Postdoctoral and PhD positions in LFCS on graph databases, provenance, and programming languages

[James Cheney]

Hi,

As a result of recent funding awards, I expect to be able to advertise two postdoctoral positions and a PhD position at the Laboratory for Foundations of Computer Science, University of Edinburgh in the near future:

* The first postdoc position will be advertised early in January to start as soon as possible (in practice, this likely means February 2016 at the absolute earliest; I'd prefer to have someone by March or April if possible).

The position will require a mix of research and development skills, to contribute to the development of a system for processing and analyzing provenance graph data in order to identify and mitigate advanced persistent threat attacks.  Preferred programming languages among other project members include Haskell, Scala and Python.  Experience with graph databases such as Titan/Cassandra or the Gremlin query language would be a big plus.

I would like to hire someone to work on this project whose research dovetails well with the development needed for the project.  This could mean a systems-oriented PL researcher interested in gaining experience with graph databases, provenance or security, or a researcher in one of these areas interested in gaining experience with PL.

This position is part of the ADAPT project (A Diagnostics Approach for Advanced Persistent Threat Detection) funded by the DARPA Transparent Computing Program.  The other partners in ADAPT are Galois, Inc., Xerox PARC, and Oregon State University.  The funding is secure until June 2017 and funding after that point is contingent on continuation of the project by DARPA, until the program ends in June 2019.

* The second postdoc and PhD studentship position will be advertised later in 2016 for a start date of mid-to-late 2016.  Both will be part of the ERC-funded project "Skye: A programming language bridging theory and practice for scientific data curation". 

Relevant topics/background include heterogeneous metaprogramming, language-integrated query, and scientific data management and provenance. 

Both positions will have funding for up to 4 years in the period 2016-2021 (pending finalization of the grant agreement).

This message does not constitute a formal advertisement of an employment opportunity; formal advertisements will follow when the details are finalized.  Please contact me if interested in any of these opportunities or with any questions about the projects, and research environment, and preferably including a CV and summary of your research interests and how they relate to the position(s) you are interested in.

--James

[James Cheney]

Hi again,

I am pleased to announce that we are now accepting applications for a postdoctoral research position and a PhD studentship, as follows:

1) an 18-month postdoctoral position on the ADAPT project, funded by the DARPA Transparent Computing program, focusing on graph databases and querying:

http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/jcheney/group/adapt.html
https://www.vacancies.ed.ac.uk/pls/corehrrecruit/erq_jobspec_version_4.jobspec?p_id=035230

Applications must be received by February 12, 2016.

Although the project is somewhat database-centric, I would be very happy to receive applications from candidates with a strong PL implementation background who are interested in learning a little about graph databases - the skill sets needed overlap.  For example, the main query language we expect to use, called Gremlin, is based on monadic comprehensions...

2) a *4-year* PhD studentship, for a student of any nationality, on the project "Skye: A programming language bridging theory and practice for scientific data curation", funded by a €1.99M ERC Consolidator Grant:

homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/jcheney/group/skye.html
http://wcms.inf.ed.ac.uk/lfcs/graduate%20study/apply/

I would prefer to recruit a student with expertise in programming language design and implementation this year, but will consider applications from any prospective students with interests relevant to the project. 

Additional positions on this project will be announced in due course, but applications from prospective students interested in starting a PhD in the next academic year should be submitted by March 18, 2016.

More information about both projects, and about my current group and the excellent research environment offered by LFCS, can be found on the above web pages and I am happy to answer any questions by email.

--James