** Apologies if you receive multiple copies of this open position **
A fully funded research and teaching position with the opportunity of undertaking a PhD at the Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield is available. Candidates within the scope of the Foundation of Computation (FOX) Group are in particular encouraged to apply: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/dcs/research/groups/foundations-computation
The FOX research group at Sheffield is growing rapidly. This post provides excellent opportunities for a graduate student (UK and overseas) to obtain a PhD in any active research area of the group (see below the research interests of potential supervisors).
The post is a fully funded salaried position for six years, 60% of your time will be dedicated to research, with the remaining 40% allocated to teaching.
For more detailed information (including roles and responsibilities), please see
https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/DIZ683/research-and-teaching-assistant
For details on possible supervisors, research projects, and any informal enquiries, please contact the respective faculty members by email: Dr. Charles Grellois (c.grellois@sheffield.ac.uk) Dr. Maksim Zhukovskii (m.zhukovskii@sheffield.ac.uk) Dr. Jonni Virtema (j.t.virtema@sheffield.ac.uk) Dr. Harsh Beohar (h.beohar@sheffield.ac.uk)
Dr. Charles Grellois is mainly interested in the verification of functional programs, would they be deterministic or probabilistic. He has worked on higher-order model-checking in the deterministic case, and on higher-order termination analysis in the probabilistic case. These approaches use techniques from linear logic and its models, category theory, (intersection) type theory, tree automata theory, probabilistic semantics, realizability… Several interesting questions are still open so that several different PhD projects could be discussed on these topics; but he is also open to other research topics in this area, to be discussed with the prospective student.
Dr. Maksim Zhukovskii is interested in combinatorics, probability, logic, computational and descriptive complexity. Currently Maksim is working on variety of topics including extremal combinatorics (Turan-type questions, saturation, colourings, etc), random graphs (thresholds, limiting distributions, logical limit laws, almost sure theories), average-case complexity (canonical labelling of random graphs, search problems in random graphs, reconstruction problems), enumerative combinatorics (random regular graphs, degree sequences), algebraic combinatorics (Cayley graphs, isomorphism problem for abelian groups, matroids), random walks, first order logic and expressive power of its fragments, second order logic and modal logic. See https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=sd_xBDQAAAAJ for the list of publications.
Dr. Jonni Virtema is keen to supervise students in any area of his current research, which relate to the interplay of logic and complexity theory. Current topics include logics and complexity theory related to numerical data, and temporal logics designed to express so-called hyperproperties, which are important in information flow and security. A further emerging topic is to study foundations of neural networks using the machinery of logics and complexity theory related to numerical data. See http://www.virtema.fi/ for further details.
Dr. Harsh Beohar is broadly interested in comparative concurrency semantics and in the interplay of category theory, logic, and semantics. Current topics include expressive modal logics, behavioural equivalence games, synthesising distinguishing/characteristic formulae all at the level of coalgebras. See https://dblp.org/pid/13/7482.html for an uptodate list of publications.