University of Technology (TU/e, https://www.tue.nl/en/) is one of Europe's top technological universities, situated at the heart of a most innovative high-tech region, with a wealth of collaborations with industry and academic institutes. In 2017, TU/e was ranked 15th in Europe in the Times Higher Educational World University ranking for Engineering and Technology. TU/e has around 3,000 employees and 2,300 PhD students (half of which international, representing about 70 nationalities).

The envisioned research is part of the recently granted Horizon 2020 ECSEL project Arrowhead Tools, coordinated by ASML. The project focusses on interoperability in tool chains applied in the development process of complex Cyber-Physical Systems. The design process of these Cyber-Physical Systems involves multi-disciplinary engineering teams focusing on functional specification and verification of scenarios and mono-disciplinary engineering teams focusing on the realization of these scenarios in a platform composed of mechanical, optical, electrical and software components. These engineering disciplines each use a specific set of engineering methods, tools and technologies that are loosely coupled both on a syntactic and on a semantic level. This has a major impact on engineering efficiency. It hampers verification sufficiently early in the development process, especially concerning system-wide (performance) aspects (e.g. throughput and accuracy). In addition it hinders system evolvability and deployment, i.e. introducing new scenarios or adaptation of existing ones. To significantly improve engineering efficiency the goal is to establish seamless syntactic and semantic interoperability between the multi-disciplinary modelling tools enabling rapid deployment of (new) machine scenarios and effective prediction and trading-off key system aspects concerning performance and correctness.

The Electronic Systems group of the Electrical Engineering department at TU/e calls for applications for one PhD position funded in the Arrowhead Tools project.

PhD position: Scenario Modelling

Model-driven design methods based on formal application models such as scenario aware dataflow models provide powerful analysis and synthesis techniques. In this project, scenario models will be used to represent behavior specifications of use case scenarios. The model will be extended with an explicit distinction between controllable and uncontrollable events and the ability to take decisions based on input data and resource availability to match the specification needs and facilitate novel synthesis methods. Composition methods will be developed that capture the interactions between partial behavior specifications. The composition will signal incomplete or inconsistent specifications. The composition also defines the methods for sharing of resources and models the effect of sharing on the temporal behavior. Towards the embedded system design and implementation, mapping and resource arbitration strategies and budgeting and allocation methods will be investigated that can deliver predictable and composable performance when resources are shared between the distributed software components realizing the compositions of different scenarios. Those strategies should also be robust across versions or variations of products towards satisfying their timing constraints. The project will explore how the models can be used for automated design-space exploration and multi-objective optimization techniques. The position is supervised by dr.ir. Marc Geilen and prof.dr.ir. Jeroen Voeten.

Electronic Systems group at the TU/e

The Electronic Systems (ES) group consists of seven full professors, one associate professor, eight assistant professors, several postdocs, about 30 PDEng and PhD candidates and support staff. The ES group is world-renowned for its design automation and embedded systems research. It is our ambition to provide a scientific basis for design trajectories of electronic systems, ranging from digital circuits to cyber-physical systems. The group is strongly involved in the electrical engineering bachelor and master programs of the TU/e, as well as in the automotive bachelor program and the embedded systems master program. The group has excellent infrastructure that includes individual computers, computer servers, state-of-the-art FPGA and GPU farms, sensor- and ad-hoc networking equipment, a cyber-physical systems lab, an electronics lab and a comprehensive range of electronic-design software. ES has strong collaborations with industry, research institutes and other universities. Eleven of its staff members have a second affiliation besides their TUE-ES affiliation. The ES group has been very successful in attracting funding for its research through national and international projects and collaborations (EU programs: H2020, ITEA, CATRENE, ECSEL, Artemis, Marie Curie; national programs: NWO, RVO, contract research), for a total budget of around 2M euro per year. The ES group is a multicultural team, with staff members of eight different nationalities and students from all over the world.

We are looking for highly motivated candidates with good English proficiency. Candidates need to have obtained a relevant master degree (Computer Engineering, Informatics or Computer Sciences, Electrical Engineering - ideally with a focus on Cyber Physical Systems) with excellent grades. Candidates must have strong analytical skills, affinity for formal models and semantics, algorithmic solutions, and software engineering practices and good programming skills.

We offer a challenging job in a dynamic and ambitious university through a fixed-term appointment for a period of 4 years. The research must be concluded with the attainment of a PhD degree. As an employee of the university you will receive a competitive salary as well as excellent employment conditions. The salary starts at € 2.325,-- per month (gross) in the first year, increasing up to € 2.972,-- per month (gross) in the last year. Moreover, 8% holiday allowance and 8,3% end-of-year allowance is provided annually. Assistance for finding accommodation can be given. The university offers an attractive package of fringe benefits such as excellent technical infrastructure, child care, savings schemes, and excellent sports facilities.

TU/e also offers you the opportunity for personal development by developing your social and communication skills. We do this by offering every PhD student a series of courses in the PROOF program as an excellent addition to your scientific education.