Research fellowship about “Spatio-temporal logics: extensions for nominal quantification and hierarchical structures” - deadline Jan 12, 2024
Call for expression of interest / applications
What
We are looking for a strong candidate for a research fellow position within the PRIN 2022 project “Spatio-Temporal Enhancement of Neural nets for Deeply Hierarchical Automatised Logic (STENDHAL)”, funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research (MUR) and involving teams from the University of Udine, the University of Pisa and CNR-ISTI (Pisa).
STENDHAL aims to advance the theory and implementation of spatial logics, enabling the specification and verification of properties of structured objects, including the tracking of their evolution across time. To this end, we will extend currently used spatial logics with temporal operators, nominal quantifiers, and operators predicating on structured (hierarchical) spatial objects. Furthermore, STENDHAL proposes deep spatial analysis in which a neural network is trained on ground truths augmented via the logics and conversely predictions by the network are combined with expert knowledge via logical specifications. These methods will be validate on case studies in the healthcare and cyber-physical domains, by developing novel hybrid methods for brain tumour segmentation, object tracking and multi-scale analysis.
The STENDHAL team forms a unique combination of expertise including the co-founders of spatial model checking and researchers in theoretical computer science, medical image analysis, and neural networks. Relevance and impact of STENDHAL for the scientific community consist in a development of the foundations of hybrid spatio-temporal analysis, striving for a good trade-off between expressivity, decidability, and efficiency. Applications in the medical and cyber-physical domains are expected to lead to a breakthrough, by substantially increasing accuracy and justifiability of the proposed methods.
Within this project, this research fellowship will be mostly focused on the development of the spatio-temporal logic, keeping an eye on the applications and implementation.
Who
The ideal candidate should have a research background in areas related to Formal Methods, in particular temporal logics. Knowledge in Model Checking and/or Machine Learning is appreciated, but not required. A MSc in Computer Science or affine subjects is required.
A PhD is appreciated but not required.
When and how much
This is a full-time position for 12 months, possibly extended for other 12 months. Starting date can be negotiated, from February 2024 but no later than June 1, 2024.
The overall gross salary is €22,947.00 per year, including social security contributions; this corresponds to about 1614 euro net per month, tax free.
Where
The successful candidate will work under the supervision of Marino Miculan, at the Department of Mathematics, Computer Science and Physics (DMIF) of the University of Udine - one of the oldest and largest Computer Science departments in Italy, and with a well-renowned tradition in Formal Methods.
Life quality in Udine is constantly among the highest in Italy, and cost of living is lower than in larger cities. (And Udine is one hour from both the Alps and the Adriatic Sea…) We can consider the possibility of working from remote.
Since the STENDHAL project is a joint effort with the Department of Computer Science at University of Pisa and the ISTI at CNR, there will be frequent collaborations with the teams therein, led by Fabio Gadducci and Vincenzo Ciancia, respectively.
How to Apply
The call is already available at the UniUD website (look for call n. 1443). Deadline for applications is January 12, 2024 14:00 CET.
If you are interested in this position and you are willing to have more information, please send an email to Marino Miculan (marino.miculan@uniud.it).