Team and Joining

• Filip Bircanin – Postdoctoral Researcher
• Wenqi Zhu – Research Assistant
• Defne Eken - PhD Student (supervised w/ Letizia Gionfrida
• Xi Hu - PhD Student (supervised w/ Rita Borgo and Mike Cook)
• Carlota Vazquez Gonzalez - PhD Student (supervised w/ Rita Borgo)
• Alexandre Nevsky - PhD Student (supervised w/ Elena Simperl)
• Humphrey Curtis - PhD Student (supervised w/ Rita Borgo)

I am always on the lookout for excellent PhD students to work with me in the Human Centred Computing group at King's. I am keen to work with PhD students interested in projects in the areas of HCI, accessibility, novel interaction techniques and content creation/consumption technologies. Look at my publications to get an idea of my interests.

Funding Options

• 1 fully funded position for October 2026 entry on my Future Leaders Fellowship (see here for more)
• Fully-funded positions for exceptional candidates through KCL scholarships. These funding allocations are for full fees and a living stipend (London weighted) for any nationality.
• King's China Scholarships (for Chinese nationals). These funding allocations are for full fees and a living stipend (London weighted).
• Fully-funded as part of the King’s Centre for Doctoral Training in Data-Driven Health.
• Alternative funding: if you are keen to do a PhD but are not sure how to fund, or wish to self-fund, I am happy to work towards putting together applications for PhD fellowships for exceptional candidates.

Are You the Right Fit?

I am interested in students who can demonstrate some technical skills (e.g. programming, electronics), HCI skills (e.g. running user studies, interviewing) and research skills (e.g. data analysis, paper writing). I would also like to see some previous work in innovative human-computer interaction work (e.g., undergraduate or postgraduate projects in this area). King's expects students to have First-Class Honours at Undergraduate level or Distinction at Master's level (or its international equivalent). If you do not meet these criteria, there might be alternative ways to demonstrate your competence.

Next Steps

As I am sure you appreciate, academics get many emails from prospective PhD students; many of whom send out their proposals to hundreds of academics and have little/no bearing on their research. I normally do not have time to respond to these. If you meet the above criteria and want to do a PhD, get in touch with:

• Your CV
• A paragraph about your proposed research and why you are the person to conduct it
• A paragraph on what you think a PhD will involve and why you want to do one
• A writing sample -- this can be anything from an assignment to a published paper
• A sentence on your favourite animal and why

Current Projects

My currently defined projects can be found here, but I am happy to discuss other projects which align with my general research vision.

• Zhiqiang Huo (postdoctoral researcher in Population Health) -- collaborating on NIHR funded Improving the lives of stroke survivors with data project .
• Joshua Susak (undergraduate intern) -- created page for showcasing smartwatch apps.
• Vedeesh Bali (undergraduate intern) -- created dashboard for AAC dataset.
• Miruna Tudoreanu (undergraduate intern) -- Supporting user interface design work of accessible portal and dashboard for NIHR funded Improving the lives of stroke survivors with data project .
• Anderson You (undergraduate intern) -- Supporting experiment into mid-air haptics.
• Shehzmani Shams (undergraduate intern) -- supporting HCI project on understanding videoconferencing for people with aphasia. Resulted in CHI '22 paper.