Fashion Recommender Systems

PhD in Computer Science at Durham University, UK

Recommender systems for fashion and clothing items

Recommender systems (RS) assist web users to filter through the staggering amount of online information. They combine techniques and methods from machine learning, business and human-computer interaction to understand user preferences (at individual or group level) and produce recommendations of items that best match those preferences. Context-aware recommender systems (CARS) aim to grasp a holistic picture of a user’s condition (internal and external). Research has shown that expanding user profiles with contextual features (e.g. mood, weather, location), improves RS performance.

The fashion domain offers a variety of CARS applications, including online clothing stores, personalised clothing and outfits based on body shape or preferred fashion styles, sustainable clothing utilisation, etc.

The goal of this research is to explore state-of-the-art methods and innovate fashion CARS, by considering a combination of the following:

• Design, implement and evaluate a CARS to recommend personalised, context-aware clothing items and/or outfits. Model user style preferences and contextual information (occasion, mood, weather, etc.)
• Select, collect, generate multimodal data (with relevant user, clothing item and contextual features).
• Explore and propose features extraction methods.
• Design, develop and evaluate suitable interface for human-AI interaction for a fashion RS.
• Evaluation of fashion CARS: exploring, proposing and applying relevant offline performance metrics; performing user studies and/or A/B testing.
• Applying and evaluating Responsible AI principles (i.e., fairness, explainability, trustworthiness, etc.) within this area.

Durham University is one of the world’s top universities with strengths across the Arts and Humanities, Sciences and Social Sciences. We are home to some of the most talented scholars and researchers from around the world who are tackling global issues and making a difference to people’s lives. A collegiate University, Durham recruits outstanding students from across the world and offers an unmatched wider student experience. Durham University seeks to promote and maintain an inclusive and supportive environment for work and study that assists all members of our university community to reach their full potential. Diversity brings strength and we welcome applications from across the international, national and regional communities that we work with and serve.

Department of Computer Science is a UK Top 10 Department according to the Complete University Gide 2023. We are committed to high quality research and are proud of the people who make it happen. Our research strengths include AI, computer vision, theoretical computer science, high-performance computing, digital humanities and bioinformatics.

Lead supervisor: Dr Suncica Hadzidedic is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science with research interests in recommender systems, human-computer interaction, and responsible AI.

Specification of requirements for PhD applicants

• A first degree in Computer Science or other numerate discipline with a significant component of computing
• MSc in Computer Science, Machine Learning, Data Science or related field
• Good understanding and skills in application of concepts, tools and techniques in machine learning
• Good understanding and application of deep learning methods
• Good understanding and skills in recommender system techniques and methods
• Excellent programming skills, particularly in Python
• Excellent understanding of HCI, user experience evaluation and user-centred design
• Good skills in multimodal data collection, cleaning and analysis
• Some understanding of responsible AI concepts
• Experience in designing, performing and completing a research project
• Excellent English language skills – written and spoken.
• Desirable attributes include: background in fashion (or related discipline).

Funding

Self-funded students are welcome to apply all year round.

Two (very competitive) university-level scholarships are open for applications by January.

What to submit?

If you are interested in this project, please send to Dr Suncica Hadzidedic (suncica [dot] hadzidedic [AT] durham [dot] ac [dot] uk) the following:

• CV
• Research proposal
• Please clarify if you are looking for a self-funded PhD or a scholarship.
• In the e-mail’s subject, please state “PhD Project: AI-based interventions for MH conditions”.

Successful applicants will be invited to an interview with the lead supervisor.