PhD Position in Human-Robot Teamwork @ Delft University of Technology

At Delft University of Technology, we are looking for a PhD candidate with a background in computer science/Artificial Intelligence, experience with semantic web languages and ontology design, and experience with human-robot interaction. 

Faculty/department Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science
Level Master degree
Maximum employment Maximum of 38 hours per week (1 FTE)
Duration of contract 4 years
Salary scale €2174 to €2779 per month gross

The PhD project is part of the EU project Long-Term Human-Robot Teaming for Robot-Assisted Disaster Response (TRADR; seehttp://www.tradr-project.eu/). 

Using a human-centred design methodology, we develop decision support for human-robot teams to assist in disaster response efforts over multiple sorties during a mission. Semantic web technologies will be used to make the experience of the team persistent and to support establishing situation awareness within a team of human operators and robots over multiple, possibly asynchronous sorties. An ontological knowledge base and agent-based reasoning mechanisms are being developed to harmonise the team's work and information processes with the available human-robot resources and the dynamic context of these sorties. 

The focus of the PhD will be on the development of tools to enhance team awareness and to support coordination of the human-robot team. Part of the work will therefore involve developing the display logic of a user interface for exchanging and sharing information within the team. The situational awareness tools and components will be integrated into the cognitive agent framework that supports coordination of the team. The goal of this work is to establish a more seamless interaction between robots and humans in human-robot teamwork situations. 

Deadline for application May 31. 

Please visit http://ii.tudelft.nl/?q=node/8201 for more information on how to apply. 

PhD positions in Machine Learning & Vision and for Human-Robot

The Idiap Research Institute (www.idiap.ch), a laboratory associated with  EPFL  (Swiss Federal  Institute  of  Technology, Lausanne,www.epfl.ch) seeks qualified candidates in computer vision and machine learning for multi-modal interaction modeling.

Context:The research will be conducted in the context of MuMMER (MultiModal Mall Entertainment Robot), a 4-year EU Horizon 2020 funded project involving several leading European institutions in the field. The project will develop a humanoid robot (based on Aldebaran's Pepper platform) able to engage and interact autonomously and naturally with individuals or groups or people. To support this behaviour, the project consortium will develop and integrate new methods from audiovisual scene processing, social-signal processing, high-level action selection, and human-aware robot navigation. See
http://www.mummer-project.eu/


PhD  position and requirements:The research conducted at Idiap will focus on the sensing part, but with an HRI flavor, like better accounting for robot gestures, active sensing to reduce perception uncertainties or exploiting soft priors coming from communication and dialog models, etc. Within a team of two to three PhD students/postdocs, the PhD student is expected to advance the state-of-the-art in this field. The work will be oriented towards vision/depth processing, and the modeling of upper-body and face representation for the design of head detectors/trackers, landmark or eye alignements, or non-verbal behavior extraction methods appropriate at different depth ranges like for gaze (see for instance prior work inhttp://www.idiap.ch/project/g3e/).

These work will rely on previous experience ans software developed in the context of previous projects.

The ideal Ph.D student should have a master in computer science, engineering, or applied mathematics. S/he should have a good background in mathematics, statistics, and programming (C/C++, Python). Prior experience or background in statistical learning theory, computer vision or robotics will be a plus.

The successful PhD candidate will become a doctoral student at EPFL (http://www.epfl.ch) provided that s/he is accepted by the Doctoral School at EPFL (http://phd.epfl.ch/applicants). Appointment for the PhD position is for a maximum of 4 years. Annual gross salary ranges from 48,000 CHF (first year) to 52,000 CHF (last year). The starting date is as early as possible.

Application:For more information, please contact Dr Jean-Marc Odobez (odobez@idiap.ch, www.idiap.ch/~odobez). Interested candidates should submit a cover letter, a detailed CV, and the names of three references (or recommendation letters).

About IDIAP:Idiap is an independent, non-profit research institute recognized and supported by the Swiss Government, and affiliated with the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). It is located in the town of Martigny in Valais, a scenic region in the south of Switzerland, surrounded by the highest mountains of Europe, and offering exciting recreational activities, including hiking, climbing and skiing, as well as varied cultural activities. It is within close proximity to Geneva and Lausanne. Although Idiap is located in the French part of Switzerland, English is the working language. Free French lessons are provided.

