The project concerns an exciting collaboration with Virginia Tech and the prestigious DARPA research institute. We are interested in decompilation: retrieving source code from a binary while maintaining a formal correctness proof that everything is sound. This will make bottom-up formal verification possible: applying formal verification to binaries, instead of to source code. If you have an interest in one of the fields of formal methods, compilation, low level assembly code or reverse-engineering, then you must certainly apply. Unique about the project is:

• There currently is no formally verified decompilation tool! Research into this can be high impact, and the project has close ties to interested parties with relevant case studies.
• You will be part of a large team of postdocs and PhDs working on the same project.
• It is a close collaboration between a Dutch university, a US university and the US DARPA research institute. If desired, there is the possibility of extended visits to the US.

The candidate is also expected to participate for 10 to 15% of his/her time in educational activities within our Master Software Engineering and the Bachelor Computer Science. Also, valorisation activities form a considerable part of the daily activities of the candidate.

The candidate holds an MSc degree preferably in Computer Science or Software Engineering with proven affinity to formal methods or reverse engineering. The candidate is flexible, able to work independently and is result driven. Preferably, the candidate has good communication skills (oral and written) in Dutch; fluency in English (oral and written) is required. Relevant specializations in one or more of the following areas are desirable: artificial intelligence, search-based algorithms or machine learning techniques. Evidence of experience and commitment to any of these areas, such as substantial project work, would also be an advantage.

Applicants must be strongly motivated for doctoral studies, possess the ability to work independently and perform critical analysis and also possess good levels of cooperative and communicative abilities. Teaching experience and publications are not required, but are considered an advantage if the candidate can demonstrate experience in these areas.
 

Fixed-term contract: The candidate will be appointed for a period of 12 months. The appointment will be extended to four years when progress and performance are good.

The salary is determined in accordance with salary scale P of Appendix A of the Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities and amounts to € 2,395 gross per month for a full-time appointment.

The Open Universiteit provides good secondary benefits such as training, mobility, part-time employment and paid parental leave.

The Open Universiteit

The Open Universiteit of the Netherlands
The Open Universiteit (OU) is the university in the Netherlands where students study part-time and follow online and activating education in bachelor and master degree programmes in seven fields of study. Characteristics of the education are openness, flexibility and quality. Enhancing the study success of students is an important point of focus. More than 15.000 students are studying at the OU and it has nearly 700 employees. The OU has a network of regional study centres in the Netherlands and in Belgium (Flanders) (https://www.ou.nl/studiecentra). The head office is situated in Heerlen.

State of the art technologies and educational insights are applied in bachelor and master programmes and courses as well as in projects and programmes with partners. Both nationally and internationally the OU plays a key role in the innovation of higher education. Education and research are closely interrelated which guarantees that the current state of science is applied in education. The OU invests in research in the various academic disciplines, as well as in research in the field of learning, teaching and technology.

Top rankings
For several consecutive years, the OU has achieved top positions in the lists of the fourteen Dutch universities in the National Students’ Survey, the Dutch university guide ‘Keuzegids Universiteiten’ (in which the ratings by students and experts of the bachelor studies of the fourteen universities are compared), and the Dutch university guide ‘Keuzegids Masters’. In addition all study programmes rank highly in the study-specific rankings of the universities. All ratings are available on the website (https://www.ou.nl/rankings).

Faculty of Science

The faculty of Science is one of the six faculties of the OU of the Netherlands. Education, research and valorisation are the main tasks. The faculty offers academic bachelor and master programmes in the fields of Computer Science, Information Science, Environmental Sciences, and an Artificial Intelligence master programme is currently under development. The faculty’s research programme focuses on Innovating for Resilience. Furthermore, the faculty is partner in the Center for Actionable Research of the OU (CAROU). The faculty has Ph.D.-students who conduct research on various current topics within the research programme. As a result of the interdisciplinary focus on education and research, as well as the close link with practice, work at our faculty provides many innovative and challenging opportunities for entrepreneurial researchers.

Department of Computer Science
The Department of Computer Science is an enthusiastic and ambitious group of approximately 35 people (29 fte) focussing on artificial intelligence, educational and learning technology, software quality, and security and privacy issues. The group contributes to these challenges through excellent research and online teaching programmes, covering a large diversity of topics, e.g. deep learning applications in industry, intelligent tutoring systems, privacy-aware technologies, reinforcement learning, e-health applications, Bayesian networks, cyber-security, automated software testing, and responsible AI. The department’s research lines are presented in the research strategy “Towards high quality and intelligent software” for 2020-2025. The online academic educational programmes of this Department have received the highest accolades in the country in this domain for years