Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Friday, June 11, 2010

Sweden: PhD student in Security and Privacy of Social Networks

Application deadline: June 28, 2010
Employer's reference number: D-2010-0248


KTH The School of Computer Science and Communication (CSC) seeks a PhD student in Security and Privacy of Social Networks.

KTH is the largest technical university in Sweden. Education and research cover a broad spectrum within natural sciences and engineering, as well as architecture, industrial engineering and management, urban planning, work science and environmental engineering. KTH has 6,955 full-time equivalent students at Bachelor (first) level, 5,545 at Master (second) level, 1,314 at doctoral studies (third) level and 3,900 employees.

CSC is one of Sweden’s most advanced and successful research and education institutions in Information Technology at KTH and Stockholm University. The activities of the school focus on higher education and research within the traditional core areas of numerical analysis and computer science; from theory building and analysis of mathematical models to algorithm construction, implementation and simulation. Other core areas of growing importance are technology and methods for the support of human communication and computer mediated cooperation over distances in time and space. The applied research includes scientific computing, computer science, computer vision, robotics, neuroinformatics and neural networks, human-computer interaction, media technology and graphic arts, and communication through speech, language and music.

For more information see

The Department of Theoretical Computer Science (TCS) offers a stimulating research environment in a range of topics such as complexity theory and approximation algorithms, computer and network security, cryptography, programming languages, and formal methods. Security and safety of computer and network based systems has been identified as an area of strategic importance.


Online Social Networks like Facebook, MySpace, Xing, etc. have become extremely popular. Yet they have some limitations that we want to overcome for a next generation of social networks: privacy concerns and requirements of Internet connectivity, both of which are due to web-based applications on a central site whose owner has access to all data. To overcome these limitations, we envision a paradigm shift from a client-server to a peer-to-peer infrastructure coupled with encryption so that users keep control of their data and can use the social network also locally, without Internet access. This shift gives rise to many research questions intersecting areas such as networking, security, distributed systems, and social network analysis - leading to a better understanding of how technology can support social interactions. For more details see the PeerSoN project page at


The goal of this PhD project is to develop and evaluate security and privacy mechanisms for decentralized social networks in particular and for provider-independent personal communications in general.


The candidate will join a collaborative project with researchers located at KTH, NTU Singapore, EPFL Lausanne, and T-Labs Berlin.


This is a four-year, time-limited position and normally includes 20% departmental duties, usually teaching. Research/doctoral students must be registered at KTH. The starting date is open for discussion, though ideally we would like the successful candidate to start as soon as possible.


Employment

Form of employment: Time-limited
Work time: Full time
Start date: According to agreement
The salary follows the directions provided by KTH
Number of positions: 1


Qualifications

The applicant is expected to have a strong background and interest in computer science, including subjects such as security, cryptography, networking, distributed systems, and game theory.

Applicants must be strongly motivated for doctoral studies, possess the ability to work independently and perform critical analysis as well as possessing good levels of cooperative and communicative abilities.

To address its varied work, KTH aims to employ a diversity of talent and thus welcomes applicants who will add to the variety of the University, especially as concerns its gender structure.

Application

Application deadline: June 28, 2010
Employer's reference number: D-2010-0248

Applications should contain a letter where the applicants describe themselves, their qualifications, and interests. They should also contain a Curriculum Vitae, grade transcripts, copies of the applicant’s Master thesis and/or publications, and names and addresses of two references. Applicants about to finish their M.Sc. degrees may be considered for the position.

Applications via email to:

Write reference number in the email subject. (CV, etc should be sent as an attachment preferably pdf-files.)

Alternatively applications by ordinary post to be sent to:

KTH, CSC
att. Susanne Bergman
Lindstedtsvägen 3, plan 4
SE-100 44 Stockholm
Sweden

Source: KTH Website

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Germany: 4 PhD Scholarship in Natural and Artificial Cognitive Systems

Cross-modal Interaction in Natural and Artificial Cognitive Systems funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG), the State of Hamburg, and the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China, is seeking highly qualified and motivated candidates for

4 Doctoral Student Positions at the University of Hamburg beginning June 1st, 2010, or later.

The IRTG-CINACS offers a 3-year doctoral programme based at the University of Hamburg and at Tsinghua University, Beijing. The dissertation projects will be carried out at the University of Hamburg. A part (up to 6 months) of the studies will be performed at Tsinghua University. The interdisciplinary programme provides exciting research opportunities for research on multis­ensory perception and cross-modal information processing.

Three of the positions are available at the Department of Informatics of the University of Hamburg: One of them ( B2_project_description (13.92 kB) or B4_project_description (13.38 kB)) concerns a research project on cognitively plausible architectures of language comprehension and language production in a multi-modal environment. Special emphasis is placed on multimodal communication and representation for human-computer interaction. The required qualifications are: comprehensive knowledge of artificial intelligence, (computational) linguistics or human-computer interaction, being interested in interdisciplinary research with the computer scientists, linguists, psychologists and neuro-scientists.

The two other positions ( A6 A7 Wermter Cinacs projects (61.95 kB)) at the Department of Informatics focus on projects in neural network robotics. We are particularly interested in working towards 1) multimodal integration and 2) sound localisation within an attractive humanoid robot scenario where humanoid robots interact with humans based on multimodal information. The required qualifications are: knowledge of artificial intelligence, neural networks or robotics and an interest to work in an interdisciplinary neuroscience, computing and robotics environment.

One position ( B1_project_description (13.8 kB)) is available at the Department of Psychology of the University of Hamburg. It concerns multimodal integration in perception and action. The required qualifications are: comprehensive knowledge and interests in experimental psychology and cognitive neurosciences. Programming skills (Matlab / C) are of advantage.

Conditions
The scholarship currently provides 1468 EUR per month and is not subject to federal income tax. Additional benefits include family allowance (where applicable), travel funding, support for carrying out experiments, and an additional monthly allowance for the duration of the stay in China. The scholarships are awarded for a period of 2 years with a possible extension of one additional year. For further details see
http://www.dfg.de/forschungsfoerderung/koordinierte_programme/graduiertenkollegs/int_gk/
Requirements
  • Applicants must hold a Master's degree, or equivalent ("Diplom" or "Medizinisches Staatsexamen") in computer science, electronic engineering, computational linguistics, psychology, cognitive sciences or biology. Female applicants are particularly welcome. Successful applicants for a scholarship
  • are fluent in English (Language test not obligatory)
  • are willing to participate in the exchange programme between the University of Hamburg and Tsinghua University (participation in joint activities, research visit to Tsinghua University for up to 6 months)
  • are interested in advanced interdisciplinary research in the field of multi-modal processes.

Application Please send the following documents with your application:
Curriculum vitae (English)

  • List of publications
  • Copies of university certificates
  • Copy of your Language Test Certificate (e.g., TOEFL, if applicable)
  • Copy of your passport (for non-German applicants)
  • Description of your prior studies and scientific training, and
  • a one-page statement of interest with specific reference to one, at most two of the announced doctoral thesis topics (as described in the pdf project descriptions linked in the text above), listed in the order of preference.

Please address your application by email with scans of your documents, to: cinacs@informatik.uni-hamburg.de

Please do not send any original documents at this stage. If you have any questions please contact us by cinacs@informatik.uni-hamburg.de

Source: http://www.informatik.uni-hamburg.de/WTM/jobs.shtml