[TYPES/announce] Three PhD Positions in Computer Science at Uppsala University

[Tobias Wrigstad]

Three Open PhD Positions in Computer Science at Uppsala University
within the UPMARC Center of Excellence.

Especially the first position, Programming Languages for Parallel
Programming, should be of interest to this list.

--Tobias


Software Technology for Parallel Programming on Multicore Computer 
Deadline for applications: Dec. 1

More details below.

The Department of Information Technology at Uppsala University,
Sweden, is offering three PhD positions in Software Technology for
Parallel programming on multicore computer systems, placed within
the UPMARC Center of Excellence. UPMARC has been formed to make a
broad coordinated attack on the challenges of developing methods
and tools to support software development for multicore computer
systems, and brings together research groups in complementary
areas of computer science: computer architecture, computer
networks, parallel scientific computing, programming language
technology, real-time and embedded systems, program verification
and testing, and modeling of concurrent computation. UPMARC has
been awarded a ten year "center of excellence" grant from the
Swedish Research Council, as a sign of scientific excellence.

The three Ph.D. positions are placed in the below three
projects. The positions are fully funded and open to international
students.


1. Programming Languages for Parallel Programming
=================================================
Multicore processors are bringing parallelism into mainstream
computing. As a consequence, programming languages must evolve to
simplify and support parallel programming from the ground-up
without abandoning the millions of lines of code in the wild using
shared memory, threads and locks.

The holder of the position will be involved with design and
implementation of programming language constructs and tools for a
simple, efficient, and safety-focused parallel programming
language based on active objects. For further description of the
project, see http://upmarc.se/research/pl/facile.

Contact: tobias.wrigstad at it.uu.se
Link to information and submission instructions: http://www2.personalavd.uu.se/ledigaplatser/2782PhD.html


2. Task-based Programming Systems
=================================
Task-based programming provides a layer of abstraction that makes
it easier for both programmers and runtime systems to reason about
parallelism and performance in heterogeneous parallel systems. Yet
to get the most from modern hardware, tasks must be tuned for the
processor and memory system, and scheduled to minimize resource
contention. This requires an intelligent runtime system that can
understand task properties, reason about system performance and
resources, and provide feedback to the application about the kind
of tasks to create.

The holder of the position will be developing methods for
improving performance and energy efficiency of task-based programs
on homogeneous and heterogeneous systems. This will encompass
analyzing task behavior across emerging application domains,
developing techniques for feeding back runtime performance
information to tune task creation, and using advanced profile
information to optimize scheduling for performance and
efficiency. The research will include both modeling and
implementation, and will leverage the advanced analysis and
modeling tools developed by the computer architecture group.

Contact: david.black-schaffer at it.uu.se
Link to information and submission instructions: http://www2.personalavd.uu.se/ledigaplatser/2783PhD.html


3. Parallelism in event-based models for stochastic chemical kinetics
=====================================================================
Inside living cells, biochemical processes are often described
with inherent randomness in order to account for a noisy
microscopic environment. A common approach for simulating such
models is to perform updates to some state-variable whenever
certain events happen. These typically include reaction events and
molecular movements.

The holder of the position will be involved with advancing methods
for efficient simulation of event-based models on modern multicore
architectures. This includes, but are not limited to, aspects of
high-performance computing, a certain amount of software
flexibility, and numerically approximate algorithms. The research
will initially be centered around the numerical software "URDME"
(see http://www.urdme.org), freely available under the
GPL-license. This software simulates a quite general event-based
stochastic model such that the results are of general interest in
computational physics.  

Contact: stefan.engblom at it.uu.se 
Link to information and submission instructions: http://www2.personalavd.uu.se/ledigaplatser/2786PhD.html


ABOUT PH.D. POSITIONS, APPLICATIONS, AND THE DEPARTMENT.

A PhD position requires a Master of Science in Computer Science,
Computer Engineering, or equivalent in a field which is relevant
for the topic of the PhD thesis. The position is for a maximum of
five years and includes departmental duties at a level of at most
20% (typically teaching). The salary amounts currently to about
23.000 SEK per month in the first year.

Applications should include a description of research interests
and past experience, a CV, copies of exams, degrees and grades, a
copy of Master thesis (or a draft thereof), relevant publications,
and other relevant documents. Candidates are encouraged to provide
letter(s) of recommendation and contact information to reference
persons, and further to indicate their preferred research
project(s), as well as earliest feasible starting date of
employment. (See the submission website for instructions.)

Uppsala University is striving to achieve a more equal gender
balance and female candidates are particularly invited to apply.

Some information about health- and childcare in Sweden:

Healthcare is free after a small fee in connection with the first
visit to a doctor. The parental benefits in Sweden are very
generous, e.g., you can take 13 months of parental leave and
extend the length of your Ph.D. studies correspondingly. Childcare
is of high quality and very affordable.

For more information, see http://www.it.uu.se/research/upmarc
(UPMARC), http://www.it.uu.se/ (the department) or contact:
Prof. Bengt Jonsson, bengt.jonsson at it.uu.se, or some other member
of the UPMARC consortium (see upmarc.se). Union representatives
are: Anders Grundström, SACO-rådet, tel +46 18-471 5380, Carin
Söderhäll, OFR-S/ST, tel +46 18-471 1996, Stefan Djurström, SEKO,
tel +46 18-471 3315.

Information on how to apply for each of the three positions is
accessible by clicking these links:

* http://www2.personalavd.uu.se/ledigaplatser/2782PhD.html
* http://www2.personalavd.uu.se/ledigaplatser/2783PhD.html
* http://www2.personalavd.uu.se/ledigaplatser/2786PhD.html

------------------------------------------------------------
Tobias Wrigstad, assistant professor (bitr. lektor) 
Department of Information Technology
Uppsala University, Sweden
Email:  tobias.wrigstad at it.uu.se
Office: +46-18-471-1072 
Cell:   +46-736-777-418
Web:    http://wrigstad.com