* Position. A PhD position is open at the University of Antwerp, Belgium.
The
position is funded by running FWO (Research Foundation - Flanders) projects
at
the department of Mathematics and Computer Science. Funding is provided for
four
years.
* Summary of the proposed topic. Recently, there has been a boom in the
number
of efficient artificial intelligence techniques applied to problems which
are
(theoretically) hard or even undecidable. Unfortunately, though, such
techniques
usually do not come with formal guarantees. This raises the following
question:
Can we leverage techniques from verification to complement artificial
intelligence
algorithms with reasonable guarantees? We propose to answer this question in
three steps. First, we will study the expressiveness of different
machine-learned models as well as verification-like problems to assert
properties that they guarantee. Second, we will focus on reinforcement
learning
algorithms with formal correctness guarantees as well as the assumptions
under
which these guarantees are valid. Finally, we will implement those
algorithms
in proof-of-concept tools and compare them with the state-of-the-art
verification tools based on automata and logic.
* Profile: A strong base in theoretical computer science or mathematics.
* Starting dates. At any time during 2018--2019, preferably as soon as
possible.
* Salary. Gross salary starting around 2,3K euros / month for a PhD
student. In
addition, advantages include complete health insurance, a holiday bonus, and
an end-of-the-year bonus
(http://www.uantwerpen.be/en/jobs/what-do-we-offer/salaries/).
* The research environment. The University of Antwerp
(http://www.uantwerp.be) is one of
the major Belgian universities in the city of Antwerp. It has more than
20.000
students, 16% of which come from abroad. The Formal Techniques in Software
Engineering research group, headed by Prof. Guillermo A. Perez, is part of
the
Mathematics and Computer Science Department of the Faculty of Sciences. The
group maintains a large number of active collaborations with other research
groups in computer-aided verification across Europe and the USA. We also
participate in the Belgian Federated Center for Verification
(http://cfv.ulb.ac.be) that gathers all the Belgian research groups active
in
computer aided verification and hosts a monthly seminar with renowned guest
speakers. The working language is English. The PhD may be carried out under
the
co-supervision of Prof. Floris Geerts, part of the ADReM Data Lab,
with expertise in databases, logic, and complexity.
* Further information and application. Potential candidates can contact
Prof.
Perez (guillermoalberto.perez [at] uantwerpen [dot] be) or Prof.
Geerts (floris.geerts [at] uantwerpen [dot] be).
If you are interested, please contact us before March 2019.
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