Vacancy Announcement: two post-doctoral researcher positions at UNU-IIST

Vacancy Announcement: two post-doctoral researcher positions at UNU-IIST

[Wang Xu]

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(Our apology if you receive multiple copies of this advertisement)

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UNITED NATIONS UNIVERSITY VACANCY ANNOUNCEMENT

http://www.iist.unu.edu/www/job/pearl.html.


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/). 

The project covers topics broadly in:

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.

Requirements
------------

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 Research Group
-------------------

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. 

Further information is available from:

Jeff Sanders
Jeff@iist.unu.edu


The City 
---------

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. 


The Application
----------------

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.


The Deadline
----------------
Application submission is now open and will remain so until suitable candidates are found. The selection procedure, however, will start on 31 July and the positions ideally start as soon as possible afterwards. 

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Funded PhD position: formalising hardware/software interface

[Andrew Butterfield]

3-year funded Ph.D. position

Formalising the Interface between Software and Hardware (FISH)

     https://www.cs.tcd.ie/Andrew.Butterfield/FISH/

Start Date: September/October 2008
Team:
 Foundations and Methods Group,
 Software Systems Laboratory,
 Trinity College Dublin

Supervisor: Andrew Butterfield  Andrew.Butterfield@cs.tcd.ie

Summary

The aim of this project is to investigate the modelling of the interface 
between
hardware and software, with particular emphasis on Flash Memory devices.
The motivation for this work is to be able to contribute to a formally 
verified
model of a POSIX-aware file-store implemented with flash memory,
and so suitable for mission-critical data-collection applications
such as space probes.
This is part of a pilot project currently under way in the Grand Challenge
on Dependable Systems Evolution.

The research will use the techniques of the Unifying Theories of 
Programming (UTP),
and recent work on the language "Circus", and a variant called 
"slotted-Circus",
to explore the theory and practise of reasoning about the correctness
of software at the hardware interface level, incorporating techniques
for reasoning about the correctness in the face of certain classes of 
failure
whose occurrence is probabilistic and non-determinisitic.

We seek a student with an interest in modelling and verification,
with experience of at least one formal method (Z, VDM, B, CSP, pi-Calculus)
and skills with discrete mathematics, predicate calculus and theorem 
proving.
The candidate should have a good background in computer science, with
a good Bachelors or MSc degree in Computer Science, Mathematics or a 
similar
area.

The funding covers fees, plus a stipend of 17,000+ euros.

Applications:

Send applications, by email to
   mailto:Andrew.Butterfield@cs.tcd.ie?Subject=FISH,
containing:

1. Detailed CV
2. Contact details  for at least two referees
3. A clear statement as to why you would be suited for this research 
project.

See the project website for further details

     https://www.cs.tcd.ie/Andrew.Butterfield/FISH/


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Andrew Butterfield     Tel: +353-1-896-2517     Fax: +353-1-677-2204
Foundations and Methods Research Group Director.
School of Computer Science and Statistics,
Room F.13, O'Reilly Institute, Trinity College, University of Dublin
                            http://www.cs.tcd.ie/Andrew.Butterfield/
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