[agents] PhD position at ETH Zurich - Mobile Middleware Systems for Distributed Social Mining

[Evangelos Pournaras]

[We apologize in advance if you receive this announcement multiple times]

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PhD Position: Mobile Middleware Systems for Distributed Social Mining

Chair of Computational Social Science, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
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*** Apply here: http://www.eth-gethired.ch/jobs/phd_position_mobile_middleware_systems_for_distributed_social_mining/30395 <http://www.eth-gethired.ch/jobs/phd_position_mobile_middleware_systems_for_distributed_social_mining/30395>

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We are looking for a PhD student with an excellent background in software engineering, computer systems, computer networks or distributed systems. The work will be pursued in the context of the Nervousnet Project.  

The goal of the project is to build a “Planetary Nervous System“, i.e. an open distributed participatory platform to provide collective measurements and social mining services as a public good. As a PhD student working in this project, you are expected to design and engineer novel mechanisms for data collection, data management and communication among mobile devices and embedded systems. Some of the challenges concern privacy, data quality, performance and decentralization.

The ideal candidate would have exceptional Java/C++ programming skills for mobile system programming and application development (Android, iOS). Moreover, good knowledge on distributed systems, computer networks and data structures are desired. Experience in designing and developing user interfaces is a plus. As a PhD student in the Computational Social Science group of Prof. Dirk Helbing (http://www.coss.ethz.ch <http://www.coss.ethz.ch/>), you will be working in a highly interdisciplinary and international research environment.

Candidates should send their application materials online with attention to ETH Zurich, Mr. Olivier Meyrat, Human Resources, CH-8092 Zürich in one single pdf file (<5 MB), including a short motivational letter, their CV and exam documents (A-levels, bachelor, master or diploma, and PhD). Review of applications will begin on March 31, 2015, and will continue until the position is filled. The successful candidate is expected to start working in Zurich around spring 2015. Applicants are requested to submit their materials as quickly as possible. Applications via email cannot be considered.

Dirk Helbing’s Professorship of Computational Social Science at ETH Zurich hosts a team bringing together physicists, mathematicians, as well as social, complexity and computer scientists, to work on fundamental scientific questions regarding socially interactive systems using quantitative approaches. In particular, the team uses a combination of formal modeling, simulation, data mining, and behavioral experiments to understand the way our society works. Prof. Helbing has initiated the FuturICT initiative (www.futurict.eu <http://www.futurict.eu/>). Interest in the goals of this initiative is a plus (see http://link.springer.com/article/10.1140%2Fepjst%2Fe2012-01687-x#page-1 <http://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjst/e2012-01687-x#page-1> and the related social media channels).