PhD position within joint Doctoral College Logical Methods in Computer Science (LogiCS) at TU Wien, Vienna, focused on Formal Methods for large-scale, spatially-distributed, stochastic systems

The Institute of Computer Engineering at Technische Universität Wien (TU Wien) is seeking a candidate for a research assistant position (PhD student, 4 years). The position is available from September (a starting date until Fall 2019 is intended) and the successful candidate will be a PhD student of the LogiCS Doctoral Program and she/he will be supervised by Prof. Ezio Bartocci and co-supervised by Dr. Laura Nenzi.

The successful applicant will carry out his/her PhD in the research area of formal methods applied to the specification and monitor of large-scale, spatially-distributed, stochastic systems. The position in funded by the ÖAW and the FWF for the recently acquired YIRG grant: “High-dimensional statistical learning: new methods to advance economic and sustainability policies”, an interdisciplinary project to be led for the TU part by PhD Laura Nenzi.

TASK DESCRIPTION (leader Laura Nenzi):    

Formal methods provide precise formal specification languages that can be easily interpreted by humans and verification algorithms that can check in an automatic way the value of satisfaction of interesting properties. One of the main problems of such techniques is the curse of dimensionality. A possibility to treat the problem is to use approximate methods such as statistical model checking. However, even these methodologies can be unfeasible for very-large-scale stochastic systems. A new research line consists of exploiting machine learning techniques and Bayesian inference to identify relevant data and decrease the computational cost, permitting the application of such powerful formal analysis on very complex systems. An important aspect that will be covered in the study is the spatial configuration of such systems, a key feature in several real case studies that are considering in the project. The methodology will be principally applied to tackle questions related to sustainable urban mobility and thus responsible consumption.     

APPLICATION

Please submit your application following  the instructions in the DK LogiCS admission portal. https://logic-cs.at/phd/admission/, by indicating in the application form: Prof. Ezio Bartocci and Dr. Laura Nenzi as supervisors. While it is not necessary to have the Master degree at the moment of the application, it is instead mandatory to complete it before starting the PhD.

Deadline: August 31, 2019

CONTACT DETAILS

For further information and inquiries about this post please contact Laura Nenzi, e-mail: laura.nenzi AT gmail.com