Two Fully Funded Doctoral Studentships in Automated Verification for Ubiquitous Computing

The Verification Group is offering two fully funded D.Phil studentships in Oxford University's Computing Laboratory. These positions are associated with the ERC project "VERIWARE: From software verification to everyware verification", under the supervision of Professor Marta Kwiatkowska. The goal of this project is the development of models and automated verification techniques for ‘everyware', i.e. sensor-based ubiquitous computing devices (see http://www.veriware.org/docs/Veriware.pdf for a non-technical description). The project covers a broad range of topics including the following: models for ubiquitous computing devices; abstraction, refinement and synthesis; software verification; probabilistic verification; quantitative verification for resource-constrained systems; online verification techniques, e.g. those based on machine learning or statistical inference; verification algorithms for agent-based cooperation and negotiation; and applications. The focus will be on developing theoretical foundations, algorithms, implementation techniques and prototype software tools.

The VERIWARE team will be led by Professor Kwiatkowska and will include Dr David Parker, two postdoctoral researchers and the two doctoral students advertised here. The doctoral positions have been nominally assigned to (1) models for ubiquitous computing, to include applications, and (2) verification algorithms for agent-based cooperation and negotiation. However, there is some flexibility in allocating the responsibilities and thus research proposals in any of the above-mentioned topics relevant to VERIWARE are invited.

The studentships are fully funded (at EU fees level - overseas candidates will need supplementary funding) for 3 ½ years from 1^st October 2010. Students can be admitted with a later start date (but not later than October 1^st 2011).  Each studentship includes a stipend of at least £13,290 per year as well as provision for travel to conferences.

Candidates must satisfy the usual requirements:

http://web.comlab.ox.ac.uk/oucl/prospective/dphil/dphil-criteria.pdf

for studying for a doctorate at Oxford. In addition, the students should be skilled in theoretical computer science and in some of the above-mentioned areas, and must have good writing, communication, presentation, and organization skills. 

The closing date for applications has been extended to 4th June, 2010