PhD Position

 

University of Lugano, Switzerland

 

Software has a central role in modern society: Virtually all of todays industry depends critically on software either directly in the products or indirectly during the production.  However, the increasing role of software in society means that the consequences of programming errors can be catastrophic.  This has resulted in an increased interest in the industry towards formal approaches for increasing software reliability. One of the critical bottlenecks of adopting formal verification is that verifying complex software is computationally extremely expensive.  As the modern computing moves towards increasingly parallel environments such as multi-core CPUS, clusters, and clouds, it has become evident that for a verification approach to be successful it needs to use parallel computing resources efficiently.

The Formal Verification and Security group (verify.inf.usi.ch) of the Faculty of Informatics in the University of Lugano, Switzerland, is renowned for world leading research in the field of software verification.

 

We expect you to have solid skills in mathematics and theoretical computer science, as well as practical, system-level programming experience in languages such as C++. Prior experience with formal methods and formal verification is not a strong requirement though it is a plus.

Assistant Phd students have teaching duties. The classes are expected to be in the areas of computer architecture and system software. The teaching requirement includes support for courses and seminars. Both teaching and research is to be conducted in English.

Salaries of PhD student are highly competitive ~ CHF 44,000 / year (~ EUR 41,000, USD 44,000). Low taxes! There is travel funding in case of papers accepted at important conferences.

 

Additional questions and applications can be addressed to Professor Natasha Sharygina (natasha.sharygina@usi.ch). Applications should include a curriculum vitae, a research statement, and names of at least two persons (for instance teachers or employers) willing to write a recommendation letter.

 

Applicants must have a Master's degree or a Diploma in computer science or a related area. A Bachelor's degree is not sufficient. An excellent knowledge of English (both written and spoken) is required.