Ledig stilling på Universitetet i Oslo

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PhD Research Fellowship in Programming Language Theory and Formal Methods

Deadline: 26.04.2019

Job description

Universitetet i Oslo

The University of Oslo is Norway’s oldest and highest rated institution of research and education with 28 000 students and 7000 employees. Its broad range of academic disciplines and internationally esteemed research communities make UiO an important contributor to society.


The Department of Informatics (IFI) is one of nine departments belonging to the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences.


IFI is Norway’s largest university department for general education and research in Computer Science and related topics.


The Department has more than 1400 students on bachelor level, 600 master students, and over 240 PhDs and postdocs. The overall staff of the Department is close to 370 employees, about 280 of these in full time positions. The full time scientific staff is 75, mostly Full/Associate Professors.

Flere stillinger fra Universitetet i Oslo

A position as PhD Research Fellow in programming language theory and formal methods is available at the Department of Informatics, University of Oslo.

The fellowship will be for a period of 3 years with no compulsory work. Starting date is flexible, but no later than June 2019.

No one can be appointed for more than one PhD Research Fellowship period at the University of Oslo.Starting date no later than 01.10.2019.

More about the position

The position is funded by the ADAPt project, a Young Research Talent’s project from the Research Council of Norway. The PhD project will be conducted in the SIRIUS Center, a dynamic and international research environment with relevant industry connections for Research-Driven Innovation (SFI) at the University of Oslo, and in the Formal Methods research group.

The main focus of this PhD project will be to develop novel static analysis techniques and formal methods for big data applications. The main objective of this project is to devise static techniques to improve data locality in parallel data processing and make use of the statically inferred information for application-specific data management strategies to improve the performance of highly parallelized applications running on scalable architectures and accessing large amounts of data.

The planned PhD research includes the formal description of data access as abstract structures, which describe how computational tasks interact with memory and to investigate the usage of these structures for memory allocation and for job scheduling, to improve locality of data access in scalable architectures such NUMA-machines.

To explore and investigate these ideas, the project will combine formal methods for parallel systems and foundational research in programming language theory, aiming to develop new techniques for improving data locality and to demonstrate the relevance of these techniques by means of experimental proof of concept. The proposed approach has the potential to open completely new directions for managing data processing on parallel architectures. The outcomes of this PhD project will enable practical data management strategies for data allocation and job scheduling to be designed and compared in a systematic way.

The PhD fellow will collaborate with project participants at Imperial College London, CWI – Amsterdam and Oxford University, with possibility of research stays at these institutions. The PhD fellow will also collaborate with Sirius industrial partners such Numascale. These collaborations will give the student the experience of participating in an international research environment.

SIRIUS is a Center for Research-Driven Innovation (SFI) in University of Oslo involving both academic research teams (UiO, NTNU and Oxford University) as well as industrial partners (e.g., Equinor, Schlumberger, DNV GL, Numascale, Computas, Evry, IBM). The Formal Methods group researches on systematic techniques to analyze the behavior of software/system executions using models. The ADAPt project aims to contribute to the Center with systematic techniques for scalable data access using static analysis.

For more information about the project, see here.

Qualification requirements

The Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences has a strategic ambition of being a leading research faculty. Candidates for these fellowships will be selected in accordance with this, and expected to be in the upper segment of their class with respect to academic credentials.

  • Master’s degree or equivalent in a relevant field of computer science or informatics such as formal methods, programming language theory, or high performance computing.
  • A solid background in theoretical computer science is required.
  • Foreign completed degree (M.Sc.-level) corresponding to a minimum of four years in the Norwegian educational system
  • Good knowledge on algorithms, formal methods, programing language theory and parallel software development skills and experiences will be considered an advantage when candidates are ranked.

Applicants should submit a statement of research interests indicating why this PhD topic fits their interest/background. This statement of research interest should not exceed one page.

Grade requirements:

The norm is as follows:

  • the average grade point for courses included in the Bachelor’s degree must be C or better in the Norwegian educational system
  • the average grade point for courses included in the Master’s degree must be B or better in the Norwegian educational system
  • the Master’s thesis must have the grade B or better in the Norwegian educational system
  • Fluent oral and written communication skills in English

http://www.mn.uio.no/english/research/phd/application/application.html

We offer

  • salary NOK 449 900 – 505 800 per annum depending on qualifications in a position as PhD Research fellow, (position code 1017)
  • attractive welfare benefits and a generous pension agreement, in addition to Oslo’s family-friendly environment with its rich opportunities for culture and outdoor activities

How to apply

The application must include

  • Application letter, including a statement of research interests indicating why this PhD position fits the interest/background of the applicant.
  • cv (summarizing education, positions and academic work - scientific publications)
  • copies of the original Bachelor and Master’s degree diploma, transcripts of records
  • letters of recommendation
  • documentation of English proficiency for International applicants
  • list of publications and academic work that the applicant wishes to be considered by the evaluation committee
  • names and contact details of 2-3 references (name, relation to candidate, e-mail and telephone number)

The application with attachments must be delivered in our electronic recruiting system, please follow the link “Apply for this job”. Foreign applicants are advised to attach an explanation of their University's grading system. Please note that all documents should be in English (or a Scandinavian language).

Applicants may be called in for an interview.

Formal regulations

Please see the guidelines and regulations for appointments to Research Fellowships at the University of Oslo.

The purpose of the fellowship is research training leading to the successful completion of a PhD degree.

The fellowship requires admission to the PhD programme at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. The application to the PhD programme must be submitted to the department no later than two months after taking up the position. For more information see:

http://www.mn.uio.no/english/research/phd/

According to the Norwegian Freedom and Information Act (Offentleglova) information about the applicant may be included in the public applicant list, also in cases where the applicant has requested non-disclosure.

The University of Oslo has an agreement for all employees, aiming to secure rights to research results etc.

The University of Oslo aims to achieve a balanced gender composition in the workforce and to recruit people with ethnic minority backgrounds.

Contact information

  • Senior Researcher Silvia Lizeth Tapia Tarifa, phone: +47 22840852, e-mail: sltarifa@ifi.uio.no

For technical questions regarding the recruitment system, please contact HR Adviser Torunn Standal Guttormsen, +47 22 85 42 72, t.s.guttormsen@mn.uio.no

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