We are looking for a PhD candidate, who will be part of the AutoDrivE project (Automatic Derivation of Event Logs), which is funded by the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research within their Open Technology Programme.

In the past years, much progress has been made with respect to the development of conformance-checking techniques. Such techniques can identify differences between the actual and desired execution of a business process, which is useful in many settings to detect and prevent fraud. At this point, the input required by conformance-checking techniques, i.e. event logs, need to be manually extracted. This is a tedious and error-prone effort, which stands in the way of applying this technology on a wider scale. This project aims to develop a groundbreaking new technique that automatically extracts an event log from an operational database. The overall mission, therefore, is to automate the preparatory steps required for any process mining project.

To achieve this goal, the idea is to exploit the information from existing process models to automatically identify tables from an operational database that may contain information relevant to the process execution. This PhD project is breaking new ground by its aim to align a process-oriented data structure (i.e., a process model) with a non-process-oriented data structure (i.e., the structure of a database). In addition to the technical side of the project, the aim is to apply and evaluate the technique in real-life, industrial settings.

You will be part of a team that is set up by Utrecht University, the Kühne Logistics University in Hamburg, and the Hasso Plattner Institute in Potsdam. The team is composed of researchers from these institute who are experts in the areas of process mining, natural language processing, and software tool development.

The ideal candidate should hold a Master's degree in Computer Science or a related discipline, show strong interest in research, and possess strong programming skills. We expect the candidate to fluently speak and write in English. Familiarity with ProM and other process mining tools are a plus. Candidates of all nationalities may apply. The University is striving for gender balance in its research and teaching staff; hence, women are especially encouraged to apply for these positions. Applicants are encouraged to mention any personal circumstances that need to be taken into account in their evaluation (parental leave, military service etc.).

The candidate is offered a full-time position for 4 years. Salary starts at €2,325 and increases to €2,972 gross per month in the fourth year of the appointment (scale P of the Collective Labour Agreement Dutch Universities). The salary is supplemented with a holiday bonus of 8% and an end-of-year bonus of 8,3% per year. In addition we offer: a pension scheme, a partially paid parental leave, flexible employment conditions. Conditions are based on the Collective Labour Agreement Dutch Universities. The research group will provide the candidate with necessary support on all aspects of the project. More information is available on the website.

A better future for everyone. This ambition motivates our scientists in executing their leading research and inspiring teaching. At Utrecht University, the various disciplines collaborate intensively towards major societal themes. Our focus is on Dynamics of Youth, Institutions for Open Societies, Life Sciences and Sustainability.

The Faculty of Science consists of six Departments: Biology, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Information and Computing Sciences, Physics and Astronomy, Chemistry and Mathematics. The Faculty is home to 6,500 students and nearly 1,500 staff and is internationally renowned for the quality of its research. The Faculty's academic programmes reflect developments in today's society. Read the overall impression 2018 of the Faculty of Science.

The Department of Information and Computing Sciences is nationally and internationally renowned for its research in Computing Science and Information Science. Current research groups are Algorithmic Data Analysis, Algorithms and Complexity, Decision Support Systems, Simulation of Complex Systems, Geometric Computing, Multimedia, Human-Centered Computing, Social and Affective Computing, Visualisation and Graphics, Interaction Technology, Process Management and Analytics, Organization and Information, Natural Language Processing, Intelligent Systems, Data Intensive Systems, Software Technology and Software Technology of Learning and Teaching.

The Department offers Bachelor programmes in Computer Science and Information Science, and four English Research Master programmes in Artificial Intelligence, Business Informatics, Computing Science, and Game and Media Technology.