UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD
DEPARTMENT OF ENGINEERING SCIENCE

Post Graduate Studentship in Silicon Cochlea Design

http://www.eng.ox.ac.uk/~wpcadm2/jobs/scadvert.html

Applications are invited for a 3 year EPSRC funded research studentship in
the Microelectronic Circuits and Analogue Devices Research Group within
the Department of Engineering Science. The position is available to
commence at any time prior to 1 October 2002. A successful candidate will
have a first or upper second degree in Electronics or a similar subject.

The area of the research is biologically inspired information processing,
in particular auditory signal processing in the cochlea. The aim of the
project, supervised by Dr. Steve Collins, is to develop a new design of a
silicon cochlea. This work, which is part of a wider EPSRC funded project,
will be undertaken in collaboration with Professor Leslie Smith at the
University of Stirling, who has highlighted the benefits of
exploiting temporal correlations in the auditory system. Work at Oxford
will concentrate on designing, building and testing a silicon cochlea
which will then be integrated into a larger system at Stirling.

Work at Oxford will concentrate on designing, building and testing
circuits which perform the critical functions identified by simulation
work undertaken at the University of Stirling. Following previous
work, the basic filtering action will be based upon subthreshold gm-C
filters. However, the output of these filters will be represented as a
stream of pulses, rather than an analogue voltage. This will both
avoid the problems arising from using positive feedback in existing
systems and create the opportunity to exploit temporal correlations in
the power within different frequency bands. Several different designs
will be looked at in collaboration with Stirling to determine the one
which produces the required functionality most efficiently. This design
will then be implemented in a prototype system which will be characterised
in detail at Oxford and the functionality tested at Stirling.

For more details contact steve collins (steve.collins@eng.ox.ac.uk) or visit the group website
http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~mcad/

Further particulars may be found on the web
http://www.eng.ox.ac.uk/~wpcadm2/jobs/scfp.html

Please quote SS/SC/DF/02/021 in all correspondence.

The closing date for applications is 4th June 2002.

The University is an Equal Opportunity Employer.