Fwd: [DMRN-LIST] Open PhD position at KCL in robotic piano expressions for personalised music-heart interventions

Dear all,  Please share this with interested individuals with suitable music and computing skills. The research will involve computing with music and cardiovascular signals in clinical contexts.

PhD position open for "𝘿𝙚𝙭𝙩𝙧𝙤𝙪𝙨 𝙢𝙖𝙣𝙞𝙥𝙪𝙡𝙖𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣 𝙤𝙛 𝙧𝙤𝙗𝙤𝙩𝙞𝙘 𝙥𝙞𝙖𝙣𝙤 𝙚𝙭𝙥𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙨𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨 𝙛𝙤𝙧 𝙥𝙚𝙧𝙨𝙤𝙣𝙖𝙡𝙞𝙨𝙚𝙙 𝙢𝙪𝙨𝙞𝙘-𝙝𝙚𝙖𝙧𝙩 𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙫𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙞𝙤𝙣𝙨" supervised by myself with Gary Cook and Ildar Farkhatdinov in the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Advanced Engineering for Personalised Surgery & Intervention (AE-PSI) at King's College London's School of Biomedical Engineering & Imaging Sciences. This PhD starts in October 2026; the funding includes stipend, fees, and RTSG for 4 years. UKRI allows up to 30% of the cohort to be international. The position is available until filled. The first of three interview rounds begins in March. To apply, see https://www.surgerycdt.com/.

Short description:

This project is centred on creating tailored, goal-oriented, person-specific music-based cardiovascular interventions through the building of autonomous, steerable, dextrous manipulation of robot piano expressions.

       Music has profound effects on human physiology, with great potential for use as adjunctive medicine. Music affects the body through the autonomic nervous system, with direct impact on the heart. However, music's effect on the heart is understudied and underutilised in cardiovascular medicine.

       Humans are wired to react to prosodic features in acoustic stimuli, and trained musicians hone their dexterity to manipulate musical prosody to elicit desired reactions. However, clinical studies involving music in medicine rarely consider the expressive components of music.

       The goal in this project will be to building tools and interfaces to learn and shape nuanced prosodic expressions through a reproducing (robotic) piano. The steering of musical expression will be based on individuals' physiological feedback and designed to achieve target cardiovascular states.

       A clinical application will be with the TOTEM Study using Total Body Positron Emission Tomography at St Thomas' Hospital.

Thank you,

Elaine

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Elaine Chew | eniale.kcl.ac.uk

Professor of Engineering | King's College London

NMES: Engineering | FoLSM : BMEIS : Cardiovascular Imaging

Becket House, BH5.16 | 1 Lambeth Palace Rd, London, SE1 7EU, UK

Founder/Director, Digital Music Theranostics Lab | cosmos.isd.kcl.ac.uk 

Member of the Music & Acoustics Research Centre | marc.kcl.ac.uk