Distributed Artificial Intelligence for Collective Decisions in Smart Cities

Summary

Can you envision a more inclusive and direct democracy for our digital society empowered by an ethically-aligned AI and blockchain? The Distributed Systems and Services group at University of Leeds has an opening for a PhD candidate position in the lab of Distributed and Intelligent Social Computing Systems.

As a PhD candidate in this project you are expected to develop and study decision-support systems using blockchain and distributed AI for multi-agent systems (reinforcement learning, distributed combinatorial optimization). You will apply these decision-support systems to mobile crowd-sensing platforms and digital voting systems to empower trustworthy collective decisions in Smart Cities. You will apply data science skills to data collected from citizens to understand collective crowd behavior. You will have a unique opportunity to apply this research in real-world by running pilots tests in the city of Aarau in Switzerland with a strong tradition on direct democracy initiatives. This project will run in collaboration with ETH Zurich and University of Fribourg in Switzerland as well as the city authorities of Aarau.

Related projects and publications:

Smart Agora

EPOS

Proof of Witness Presence: Blockchain Consensus for Augmented Democracy in Smart Cities

Collective Learning: A 10-Year Odyssey to Human-centered Distributed Intelligence

Applicants to research degree programmes should normally have at least a first class or an upper second class British Bachelors Honours degree (or equivalent) in an appropriate discipline and very good programming skills (covering data science and systems). An MSc in Computer Science or in the broader area of Computational Social Science would be desired, as well as an interest in decision and social sciences (mechanism design). Relevant industry experience is also recognised.

The minimum English language entry requirement for research postgraduate research study is an IELTS of 6.5 overall with at least 6.5 in writing and 6.0 in reading, listening and speaking or equivalent. The test must be dated within two years of the start date of the course in order to be valid.