbo Wu (l.y.wu@swansea.ac.uk).

*External Partner Application Data Sharing – Please note that as part of the scholarship application selection process, application data sharing may occur with external partners outside of the University, when joint/co- funding of a scholarship project is applicable.