Thursday, December 15, 2011

PhD and Research Programmer Openings at Rice and Texas A&M

New announcements have just been posted for four PhD positions and one research programer positions funded by a new NSF project lead by Professor Taha.  The positions are hosted by Rice and Texas A&M Universities, but participants will spend significant periods of time at Halmstad University.  Please forward these announcements to strong candidates.  Note that the two deadlines are as early as January 6th.

Research Programmer in Computer Science at Rice

Major technical challenges get in the way of developing novel cyber-physical systems (CPS). Overcoming these challenges can significantly accelerate the design process. A new NSF CPS project on Robot Design is building foundations and tools to achieve this goal for novel robotics applications. The project focuses on issues relating to modeling hybrid (continuous/discrete) systems and model validation. The project, which is a close collaboration between Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering at Rice University, Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M, and Halmstad University in Sweden, will develop and validate foundations, methods, and tools for the modeling and simulation of hybrid and cyber-physical systems.

The project has an opening a research programmer with Professor Taha at Rice University. The successful candidates will work closely a team of four professors and four PhD students working on various aspects of this project, contributing and coordinating the development of the Acumen modeling language for the purposes of this project.

Applicants for this position must have strong skills and interest in programming language design and theory; functional programming; and test-driven development.  Excellent communication and collaboration skills are required as the student will be expected to work as part of a large, international research team investigating modeling languages. Priority will be given to applicants who already hold a doctoral degree in Computer Science or Mechanical Engineering, but applicants with suitable skills and interests who hold a doctorate in Mathematics, Physics, or Electrical Engineering are also encouraged to apply. Desirable experience includes working interval and enclosure methods, exact real arithmetic, domain theory, operational semantics, formal verification, differential equations, hybrid/impulsive differential equations, and mechanical hardware design and control, especially in the context of robotics. Desirable skills include facility with Scala, Java, Haskell, OCaml, ML, Scheme, Mathematica, Maple, OpenGL, Matlab, Simulink, the Open Dynamics Engine (ODE), or other modeling and simulation tools.

The position is for one year, renewable to two years, and is subject to the availability of funding. The successful applicant will spend part of their time in Halmstad, Sweden (50%) as part of the collaboration and must be ready to start the position by May or June 2012.

The deadline for applications is January 15th, 2012. Application for this position should be sent directly to Professor Taha by email. The title of the email should be (without quotes) "Application for Robot Design Research Programmer Position". The application should consist of one, self-contained PDF attachment. The application should include 1) a brief cover letter including motivation for the application, 2) a CV, and 3) a list of names of references. It is also suggested that the application include online pointers to previous publications or software produced by the applicant.

Doctoral (PhD) student in mechanical engineering at Texas A&M

Major technical challenges get in the way of developing novel cyber-physical systems (CPS). Overcoming these challenges can significantly accelerate the design process. A new NSF CPS project on Robot Design is building foundations and tools to achieve this goal for novel robotics applications. The project focuses on issues relating to modeling hybrid (continuous/discrete) systems and model validation. The project, which is a close collaboration between Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering at Rice University, Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M, and Halmstad University in Sweden, will develop and validate foundations, methods, and tools for the modeling and simulation of hybrid and cyber-physical systems.

The project has an opening for a Mechanical Engineering doctoral (PhD) student with Professor Ames at the University of Texas A&M. The student's dissertation will focus modeling and simulation of lower-limb robots and will involve the evaluation and development of new technologies for modeling and simulation of such systems. The successful candidate will work closely with Computer Scientists developing new computational tools to support modeling and simulation.

Applicants for must have strong skills and interest in mechanics, control theory, rigid body dynamics, and robotics.  Excellent communication and collaboration skills are required as the student will be expected to work as part of a large, international research team investigating modeling languages. Priority will be given to applicants with a masters in Mechanical or Electrical Engineering, but students with suitable skills and interests who hold a masters in Mathematics, Physics, or Computer Science are also encouraged to apply. Desirable experience includes working differential equations, hybrid/impulsive differential equations, or with mechanical hardware design and control, especially in the context of robotics and upper limb rehabilitation robots. Desirable skills include facility with Mathematica, Maple, Matlab, Simulink, the Open Dynamics Engine (ODE), or other modeling and
simulation tools.

Selected students are will spend part of their time in Halmstad, Sweden (25%) as part of the collaboration and must be ready to start the position by May or June 2012.

The deadline for applications is March 1st. Application for these positions is done through the on-line application form. Your application (and in particular your Research Statement) must make it clear that  your are applying for a PhD position with Professor Ames on the Robot Design project.

Two Doctoral (PhD) students in Computer Science at Rice University

Major technical challenges get in the way of developing novel cyber-physical systems (CPS). Overcoming these challenges can significantly accelerate the design process. A new NSF
CPS project on Robot Design is building foundations and tools to achieve this goal for novel robotics applications. The project focuses on issues relating to modeling hybrid (continuous/discrete) systems and model validation. The project, which is a close collaboration between Computer Science and Mechanical Engineering at Rice University, Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M, and Halmstad University in Sweden, will develop and validate foundations, methods, and tools for the modeling and simulation of hybrid and cyber-physical systems.

The project has an opening for two Computer Science doctoral (PhD) student with Professor Taha at Rice University. Each student's dissertation work will have distinct technical focus. One will focus on developing the meta-theory for relating user-level descriptions of mechanical systems, mathematical equations describing the behavior of such systems, and the simulation codes needed to solve these equations.  The other will focus on developing methods for the simulation of hybrid systems, including zero-crossing and Zeno behavior. The succesful candidates will work closely with Mechanical engineerings who are working on modeling and simulation of new experimental robots.  The engineers will use and evaluate the results of the work of the PhD students.

Applicants for this position must have strong skills and interest in programming language design and theory; functional programming; and test-driven development.  Excellent communication and collaboration skills are required as the student will be expected to work as part of a large, international research team investigating modeling languages. Priority will be given to applicants with a masters in Computer Science or Electrical Engineering, but students with suitable skills and interests who hold a masters in Mathematics, Physics, or Mechanical Engineering are also encouraged to apply. Desirable experience includes working with interval and enclosure methods, exact real arithmetic, domain theory, operational semantics, formal verification, differential equations, hybrid/impulsive differential equations, and mechanical hardware design and control, especially in the context of robotics. Desirable skills include facility with Scala, Java, Haskell, OCaml, ML, Scheme, Mathematica, Maple, OpenGL, Matlab, Simulink, the Open Dynamics Engine (ODE), or other modeling and simulation tools.

Selected students are will spend part of their time in Halmstad, Sweden (50%) as part of the collaboration and must be ready to start the position by May or June 2012.

The deadline for applications is January 6th, 2012 January 16th, 2012 (Rice Computer Science extended the deadline). Application for these positions is done through the on-line application form. Your application (and in particular your Research Statement) must make it clear that your are applying for a PhD position with Professor Taha on the Robot Design project.