Fully Funded PhD Studentship in Human-Robot Interaction

In partnership with Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, CO-STAR aims to develop socially intelligent assistive robots capable of safely and effectively supporting patients, clinicians, and caregivers in real-world healthcare environments through human-centred co-design. The research programme is structured around three interconnected pillars. First, it will establish participatory design frameworks that actively involve patients, clinicians, and caregivers in shaping assistive robotic systems. Second, it will develop hybrid AI approaches that combine foundation models with symbolic reasoning to enable safe, interpretable, and socially aware human–robot interaction. Third, it will translate these advances into practice through the deployment and evaluation of robotic systems in real healthcare environments, identifying clear pathways towards their adoption.

The PhD student will be based at King's College London and will focus primarily on the robot learning and social reasoning aspects of the project. In particular, the student will develop novel robot learning algorithms that incorporate social reasoning capabilities to enable safe, adaptive, and socially acceptable human–robot interaction. The research will explore how robots can learn appropriate behaviours while accounting for social context, human behaviour, and the complex requirements of healthcare environments. An important component of the project will be simulation-to-real transfer, with the ultimate goal of deploying and evaluating the developed algorithms on physical robotic platforms in real hospital environments at Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust.

The successful candidate will become a member of the Social AI and Robotics Lab (SAIR), led by Dr Celiktutan. SAIR is an inclusive, supportive, and award-winning research group focusing on multimodal machine learning and robotics, with the goal of developing autonomous agents, including robots and virtual agents, capable of interacting seamlessly with humans. The group's research spans multimodal perception, human behaviour understanding and forecasting, robot learning, navigation and manipulation, and socially aware human–robot interaction. SAIR has received several distinctions, including the Best Paper Award at IEEE RO-MAN 2022, the NVIDIA CCS Best Student Paper Award Runner-Up at IEEE FG 2021, and First Place and Honourable Mention Awards at the ICCV UDIVA Challenge 2021.

The studentship provides 3.5 years of full PhD funding in accordance with King's College London and Royal Academy of Engineering arrangements, including tuition fees, a doctoral stipend, and research support for computational and experimental work, as well as a laptop, training and professional development, research-related travel, and conference participation.

Eligibility Criteria:

Project for an Oct-27 entry point, applications open 20th October.

• Applicants should have, or expect to obtain, a strong undergraduate degree (typically a UK First or 2:1, or an equivalent international qualification) in a relevant discipline, such as robotics, engineering, computer science, human-computer interaction, or a related field.
• A relevant Master's degree and/or research experience would be advantageous but is not essential. Applicants should demonstrate a strong interest in human-robot interaction, socially assistive robotics, and healthcare applications.
• Strong mathematical skills and knowledge of machine learning, together with excellent programming skills, are essential for this project. Candidates should also be highly motivated to work hands-on with physical robotic platforms, including systems such as the Mirokaï robot developed by Enchanted Tools, and to develop and evaluate robotic behaviours in real-world hospital settings.
• The successful candidate should be comfortable working as part of an interdisciplinary team comprising researchers, engineers, healthcare professionals, and target users. Strong communication, analytical, and research skills, as well as an ability to collaborate effectively across disciplines, are therefore important.
• Applicants whose first language is not English must meet the University's English-language requirements for postgraduate research study.
• Applications are welcome from UK and international candidates. We particularly encourage applications from candidates from groups that are currently underrepresented in robotics, engineering, and related research fields.

Application Details

To be considered for the position candidates must apply via King's Apply online application system. Details are available here.

Please apply for Engineering Research (MPhil/PhD) and indicate Dr Oya Celiktutan as the supervisor and quote the project title in your application and all correspondence.

Please ensure to add the following code [1213] in the Funding section of the application form.

Please select option 5 'I am applying for a funding award or scholarship administered by King's College London' and type the code into the 'Award Scheme Code or Name' box. Please copy and paste the code exactly.

The selection process will involve a pre-selection on documents and, if selected, will be followed by an invitation to an interview. If successful at the interview, an offer will be provided in due course.

Further information can be found here.

Application Documents

Please submit the following documents. Applications exceeding the stated word or page limits will not be considered.

• Curriculum Vitae (maximum 2 pages): Include your academic qualifications and degree classification/grades, relevant technical skills (e.g., programming, computational and/or robotics skills), research experience, and any research projects you have completed.
• Research Proposal (maximum 2 pages, excluding references): Drawing on the aims of the advertised CO-STAR PhD project, identify a research problem you would be interested in addressing. Outline the research context and motivation, research question(s), proposed methodology, expected contributions, and feasibility within the 3.5-year PhD timeframe.
• Personal Statement (maximum 500 words): Explain your motivation for pursuing this PhD and joining our research group, the skills and experience you would bring to the project, and your longer-term research and career goals.
• Academic Transcripts: Provide official transcripts for your undergraduate degree and, where applicable, your Master's degree.
• Evidence of English Language Proficiency: Where required, provide evidence that you meet King's College London's English language requirements for postgraduate research study.
• Referees: Provide the names and contact details of two academic referees (e.g., a thesis/project supervisor or academic tutor). Please indicate whether they may be contacted prior to interview informally.

Please contact Dr Oya Celiktutan for academic queries about the project.

Funding Notes

Funding is available for 3.5 years for home and overseas students.

Stipend: For 27/28 a tax-free stipend of approximately £24,514 p.a. with possible inflationary increases after the first year.

Bench fees: £3,000 p.a.

Tuition fees: Overseas or home fees