Idiap offers competitive salaries and conditions at all levels in a young, dynamic, and multicultural environment. Idiap is an equal opportunity employer and is actively involved in the "Advancement of Women in Science" European initiative.

Ph.D. Position in Security Modeling at IRISA in Rennes, France

IRISA, the computer science laboratory of Rennes in France, seeks to hire an outstanding Ph.D. student to perform research in the field of formal modeling and analysis of security. The position is within the project entitled
"Attack-Defense Trees for Computer Security: Formal Modeling of Preventive and Reactive Countermeasures".

Description of work---------------------
Attack-defense trees constitute a methodology to represent how an attacker may compromise a system and how a defender can protect it against potential attacks. The project's objective is to increase the expressive power of
attack-defense trees by integrating reactive countermeasures into the formalism.

The main tasks of the Ph.D. student will be to
- Develop mathematical foundations for attack-defense trees distinguishing
  between protective and reactive countermeasures;
- Propose quantitative evaluation techniques for attack-defense trees with
  protective and reactive countermeasures;
- Validate the extended model in real-life case studies performed in collaboration
  with industry;
- Co-supervise master students.

A detailed description of the thesis topic is available at
http://people.irisa.fr/Barbara.Kordy/vacancies.php

Candidate's profile--------------------
The candidate is expected to have:
- A Master degree in computer science or mathematics;
- A proven interest in formal methods and formal modeling;
- Excellent written and oral English skills.

Background in computer security will be a plus. Knowledge of French is not required.

Work environment

-----------------
We offer a three year appointment funded by the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research. The successful candidate will participate in the activities of the Embedded Security and Cryptography (EMSEC) research team (http://www.irisa.fr/emsec/) co-led by Prof. Dr. Gildas Avoine and Prof. Dr. Pierre-Alain Fouque. The student will be supervised jointly by Dr. Barbara Kordy (http://people.irisa.fr/Barbara.Kordy/) and Prof. Gildas Avoine (http://www.avoine.net/).

IRISA (https://www.irisa.fr/en) is located in Rennes at the heart of the beautiful Brittany region in the north-west of France. Rennes is situated 60km from the Atlantic Ocean, 60km from the UNESCO World Heritage Site of
Mont Saint-Michel, and 70km from the charming city of Saint Malo. Direct high-speed rail service (TGV) connects Rennes with the center of Paris within 2 hours and with the France's largest international airport Paris Charles de Gaulle (CDG) within 3 hours.

Application---------------
Applications should be written in English and include the following documents:
- Motivation letter clearly explaining the candidate's interest in the proposed
  topic and his/her fit to the position;
- Curriculum Vitae (including contact information, education and work experience,
  short description of the master thesis, list of publications, etc.);
- Transcript of grades from all university-level courses taken;
- Contact information for 2 referees.

Applications will be considered on a rolling basis until the position is filled. Documents should be submitted by e-mail to Dr. Barbara Kordy (barbara.kordy@irisa.fr).

PhD Studentship on Big Data Graph Analysis at Paris Dauphine University - LAMSADE

A PhD project proposal is available at Paris Dauphine University, LAMSADE, on topics related to the efficient and safe querying of big data graphs by means of static and dynamic analysis.

This PhD proposal has been considered as a priority in order to obtain financial support from the French Ministry of Higher Education and Research (MESR). Prospective students are invited to contact Prof. Dario Colazzo (dario.colazzo@dauphine.com) and Dr. Khalid Belhajjame (Khalid.Belhajjame@dauphine.fr) for more details about the project, and to send a cover letter, full CV, grades, and eventually published articles, for applications, not later than 15 May, 2016.

Candidates are expected to have a MS degree in Computer Science or equivalent with very good results, and a solid knowledge of database systems and programming languages. Knowledge of the french language is not mandatory.

7 PhD position at the University of Osnabrück, Germany

The DFG Research Training Group "Combinatorial Structures in Geometry” at the University of Osnabrück invites applications for 7 Positions for PhD Candidates

Starting from October 1st, 2016. All positions are within the TV-L E 13 German public sector pay scale. The PhD positions are offered at a 75 % base, the contracts will be for a duration of 2 ½ years and are planned to be extended to 3 years. 

