Natural Sciences | Scholarship for Nigerians and Africans - Part 16

PhD Research Fellowship in Network and Distributed Systems for International Students, Norway

The Department of Informatics (IFI) is one of nine departments belonging to the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the University of Oslo. IFI is Norway’s largest university department for general education and research in Computer Science and related topics. You can read more about the Department here:. The Department has near 800 students on bachelor level, near 300 master students, and over 200 PhD students. The totall staff of the Department is close to 250 employees, about 150 of these are full time scientific positions: about 60 Professors and Associate Professors.

The fellowship is for a period of up to 3 years.

Job Description:

The scholarship is in the framework of the Tidal News (Middleware Platform for Adaptive and Dependable Data Dissemination) project.

We are witnessing a dramatic increase in the use of data-centric distributed systems such as the dynamic Web, sensor networks, network-monitoring systems, and various publish-subscribe systems. The ubiquitous presence of such systems creates very large application networks that spread over large geographical areas and diverse intra- and inter-organizational domains. The visions of massive demand-driven data dissemination, intensive processing, and intelligent fusion in order to build dynamic knowledge bases that seemed infeasible just a few years ago are about to come true.

However, the realization of this potential demands adequate support from middleware that could be used to deploy and support such systems. At this time, both COTS middleware software and even state-of-art research middleware lack the technological foundations to cope with the enormous volume of data, constantly changing underlying network connectivity, and dynamic system organization. Typically, numerous information transmitters produce continuous data flows as well as massive unpredictable bursts of data at geographically dispersed locations. This data needs to be rapidly processed, routed, and classified by the degree of criticality, and intelligently fused. A large number of potentially mobile clients can issue multiple concurrent queries of varying urgency, priority, and precision requirements. In order to build a system that is capable of handling such a demanding situation, there is a clear need to develop new middleware technologies for scalable, mobility, adaptive, and reliable handling of these high-volume dynamic information flows.

We are seeking a student who is interested in designing, developing, and evaluating techniques that address these issues.

Requirements:

Applicants must have a degree in Computer Science, or in a related study, with excellent results. They must also be able to demonstrate interest in scientific research. The ideal candidate for the position will have strong background in distributed computing.

The purpose of the fellowship is research training leading to the successful completion of a PhD degree.

The fellowship requires admission to the research training programme at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. An approved plan for the research training, including a project outline, must be submitted no later than two months after taking up the position, and the admission must be approved within three months. For further information see:

A good command of English is required of all students attending the University of Oslo.

The application must include:

  • Application letter
  • Project description
  • CV (summarizing education, positions and academic work – scientific publications),
  • Copies of transcripts of records, and educational certificates
  • List of publications and academic work that the applicant swishes to be considered by the evaluation committee
  • Names and contact details of 2-3 references (name, relation to candidate, e-mail and telephone number

Foreign applicants are advised to attach an explanation of their University’s grading system.

Please remember that all documents should be in English or a Scandinavian language.

Closing date for applications: September 17, 2010

Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Nanoelectronics, University of Oslo, Norway

The Department of Informatics (IFI) is one of nine departments belonging to the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at the University of Oslo. IFI is Norway’s largest university department for general education and research in Computer Science and related topics. You can read more about the Department here: http://www.ifi.uio.no. The Department has near 800 students on bachelor level, near 300 master students, and over 200 PhD students. The totall staff of the Department is close to 250 employees, about 150 of these are full time scientific positions: about 60 Professors and Associate Professors

The fellowship period is 3 years. Within the framework of the position duties may be assigned. No one can be appointed for more than one specified period at the same institution.

Job Description: The current postdoc project can be devided into three subfields: A) Development of higher-order open-loop Delta-Sigma modulators for sensor data conversion, including noise and energy optimization, linearization and integration of CMOS and MEMS sensors. B) Development of impulse radio (IR-UWB) wireless systems where both impulse radar and communication solutions are explored in silicon using new and innovative design paradigms, facilitating power efficient implementations in CMOS. The postdoc will participate in several ongoing subprojects (positioning, RFID, RF-camera), and skills in RF chip design is important. C) Development of sparse asynchronous pixel-event vision sensors, inspired by the operation principles of the human eye. Such sensor nodes should communicate by low capacity, low power wireless links using an IR-UWB protocol. The candidate must have competence within at least one of those subfields.

A description of research areas of the nanoelectronics group can be found on:

Requirements:

The candidate must have a PhD or other corresponding education equivalent to a Norwegian doctoral degree nanoelectronics.

UiO (and Norway more generally) is a multi-lingual environment, where knowledge of Norwegian is not a necessity in everyday life. However, a good command of English is required.

Submissions:

The main purpose of post-doctoral research fellowships is to qualify researchers for work in top academic positions within their disciplines.Applicants must submit a project proposal, including a time schedule, for the qualifying work.

Please also refer to the regulations pertaining to the conditions of employment for post-doctoral fellowship positions:

Closing date for applications: August 27, 2010

PhD Research Fellowship in Medical Instrumentation and Imaging for a Preclinical PET Scanner for International Students, Norway

The candidate for this position is expected to participate in the development of COMPET, a preclinical PET scanner with a novel concept for 3D event reconstruction and MRI compatibility. The detector technology is based on LYSO crystals, Wave Length Shifting (WLS) strips, and SiPM / MPPC-readout.  For the readout of the detector high speed FPGAs are used connected with an Ethernet interface to the computer farm. The project covers the assembly of the scintillators and the WLS in the detector, design and test of analog and digital hardware, FPGA firmware, programming and testing of readout and analysis software image reconstruction algorithms and detector simulation.

Requirements:

Applicants must hold a Master’s degree or equivalent in physics is required. Applicants that are close to completion of their Master degree can apply, but the committee is free to reject the application if the final Master degree is not completed in time for the committee’s decision.

The applicants should document their experience and expertise within the areas mentioned, and also their general experience within development of detectors for particle-, astro-, medical- or nuclear physics. The subject of the candidate’s master degree is expected to be closely related to one or more of the above mentioned research areas. Experience with lab work, programming (VHDL, Verilog, C/C++, Python, Cuda, LabView, root), image reconstruction, data analysis or Monte Carlo simulations (Gate) is an advantage.

In addition the applicants may submit a project proposal for the qualifying work during the program. The project proposal should include research topic, main issues, as well as choice of theory and method.

The purpose of the fellowship is research training leading to the successful completion of a PhD degree.

The fellowship requires admission to the research training programme at the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences. An approved plan for the research training, including a  project outline, must be submitteed no later than two months after taking up the position. For more information see:

A good command of English is required of all students attending the University of Oslo.

The application must  include:

  • Application letter
  • CV (summarizing education, positions and academic work – scientific publications)
  • Copies of educational certificates, transcript of records and letters of recommendation
  • List of publications and academic work that the applicant wishes to be considered by the evaluation committee
  • Names and contact details of 2-3 references (name, relation to candidate, e-mail and telephone number)

Foreign applicants are advised to attach an explanation of their University’s grading system. Please remember that all documents should be in English or a Scandinavian language.

Closing date for applications: 15 August, 2010