Full time
University of Birmingham
Birmingham, UK
The Centre for National Training and Research Excellence in Understanding Behaviour (Centre-UB) is inviting applications for a Doctoral Studentship in association with our collaborative partner VisionMetric Ltd (Vision Metric - Fast, Accurate, Cost Effective) to start in October 2026. CCTV footage is a predominant and crucial source of evidence in policing, with an estimated 21 million cameras operating in the UK. Yet more than 80% of real-world footage is too poor in quality to support reliable person identification. This severely limits investigative success and leaves offenders unidentified. Generative AI–based super-resolution (SR) technologies—such as VisionMetric’s iREVEAL—promise transformative gains by enhancing low-quality facial images. However, there is little scientific evidence on whether these tools improve human accuracy, how they affect machine recognition, and whether they introduce demographic biases. This interdisciplinary PhD will investigate how generative...

