PhD – Maximising human potential

The explosion of the Internet, the pervasive uses of technologies in daily activities and many
environments, including remote home working, impose ever more mental workload upon
operators and less physical load. The principal reason for measuring workload (MWL) is to quantify
the mental cost of performing tasks to predict human performance. In turn, performance prediction
can be used for designing interfaces, technologies, and information-processing activities optimally
aligned to the well-known human mental limited capacities. Despite 60 years of effort, research on
MWL has not been able to make major advances yet, failing to provide a model of understanding.
Guess intuitions and several field-dependent definitions have proliferated, but these disagree about
the MWL sources, its attributes and their impact on human performance. Identifying these and how they impinge on human potential are all open research problems. The project will focus on multi-
disciplinary research in the area of Mental Workload (MWL) modelling leading to a major understanding of the construct (fundamental breakthrough). It will provide human-centred
designers with an interpretable and explainable model of MWL for real-time prediction of task
performance, a revolutionary contribution to the field of Human-Computer Interaction (applied
breakthrough). This contribution will allow human-centred designers to develop and rapidly test
their interactive technologies and information-processing procedures aligned to the limitation of
the mental capacity and that maximises human potential.

What is funded

Technological University Dublin – researcher award

Student Stipend per annum €19000

Materials & Travel Budget per annum €2600

Fees covered by the funding per annum €5500 (100%)

Duration

48 months

Eligibility

Master in Computer Science or similar technical subjects
– strong coding capabilities (python)
– significant experience with signal processing
– fluent English writing

If you are interested in submitting an application for this project, please complete an Expression of Interest.

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