Collaborative privacy in data marketplaces

About the project

In this PhD project, you'll investigate how to advance data-sharing and data marketplaces with a PhD opportunity led by Dr George Konstantinidis .

Your PhD will be part of the RAISE and UPCAST Horizon Europe projects, which aim to:

You’ll have the option to research, design and implement algorithms for one or a combination of the following research themes:

• design and deploy algorithms for data marketplaces and data-sharing platforms
• collaboratively negotiate and enforce data-sharing contracts, automatically providing dynamic fair pricing while protecting privacy
• option A: data integration, exchange and sharing
• option B: data privacy, automating data agreements, and privacy-based data sharing
• option C: dataset search

Option A: Data integration, exchange and sharing

You’ll explore topics ranging from query answering in the face of constraints/ontologies, to reasoning algorithms for knowledge graphs, depending on your interests and expertise.

You will investigate, develop, and maintain:

All these tasks will build upon and extend existing implementations.

• mapping languages to connect different resources and algorithms in a data marketplace to each other or to a global vocabulary
• a data-warehousing/data-exchange approach that moves data within the ecosystem while respecting privacy and pricing conditions
• a virtual integration approach where queries are posed over a central vocabulary and the system needs to resolve them over the source schemas/endpoints/APIs
• data validation techniques

Option B: Data privacy, automating data agreements, and privacy-based data sharing

In this option, you’ll investigate data privacy for data sharing mechanisms, such as the use of Blockchains, using knowledge graphs and algorithmic mechanisms to express privacy preferences.

You'll develop middleware that automates and streamlines negotiations and convergences of data sharing agreements that are currently written in human language. This system will manage the negotiation of privacy preferences against different pricing schemes in contrast to the more traditional accept/reject approaches, model data processing purposes and support privacy updates, such as withdrawal of consent.

Option C: Dataset search

You’ll examine dataset search, focusing on:

As part of this PhD project, you’ll write and submit academic papers, technical reports, and project deliverables. You will also have the opportunity to travel to conferences and meetings to present your work while representing the team

• designing vocabularies/languages to express dataset properties and reason over data processing workflows
• exploring decentralised data catalogues and data processing resources repositories
• answering queries expressed as data processing workflows
• recommending datasets and resources based on your findings

Potential supervisors

• Potential supervisors: Lead supervisor Professor George Konstantinidis Professor

Lead supervisor

• Lead supervisor: Professor George Konstantinidis Professor

Professor George Konstantinidis

• Professor George Konstantinidis: Professor

Entry requirements

A 2:1 honours degree, or its international equivalent.

Fees and funding

For UK students, tuition fees and a stipend of £17,668 tax-free each year for up to 3.5 years.

How to apply

Apply now

You need to:

Applications should include:

• choose programme type (Research), 2022/23, Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences
• choose PhD in Computer Science (Full time)
• add name of the supervisor (George Konstantinidis) in section 2
• a research proposal
• your cv (resumé)
• 2 reference letters
• degree transcripts to date

Faculty of engineering and physical sciences

Email: feps-pgr-apply@soton.ac.uk

Project leader

If you wish to discuss any details of the project informally, please contact Dr George Konstantinidis.

Email: g.konstantinidis@soton.ac.uk

Phone: +44 (0)23 8059 2978

Research areas