The School of Computer Science has secured support from two major companies, Time Warner Cable and Adobe, and is able to offer two fully funded PhD studentships in exciting areas of research with important applications. Both studentships are fully funded for EU applicants (covering fees, and a stipend of at least £13.5K p/a) for up to 42 months, the expected duration of the PhD. Non EU applicants may apply but may be liable for an additional approximately £11K p/a in fees.
Applicants should normally have (or expect to obtain this academic year) a 2:1 or (preferably) first class Honours Bachelors degree or equivalent in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Software Engineering, Electrical Engineering, or a closely related topic, or a MSc (distinction preferred) in one of these subjects.
The two research topics available are:
1. “Core ILNP implementation on Linux”, Prof Saleem Bhatti, Time Warner Cable
This is a vacancy for a PhD student to work on the implementation of a prototype of ILNP (Identifier-Locator Network Protocol):
http://ilnp.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/
Applicants should be excellent C programmers, with kernel-level development experience, ideally in Linux (the platform that will be used for the ILNP implementation), but those with similar experience in FreeBSD may be considered. Applicants should be able to demonstrate excellent knowledge of IP networking.
This position is jointly supported by Time Warner Cable (US) and the University of St Andrews.
2. “Interacting Efficiently with Cloud Storage”, Prof Al Dearle, Adobe
Increasingly complex documents are being created, edited, interacted with and viewed on mobile devices in addition to traditional desktop platforms. Typically documents are stored in a cloud storage service and served on demand to clients that often perform some degree of caching. This PhD will investigate the issues associated with providing an efficient storage abstraction for such scenarios.
The issues that will be investigated include:
•the impact of co-operative caching on mobile devices and in network,
•the effect of pre-fetching of assets guided by semantic information associated with assets,
•the effect and control of parallel bi-directional data transfers,
•the impact of adaptive protocols, for example, the use of autonomic algorithms to adapt the behaviour of clients and servers to network conditions,
•the impact of the separation of data from meta data on the client and on the server,
•the effect of different consistency protocols,
•the interaction and coupling between devices and users and how this knowledge may be effectively exploited,
•how to reduce the volume of data transferred, for example by the use of:
•different styles of file encoding and approaches to blocking on the caches, client and server and how these interact with network performance.
•loading file differences for files that are undergoing change and versions of which are cached by a mobile devices.
•the effect and efficiency of compression.
This PhD is supported by Adobe in Edinburgh and St Andrews University. The successful candidate would spend time each week with Adobe in Edinburgh. This joint approach would provide the candidate with business context to supplement the academic context provided by the University. The candidate would be given the opportunity to spend time during the summer vacation as an intern at Edinburgh.
How To Apply
For further information on how to apply, see our postgraduate web pages (http://www.cs.st-andrews.ac.uk/prospective-pg).
Candidates should address general queries to pg-admin-cs@st-andrews.ac.uk, or specific queries on the research topics to saleem@st-andrews.ac.uk or alan.dearle@st-andrews.ac.uk. The application process will require an interview (by phone or voice-conference if appropriate).
The closing date for applications is March 31, 2013.