UK : University of Oxford Two fully funded D.Phil positions

euHeart: Personalised & Integrated Cardiac Care

Oxford University Computing Laboratory

Applications are invited for two, 3-year, DPhil studentships funded under the project “euHeart,” within the Computational Biology Group at Oxford University’s Computing Laboratory. The aim is to develop multiscale, electromechanical models of the heart to guide the optimisation of clinical therapies such as cardiac resynchronisation therapy. Such therapies are utilized to treat the progression of congestive heart failure, which continues to be a growing problem affecting up to 4 million people in the European Union and nearly 15 million people worldwide. The research will involve working within an interdisciplinary team involving engineers, clinicians and mathematicians.

The studentships are fully funded (at EU fees level – overseas candidates will need supplementary funding) for three years from October 2008 and include stipends of £12,940 per year, as well as provision for travel to conferences.

Candidates must satisfy the usual requirements for taking on doctoral study at Oxford (please refer to http://web.comlab.ox.ac.uk/oucl/prospective/dphil/dphil-criteria.pdf), as well as meet the following, essential, criteria:

1. A degree in Bio-medical Engineering, Mathematical Biology, Applied Mathematics, Physics or Computer Science is required.
2. Demonstrated ability to develop mathematical algorithms in a modern computing environment (preferably one or more of Matlab/Fortan90/C++);
3. Willingness to work in biomedical computational modelling.
4. Ability to function productively in a team, with good English and general communication skills.

The closing date for applications for the DPhil Studentships will be 26th September, 2008.

Further information and details of the application process can be found here:
http://web.comlab.ox.ac.uk/oucl/prospective/dphil/nicsmithfurtherinfo.pdf

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Germany : RWTH Aachen University Doctoral Positions

Aachen Institute for Advanced Study in Computational Engineering Science

The Graduate School "Aachen Institute for Advanced Study in Computational Engineering Science (AICES)" at RWTH Aachen University announces open positions within its new doctoral program. Highly qualified students with Bachelor's and Master's level degrees and background in the fields of Mathematics, Computer Sciences, Engineering, and natural sciences are invited to apply.

As one of the leading technical universities in Europe, RWTH Aachen University has recently been awarded funding for all three lines within the Excellence Initiative of the German government. The graduate school AICES has been established as one of the programs.

AICES offers non-taxable stipends of up to 2000 Euros/mo., and a highly interdisciplinary research-oriented graduate program for very talented students, typically leading to a doctoral degree in three years (for MSc graduates), or 4 years (for BSc graduates). AICES brings together scientists from 15 RWTH institutes, from the Jülich super-computing Centre, and from the Max Planck Institute for Iron Research in Düsseldorf. Research projects are available in many areas of computational engineering sciences, applied mathematics, and computer science.

Please consult our website for details, regarding research topics and the application procedure:
http://www.aices.rwth-aachen.de
http://www.aices.rwth-aachen.de/admission

Further Details

UK : De Montfort University Full-Time PhD Studentship

School of Applied Social Sciences

Faculty of Health & Life Sciences

Applications are invited for a fully funded three-year PhD studentship starting in October 2008. The studentship includes a bursary of £12,600 per annum (tax-free) for three years and all tuition fees.

Candidates should hold a good first degree (at least an Upper-Second Class or equivalent) in a relevant subject area.

The Faculty of Health and Life Sciences has made available a number of post graduate bursaries, one of which has been allocated to the social sciences. The bursary provides tuition fees and generous subsistence funding to support your PhD study. Bursaries are offered on a competitive basis and it is anticipated that the successful candidate would commence study as early as possible in the autumn of 2008.

Any area of social science study will be considered, however the strengthening of current strategic areas of importance and critical mass in research suggests the following are most likely to meet with support:

- Social science and Disability Policy
- Social science, criminal/youth justice
- Social science and health (particularly health consumer diversity)
- Social science and youth/childhood

Any combination of underpinning social science disciplines would be acceptable, however we have the strongest supervisory standing in sociology, social policy, psychology and philosophy. We are an applied social science faculty and attention to the social outcomes of primary research would be welcomed. We do however value theoretical, epistemological and conceptual approaches to social and human science issues.

Applications are welcome from citizens from the EU and those with overseas status as well as those from UK. Candidates for whom English is not their first language should hold an English qualification at least equivalent to IELTS 6.5.

Enquiries should in the first instance go to the Research Office, De Montfort University, Leicester, LE1 9BH Telephone: 0116 2506309. Web: http://www.dmu.ac.uk/research/index.jsp

Closing Date: 26th September 2008

An application form may be downloaded from:
http://www.dmu.ac.uk/research/degrees/procedure.jsp

Applicants are requested to contact the office to receive a hardcopy admission pack and will need to provide a full CV with two supporting references. Please e-mail: researchstudents@dmu.ac.uk or call (0116) 2506309 to receive further details.

Ireland : University College Dublin PhD Studentship Advertisement 1

Model Validation By Fault Injection in Enterprise Systems

The Systems Research Group

UCD School of Computer Science and Informatics
UCD College of Engineering, Mathematical and Physical Sciences

The Systems Research Group is now seeking well-qualified, motivated PhD researchers who want to be part of the second phase of our development into a world-class research group in systems and software technology. The SRG focuses on the systems aspects of computer science: how individual components are created and composed to create large-scale, highly functional adaptive systems.

