Two post-doctoral researcher positions are now open at International Institute for Software Technology, United Nations University (UNU-IIST, http://www.iist.unu.edu). UNU-IIST is a Research and Training Centre of the United Nations University. It serves developing countries to help them attain self-reliance in software technology by training their young scientists and engineers.

The positions are funded for three years by Macau Sci.&Tech. Development Fund and UNU-IIST through "PEARL --- Process expansion: action refinement in the large", a project in collaboration with University of Macau (UM, http://www.umac.mo/).

a) Developing `grainless' semantic theories for concurrent systems, where coarse grain actions can be refined into (subsystems of) fine grain actions or reversely fine grain actions atomised into coarse grain actions.

b) Exploiting the freedom of moving across levels of abstraction (i.e. grain size) to develop scalable verification techniques (model-checking) and incremental development methods (law-based).

c) Application of the theories, techniques and methods to the verification and development of concurrent non-blocking algorithms, multithreaded Java programs (with weak-ordering memory model) and web-based transaction systems.

These positions are ideal for young researchers who would like to develop their academic research careers by working in an excellent academic setting. They provide a unique opportunity to join an institute that has proven experience in, and dedication to, the training of young researchers, in formal methods and theoretical computer science.

We are seeking young research scientists with (or in the process of obtaining) PhDs in computer science. Good English speaking and writing skills are necessary. The successful applicants should have a profound knowledge of the semantics, specification and verification of concurrent systems. Experience in simulation and data refinement techniques, process algebra model-checking (esp. CSP) and action/atomicity refinement will be an advantage.

Besides research, the successful applicants will also be involved in helping to supervise postgraduate students from developing countries recruited to the project as UNU-IIST fellows.

Conditions
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The postdoctoral positions are contract appointments starting with one year and renewable for another two years, depending on performance. Salary will be in the range 2000-3000 USD per month paid without deduction of tax. UNU-IIST will provide medical insurance and a fully-furnished & rent-free two-bedroom apartment (exclusive of utility expenses).

The successful applicants will be working in a joint research group at UNU-IIST and UM. The research group is led by Dr. Jeff Sanders, Principal Research Fellow of UNU-IIST. Other members of the group include Dr. Qiwen Xu of UM and Dr. Xu Wang of UNU-IIST.

Macao is a Special Administrative Region of China, about 40km from Hong Kong, the other side of the Pearl River estuary. It is a small, safe city, predominantly Chinese in culture but with strong Portuguese influences and an active expatriate community of people from many countries. There are schools that teach in English, Chinese and Portuguese.

Potential applicants are suggested to send a CV, 2-3 recent publications (relevant to the project) and a covering letter with the contact details of three referees by email to vacancy@iist.unu.edu, quoting the job reference PEARL-1.