My colleagues in Newcastle (where I did my first degree) have an MRes/PhD position available in computational behaviour analysis. Together with colleagues from Agriculture, the School of Computing Science in Newcastle have recently been active in the field of computational behaviour analysis in livestock animals. They have a small grant on which we are currently doing some  pilot work related to food safety and animal wellbeing, which has now given rise to funding for an integrated MRes / PhD studentship to work in this field. The group wants to work on a system for automatic tracking of farm pigs (indoor) and on modelling their behaviour (as individuals and in the group) with the goal of early detection of changes therein that might be linked to  certain diseases. The project involves some very strong partners from and connections to agriculture and access to farms and industry.  The topic is extremely relevant for the UK industry and has wider societal impact (food safety, animal welfare). They are looking for strong CS candidates with a background in machine learning, signal processing, or computer vision, and an interest in working in an multi-disciplinary team on a challenging and very interesting topic with substantial societal and economic relevance. The funding covers four years of fees and maintenance. UK home  students (and EU citizens who have been residents for at least three years) are eligible for the full funding, EU students essentially for 50%. Throughout the first year the student will be enrolled into an MRes program with courses and time to get familiar with the topic, which is a fantastic opportunity for students to obtain an interdisciplinary skill-set. More details can be found here. Application deadline is the 5th April 2013.