The central research idea behind the Research Training Group concerns the interaction of combinatorics and geometry as well as the collaboration between researchers from different disciplines, such as commutative algebra, combinatorial optimization, harmonic analysis, homotopy theory, K-theory, and stochastic geometry. For further information we refer towww.mathematik.uni-osnabrueck.de/graduiertenkolleg.

Description of Responsibilities within the PhD Positions:

• Cooperation in the research activities of the Research Training Group
• The position offers the possibility to pursue a doctorate degree

Required Qualifications for the PhD Positions:

• Applicants for the PhD positions should hold an excellent master/diploma degree in mathematics or computer science
• Good English language skills are mandatory
• PhD candidates should finish their dissertation within the time frame of 3 years

As a certified family-friendly institution, the University of Osnabrück is committed to furthering the compatibility between work/studies and family life.

Applications should include the relevant documents (curriculum vitae, list of publications, certificates of academic qualifications), a reference letter written by a professor and an accompanying statement mentioning one or several research projects the applicant wants to work on. Applications should be sent via email in PDF format to the spokesman of the Research Training Group, Prof. Dr. Matthias Reitzner ( gkmath@uni-osnabrueck.de) by May 19th, 2016.

Further information will be furnished by Prof. Dr. Matthias Reitzner (matthias.reitzner@uni-osnabrueck.de)

Two PhD positions: clinical neuroscience and machine learning

Two PhD positions at the intersection between clinical neuroscience and machine learning

"Statistical-learning approaches to structure and function in schizophrenia"

In an innovative approach, we will investigate the neurobiological aberrations in schizophrenia that underlie disturbed thinking, speech, and behavior. Although agnostic to one specific psychological process, we have a special interest in altered social-affective processes in schizophrenic individuals because these cognitive skills set human beings apart from other species. We will use data-driven methods that formally extracts patterns in large datasets with a minimum of a-priori assumptions. Completion of this PhD program allows you to become part of the badly needed new generation of computationally trained imaging neuroscientists.

What you would work on
- Work on neuroimaging questions in psychiatry that matter with multivariate statistical tools applicable beyond imaging neuroscience.

- We aim at the characterization of the neurobiology of schizophrenia neurobiology from the perspective of brain area and network architectures. We will perform clustering algorithms and network decomposition for dimensionality reduction. The feature-engineered data will form the basis for unsupervised structure discovery (e.g.,MDS, t-SNE), supervised classification (e.g., support vector machines), brain-behavior analyses (e.g., Lasso/Ridge/ElasticNet regression analyses), and resting-state connectivity analyses (e.g., group-sparse covariance estimation).

- The multi-modal analyses will be performed on structural (voxel-based morphometry) and functional (resting-state data) from a Europe-wide datasets (n=~500) from eight different psychiatric
clinics.

- This position is an excellent opportunity to learn how to combine
clinical neuroscience and recently emerged statistical techniques.


What we expect
- High motivation for inter-disciplinary challenges

- An analytical, problem-solving mindset

- MSc or equivalent in computer science, physics, biomedical
engineering, psychology, medicine or biology (natural-science-related
background is preferred)

- Experience with programming is a big plus (especially in Python)

- Fluent in written and oral English language


What we provide
We provide funding for two three-year PhD position. One position is available starting from 1st May 2016 and one position is available starting from 1st July 2016. Applications will be considered until the position is filled. Payment will correspond to salary grade 13/2 of the German Collective Bargaining Agreement for the Civil Services (65% TVL-13, http://bit.ly/1Rf8TjY). The position are funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the START-Program of the Faculty of
Medicine, RWTH Aachen.

This academic environment offers structured PhD training and close interdisciplinary interactions in the context of the "International Research Training Group" with the University of Pennsylvania, USA.

www.irtg2150.rwth-aachen.de

The project will be conducted in collaboration with Parietal group atNeurospin, France, (Bertrand Thirion) and cognitive neuroscience group at the Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany (Simon Eickhoff).


Application

Send CV, motivation letter, and contact details of two academic referees to Prof. Dr. Dr. Danilo Bzdok (danilo.bzdok@rwth-aachen.de)

Department of Psychiatry, Psychotherapy, and Psychosomatics
RWTH Aachen University, Germany