Research Associate

Full-time: 35 hours per week

Fixed-term: for 12 months

The Opportunity:

Together we can do great things. Be part of something bigger.

With roles from hospitality to research, there’s a career for everyone at the University of Edinburgh. We can offer opportunities for you to develop in your career and make a real difference in the communities around us while contributing to the world at large. 

The University of Edinburgh is a world-class organisation. We look for the best in the field across all disciplines and provide a working environment where academics can develop their careers and passion for their chosen subject area. We offer the full range of academic roles and have a genuine focus on our student’s performance and wellbeing.

This project is about proving liveness properties, stating that certain goal states of a programme are in fact reached. Most prior work on this employ’s fairness assumptions, saying that if one tries something often enough, it will eventually succeed. Without making such assumptions, no meaningful liveness property can be proved. However, fairness assumptions are typically unwarranted, as the real world is not fair. This project replaces fairness with the weaker assumption of justness. This is still sufficient to prove meaningful liveness properties, and moreover warranted in most applications.

It turns out, however, that many of the foundations of concurrency theory laid in the last 40 years have to be redone to cope with justness. This project aims to do just that.

People have always been at the heart of our work. As part of the University, you are a part of our community. We are looking for people with drive, determination, and a passion for what they do. We are a place where everyone is welcome and offer a range of policies and benefits designed to support you in building the right meaningful/personalised flexibility for you.

Your skills and attributes for success: 

• Degree in an appropriate field (a master’s degree or above in Computer Science, Physics, or Mathematics).

The following criteria are not strict yes/no requirements; rather, candidates will be assessed on the strength of their experience and evidence across these areas. Recruitment will aim to select the candidate(s) demonstrating the strongest overall profile.

• A PhD in Computer Science, Informatics, Mathematics, or a related discipline.
• Experience in working and managing research projects.
• Expertise in the foundations of concurrency theory, especially in applying assumptions such as fairness or justness.
• Competence in comprehending academic computer science research results and documents, at least at a high level, to compose reports understandable to industry.
• Excellent interpersonal, verbal and written communication skills.

Contact details for enquiries (name and email address):

Rob van Glabbeek Rob.van.Glabbeek@ed.ac.uk

A career with us has a range of other benefits that can be tailored to your lifestyle: 

• Professional development and subject matter expertise
• Leading-edge research
• Contributing to the work and purpose of the University.

This post is full-time (35 hours per week); however, we are open to considering part-time or flexible working patterns. We are also open to considering requests for hybrid working (on a non-contractual basis) that combines a mix of remote and regular on-campus working.

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