We live in a society based on experiences. Whether we look at a commercial for a holiday destination or interact with social media, the consumer experience plays a crucial role in our behavior. Yet, it is surprising to see how little it is actually known about how consumers value these experiences. The high-end technical solutions for shaping experiences sharply contrast with the rather conventional mechanisms used to measure them. DIS explores the use of smart textiles and wearable sensors as a source for collecting reliable and quantified data about everyday life experiences. In particular, we are interested on better understanding social IoT in the environment of smart cities. Based on realistic testing grounds, collaborating with several commercial and academic partners, we have deployed our technology and infrastructure in places such as the National Theatre of China in Shanghai and the Amsterdam Dance Event in the Netherlands. Our approach is to seamless connecting fashion and textiles with sensing technology, and with the environment. The final objective is to create intelligent and empathic systems that can react to the experience of users. 

CWI is starting a joint industrial PhD program with Xinhuanet in the research direction of social internet of things and smart textiles (www.dis.cwi.nl/research-areas/social-iot-smart-textiles/). We are looking for an excellent student who will work on multimodal sensor technology and human/social activity recognition. The program provides the student the unique opportunity of working on real-world problems related to healthcare or to the creative industries. In addition to the supervisor at CWI, the student will have a tutor at Xinhuanet and will do several internships in China.

The PhD candidate will sign a confidential agreement with Xinhuanet, with the IP of the result of the project shared by CWI and Xinhuanet.

Results from the program will be of world-class academic and industry-leading level, with a high competitive value.

Candidates are required to have a master degree in computer science, telecommunications, biomedical engineering, communication engineering or related field. In particular, the candidate should have background on affective computing, embedded systems, pattern recognition, sensor technology or physiological computing. Preferable qualifications for candidates include proven research talent, programming skills (C/C++, Python, Javascript), practical experience with multimedia systems, and software development in a team. Circuit design, circuit debugging and embedded programming capabilities will be a plus. 

Candidates are expected to have an excellent command of English, and good academic writing and presentation skills.

Command of Chinese is a plus.

The terms of employment are in accordance with the Dutch Collective Labour Agreement for Research Centres ("CAO-onderzoeksinstellingen"). The initial labour agreement will be for a period of 18 months. After a positive evaluation, the agreement will extended by 30 months. The gross monthly salary, for a PhD student on a full time basis, is €2,246 during the first year and increases to €2,879 over the four year period.

Employees are also entitled to a holiday allowance of 8% of the gross annual salary and a year-end bonus of 8.33%. CWI offers attractive working conditions, including flexible scheduling and help with housing for expat employees.

Please visit our website for more information about our terms of employment: www.cwi.nl/terms-of-employment

Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI)

Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) is the Dutch national research institute for mathematics and computer science and is part of the Institutes Organisation of NWO. The mission of CWI is to conduct pioneering research in mathematics and computer science, generating new knowledge in these fields and conveying it to trade, industry, and society at large.

CWI is an internationally oriented institute, with 160 scientists from approximately 27 countries. The facilities are first-rate and include excellent IT support, career planning, training, and courses.

CWI is located at Science Park Amsterdam that is presently developing into a major location of research in the natural sciences in The Netherlands, housing the sciences of the University of Amsterdam and of the Vrije Universiteit as well as several other national research institutes next to CWI.

http://www.cwi.nl

Research group: Distributed and Interactive Systems

Our research group focuses on facilitating and improving the way people access media and communicate with others and with the environment. We address key problems for society and science, resulting from the dense connectivity of content, people, and devices. We use recognized scientific methods, following a full-stack, experimental, and human-centered approach.

We base our results on realistic testing grounds and data sets, and embrace areas such as wearable technology and smart textiles, immersive media, and languages and infrastructures. Distributed and Interactive Systems is an outward-looking research group, and we enjoy a number of fruitful partnerships with companies and organizations in the areas of creative industries and smart cities. 

Our group transfers knowledge through scientific publications, standards bodies, open-source implementations and consultancy. We pride ourselves on pushing boundaries, leading the way for others to follow.

About Xinhuanet

Xinhuanet Co. Ltd. (xinhuanet.com/english/) is a key website in China with world influence, sponsored by Xinhua News Agency, the Chinese national news agency. It releases global news items on a 7×24 basis in 8 languages, namely Chinese (simplified and traditional), English, French, Spanish, Russian, Arabic and Japanese. Xinhuanet has a press team covering more than 100 countries and regions and its provincial channels spread over 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions in China. It carries out on a daily basis more than 1.8 million words amount of the latest news both at home and abroad. According to the statistics released by Google in June 2004, of all the domestic networks, Xinhuanet was the only network that enjoyed class 9 page views, which is the same class as CNN in the United States, Yahoo, Microsoft, amazon and other world famous websites. Since 2006, Xinhuanet has been listed on the top of all news websites with China rank, a ranking website sponsored by Internet Society of China.

Future Media Convergence Institute at Xinhuanet

One example product introduction: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/1dS6EknpsNzlfivObnH4pA

Future Media Convergence Institute (FMCI) (https://tinyurl.com/ydypymfq) is a national media research institute under direct administration of Xinhuanet. It is committed to the products of the media convergence, cutting-edge technology and the innovative development model. FMCI also provides the service of incubator for researchers and employees with the exploring spirit. It is an Industry-Academia-Research platform, which focuses on the applications of sensor, artificial intelligence technology and the big data in the context of the IoT for Xinhuanet. FMCI explores different areas including the development of intelligence hardware, intelligent software system and new service model in the context of the new ecological media environment. We have dozens of researchers at home and abroad who come from different disciplines, such as human computer interaction, telecommunications engineering, electrical engineering, software engineering, physiological computing, material science, neuroscience, cognitive psychology, management science and media. And also, we cooperate in various forms with many academic institutions. The research team have made breakthrough in physiological data collection and analysis, affective computing, sensor news production, as well as intelligent writing system through the convergence of biological sensor and artificial intelligence technology. Meanwhile, we have applied our research products in the field of news data collection, film evaluation, advertising effectiveness monitoring, education evaluation, safety-alarming in transportation, and intelligent city network.

http://www.dis.cwi.nl