To date the group has secured over €5m in funding from a variety of sources in the areas of pervasive computing, visualisation, systems, software verification, software engineering, digital radio hardware, semantics and software tools. In addition the group works closely with industry partners such as IBM, Intel, Microsoft Research, Oracle, and Hewlett Packard.

Positions: (updated as positions are filled)

Start date: Monday, October 6th 2008.
Funding: Includes payment of fees, travel, equipment and a generous stipend.
Closing Date: 5pm on Friday, September 26th 2008.

• PhD Advertisement 1: Model validation by fault injection in Enterprise Systems
Supervisor: Professor Paddy Nixon, University College Dublin

Project: The context of this PhD studentship is a collaborative project between UCD and Oracle on automating fault recovery for large systems. We investigate here automatic fault recovery and the application of autonomic computing principles. Autonomic systems make, informed, constrained, decisions without human intervention. They enable dynamic self-management, self-protection and self-optimisation of software systems, in turn allowing software systems to react to their changing requirements of their environment. These systems collect and collate data from sensors in the environment, analyse the data's relevance to the system's current state and make decisions based on this information. These decisions are made based on models of the systems. Several models of the system can be considered to deal with different aspects: diagnostic, prediction of changes, configuration management, etc. This Ph.D will focus on validation of those models. In particular, validation of models for diagnosis using fault intrusion techniques will be mainly considered. Given a benchmark system and a model for diagnosis, this study aims to understand how to introduce appropriate failures in the system in order to observe its output and then validate the model.

Application Procedure:

Applicants for PhD Positions should have/expect to achieve at least a 2.1 in Computer Science, Electronic Engineering or a related discipline and possess a keen interest in research. Students need to have either have been educated to degree level through the medium of English or have TOEFL 600 (250) / IELTS 7 or equivalent. EU and international students are eligible.

To apply for this studentship, please email your CV and Cover Letter with the Title of the PhD for which they you applying in the ‘subject line' e.g. Subject: to both:

paddy.nixon at ucd.ie and benoit.gaudin at ucd.ie

For informal enquiries please Contact:

Name: Benoit Gaudin
Email: benoit.gaudin at ucd.ie
Telephone: (01) 716 5352

Further Details

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Ireland : University College Dublin PhD Studentship Advertisement 2

Automatic Model Design of Enterprise Systems

The Systems Research Group

UCD School of Computer Science and Informatics
UCD College of Engineering, Mathematical and Physical Sciences

The Systems Research Group is now seeking well-qualified, motivated PhD researchers who want to be part of the second phase of our development into a world-class research group in systems and software technology. The SRG focuses on the systems aspects of computer science: how individual components are created and composed to create large-scale, highly functional adaptive systems.

To date the group has secured over €5m in funding from a variety of sources in the areas of pervasive computing, visualisation, systems, software verification, software engineering, digital radio hardware, semantics and software tools. In addition the group works closely with industry partners such as IBM, Intel, Microsoft Research, Oracle, and Hewlett Packard.

Positions: (updated as positions are filled)

Start date: Monday, October 6th 2008.
Funding: Includes payment of fees, travel, equipment and a generous stipend.
Closing Date: 5pm on Friday, September 26th 2008.

• PhD Advertisement 2: Automatic Model Design of Enterprise Systems
Supervisor: Professor Paddy Nixon, University College Dublin

Project: The context of this PhD studentship is a collaborative project between UCD and Oracle on automating design of models for large systems. We investigate here the automatic design of models representing different aspects of large systems. These models can be used to apply autonomic computing principles. Autonomic systems make informed, constrained decisions without human intervention. They enable dynamic self-management, self-protection and self-optimisation of software systems, in turn allowing software systems to react to their changing requirements of their environment. These systems collect and collate data from sensors in the environment, analyse the data's relevance to the system's current state and make decisions based on this information. These decisions are made based on models of the systems. Several models of the system can be considered to deal with different aspects: diagnostic, prediction of changes, configuration management, etc.

This Ph.D work will focus on automatic models design from data collected by the system. For example, this data can be provided by log files, configuration files but also any type of information related to it and stored in Oracle's databases. This study aims to understand how to automatically generate relevant models. For non-satisfactory fully automatic techniques considering the available data, a study of how to collect more data as well as what type of data will be conducted.

Application Procedure:

Applicants for PhD Positions should have/expect to achieve at least a 2.1 in Computer Science, Electronic Engineering or a related discipline and possess a keen interest in research. Students need to have either have been educated to degree level through the medium of English or have TOEFL 600 (250) / IELTS 7 or equivalent. EU and international students are eligible.

To apply for this studentship, please email your CV and Cover Letter with the Title of the PhD for which they you applying in the ‘subject line' e.g. Subject: to both:

paddy.nixon at ucd.ie and benoit.gaudin at ucd.ie

For informal enquiries please Contact:

Name: Benoit Gaudin
Email: benoit.gaudin at ucd.ie
Telephone: (01) 716 5352

Further Details

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