Post-doc positions/Bath UK/FP7 Alive project

[Julian Padget]

JOB DESCRIPTION

Bath Computer Science seeks two full-time post-doctoral researchers to
work on the ALIVE (FP7) project.  ALIVE will develop new approaches to
service-oriented engineering based on the adaptation and reuse of
coordination and organisation mechanisms often seen in human and other
societies.  Such methods provide robust descriptions of distributed
systems, account for the individual autonomous nature of service
providers / consumers and define a wide range of strategies and
mechanisms with known properties to achieve coherent outcomes. The use
of such human like concepts also provides an opportunity to make the
development of complex software systems more accessible to
non-specialists, allowing a variety of actors from users to managers
to participate more directly in the design and management of systems.

Bath leads the work-package on services, supports on the development of
the theoretical framework and contributes to methodology and use
cases. Bath's primary domains of expertise that are relevant to this
project are (i) specification, verification and on-line reasoning for
institutions and (ii) semantic web service description, discovery,
brokerage and workflow enactment.  The work at Bath will therefore
include both theoretical research and prototype development.

QUALIFICATIONS

Applicants should have - or have nearly completed - a PhD in Computer
Science or Artificial Intelligence, preferably in connection with
agents and organizations.  Demonstrated experience of web services and
workflow enactment would be an advantage, along with some knowledge of
ontologies, norms and institutions.  Successful candidates will be
expected to travel frequently to partner sites and spend periods of up
to two weeks at a time working there.  The working language of the
project is English (although there will be the opportunity to practice
at least Spanish and Dutch) and so fluency in English is a necessity.

THE POSITIONS

These are full-time positions as post-doctoral researchers for a
period of 30 months, starting February 1, 2008 or as soon as possible
thereafter.  Salary up to £30,012.

FURTHER DETAILS

For further information contact Julian Padget (jap at cs.bath.ac.uk) or
Marina De Vos (mdv at cs.bath.ac.uk)

HOW TO APPLY

To find out more about the University of Bath and to apply online
please go to http://www.bath.ac.uk/jobs. Alternatively please email:
jobs at bath.ac.uk or call 01225 386924 quoting ref number 07H441A.  The
closing date for applications is January 4th, 2008.

THE UNIVERSITY OF BATH

The University of Bath (http://www.bath.ac.uk) is one of the leading
universities in Britain, with highly-rated teaching and research. It
is a small, research-oriented university, founded in 1965, with
approximately 12,000 students and about 500 permanent members of
academic staff.  From 1980 to 2000 Computing was a group within the
Mathematics department, then became a separate department (of Computer
Science) in 2000. There are three undergraduate programs and a
portfolio Masters program. Currently, there are 22 permanent staff and
34 PhD students. The department has three research groups: Human
Computer Interaction, Mathematical Logic and Symbolic Computation and
Media Technology, with activity in Grids, Artificial Intelligence and
Agents cutting across all three.

ALIVE PROJECT PARTNERS

Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, University of Bath, Calico Jack
Ltd (Dundee), Trinity College Dublin, Thales (Delft), BCN d'Infografia
SL (Barcelona), University of Aberdeen, Universiteit Utrecht.