Help choose web application framework for academic project

[LyleS]

I'm about to start an academic project related to rich internet applications.I thought that using a web application framework will save me some time and allow me to better structure my code. I've spend the last few days in searching for the best solution.There are certainly lot of choices and I'm basically lost..I'm equally good in programming in PHP and Java and have knowledge of JavaScript as well.I would like to use a framework that has good support of RIA technologies and HTML5.I have experience in Joomla development but CMS is a different case.What would you suggest for my case?Thanks!