PhD Position: Modelling and Verification of Asynchronous, Concurrent Systems


The Software Technologies Research Group at the University of Bamberg, located in a world-heritage city in Northern Bavaria in Germany, conducts research in the foundations and practice of software specification, verification and analysis. The group currently has one full-time PhD position available in the context of a new research project that will develop novel formalisms and techniques for modelling and verifying asynchronous, concurrent systems.


About the project

Frameworks and APIs supporting the development of concurrent software, where parallel tasks communicate either via shared variables or message passing, are becoming increasingly important.  As the interdependencies of such tasks are unmanageable by hand, there is a strong demand for techniques that can assure the software's correctness. This project will propose, implement and evaluate new verification techniques and algorithms based on model checking; first steps in this direction are already taken by ongoing extensions to the OCaml-based McScM framework (https://altarica.labri.fr/forge/projects/mcscm/), which have been applied successfully for verifying web services and other communicating systems. Thus, besides a strong focus on research, the advertised position is also tied to the implementation and maintenance of verification tools and frameworks, and the conduct of case studies. 


Your background and experience

A strong background in the foundations of Computer Science is required, such as evidenced by an upper class Masters degree in Computer Science or a closely related disipline.  A good knowledge of and practical experience with modern programming languages (e.g., OCaml, C++/C# or Java) is also required.  The ideal candidate will have some background in formal methods, theoretical computer science (e.g., automata theory and graph transformation systems), as well as knowledge of concurrent and asynchronous programming languages and APIs (e.g., Grand Central Dispatch, node.js, OpenMP, Erlang).  

Applicants are expected to be fluent in spoken and written English – some knowledge of German is desirable – and to support the group's teaching in software engineering and programming languages (up to 5 hours per semester week).


Further information and how to apply

If you wish to apply, please send your informative CV including copies of transcripts and awarded degrees plus a cover letter outlining your background and research interests to info@swt-bamberg.de. 

You can address any questions to Dr. Alexander Heußner by using the same email address, and find out additional information about Bamberg's Software Technologies Research Group on its website located at http://www.uni-bamberg.de/en/swt/.