Dear colleagues and students,

At the Information Engineering and Computer Science department of the University of Trento we are looking for enthusiastic PhD students interested in solving realistic-size and practical planning, scheduling and acting problems in the hot topics of Industry 5.0 and Hospital of the Future.

Could you please forward the vacancy description below to anyone that comes to mind? Or please let me know if you'd like to know a bit more.

Thanks in advance,

Marco Roveri
Email: marco.roveri@unitn.it

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PhD positions in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science of University of Trento in challenging projects to develop new algorithms for planning, scheduling and acting under uncertainty, and making these operate in industrial (e.g. manufacturing, intra-logistics) and civil (e.g. hospital, pharmaceutical) relevant environments.

Are you interested in developing new algorithms, extending state-of-the-art AI techniques, and prepared to take-on real-life problems involving advanced automation and robotic applications collaborating with humans?

Join us in a team that considers the operational planning, scheduling and actuation (motion planning) of advanced robotic platforms (AGV, UAV, ...) to orchestrate their operations in collaborating with human to achieve complex business relevant objectives like e.g. reduce time-span, optimize resource consumption, quickly adapt to contingencies (e.g. product and/or platform faults, changes in objectives, changes in human operations). As the capabilities (e.g. dexterity) of robotic agents grows and their adoption in solving complex tasks collaborating with humans increases together with an increase in the complexity of the objectives, the problems of finding feasible plans to orchestrate the different agents, and of dynamically adapt and react to run-time contingencies to fulfill the high level objectives are becoming more and more difficult.

The main tasks for the PhD student are to work on algorithms and artificial intelligence techniques from the fields of constraint programming, mathematical optimization, path planning, evolutionary algorithms and/or reinforcement learning i) to solve such planning, scheduling, actuation (motion planning) and reactive adaptation problems; ii) to deepen our understanding of these techniques; iii) and to show how they can be successfully combined to solve problems of industrial and civil relevance. Moreover, the PhD student will be allowed to experiment the developed techniques and algorithms in realistic-size facilities (e.g. Robotic Labs at the University, and industrial facilities joint with the University of Trento) equipped with state-of-the-art robotic and automation platforms.

The call is now open (https://iecs.unitn.it/education/admission/call-for-application). Interested candidates shall contact Prof. Marco Roveri marco.roveri@unitn.it to ask for additional information and to arrange for a preliminary interview.

The Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science at University of Trento

The Department of Information Engineering and Computer Science - DISI (https://www.disi.unitn.it) primarily covers the topics of information technology and engineering and ranked first among computer science departments in Italy and 78th worldwide according to the latest U.S. News Best Global Universities ranking.

The University of Trento is one of the best universities in Italy, and the region of Trentino Alto Adige is a top location in Europe in terms of quality of life and efficiency of services.

Requirements

• Applications for the PhD Program in Information and Communication Technology are accepted from applicants who hold:
• an Italian @quot;Laurea@quot; instituted in conformity with Italian Ministerial Decree 270/2004, or
• a university degree of the previous regulations (Italian "Laurea" or "Diploma di Laurea"), or
• an equivalent degree obtained abroad (Master's degree) and recognized as equivalent to the Italian " Laurea magistrale" by the Admissions Committee for the sole purposes of admission to the Doctoral programme, also within the framework of mobility and cooperation inter-university agreements.

Applications are also accepted from students who expect to complete their degree before the starting of the PhD grant (see the complete list of requirements https://iecs.unitn.it/education/admission/call-for-application).

Application

The application must be completed and submitted by August 31, 2021 at 04:00 PM.00 CEST, solely by the online system:

• https://iecs.unitn.it/education/admission/call-for-application
• Deadline August 31, 2021 04.00 PM CEST

Read carefully the announcement, the requirements and to include all the required documents. An application without the required information will be discarded without evaluation.

Scholarship

The PhD position will be covered by scholarships. Currently the annual gross amount of the doctoral scholarship is approximately Euro 16.290,00. The scholarship net amount may change, depending on the country of residence and on country-specific taxation agreements.

Students who have been awarded a PhD scholarship are entitled to get a 50% increase of their scholarship when staying abroad for reasons related to their doctoral research and studies.

Each student is provided with a budget which can be used for educational and research purposes.

First year students have the priority for getting accommodation at student residences.