Software Engineering Research Project (Probabilistic Verification and Model-Based Quality Evaluation), Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

Project title:
Probabilistic Verification and Model-Based Quality Evaluation

Research topic:
Model Based Development (MBD) has established itself as the key approach to software engineering of increasingly complex systems in automotive and aerospace domains. It has proved successful at managing complexity associated with functionality. A new approach is to use model-based techniques also for quality evaluation and predictions. Since most of quality attributes such as performance, reliability, availability, safety, and security have a probabilistic nature, probabilistic verification techniques are the best solution to perform model-based quality evaluation. The research project shall explore the possibilities of probabilistic modelling and verification techniques to reason about quality attributes early in the software development lifecycle. To get a detailed introduction into this research project please have a look at the following background literature:

• Controller dependability analysis by probabilistic model checking
  (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.conengprac.2006.07.003)
• Quantitative risk-based security prediction for component-based systems with explicitly modeled attack profiles
  (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2007.11.716)
• Early quality prediction of component-based systems – A generic framework (http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jss.2006.08.014)

Your Benefits:
Basically, the benefits can be summarised as follows:

• You will work on real-world research problems. (There will always be opportunities to cooperate with major software and systems engineering companies.)
• You will be trained in all skills that are required to successfully finish you research project. Our goal is to help you develop the skills, connections, and opportunities required, that ensure a successful postgraduate career.
• You will create research outputs at the highest standards. In today’s world, it is not only enough to be good, students must be great and competitive compared to other graduate students. Please have a look at our own research outputs.
• You will get optimal and continuous supervision. My goal is to give you strong support on your research from a technical side. However, we also try to help my students to develop their personal skills. If you like to know more about my supervision style, we can provide contact details of recently graduated students as reference.
• You study in a friendly and cooperative environment. Australia is known for its friendliness.

We require:
We are interested in a PhD student who has a good academic record (first class honours or equivalent with marks above 80-85%) with background in one or more of the following areas:

• probabilistic logics and probabilistic verification
• probabilistic model checking
• quality attributes such as performance, reliability, availability, safety, and security
• software engineering (in the areas of embedded systems, robotics, etc. )
• software architectures and architecture evaluation
• formal methods in system design
• statistics

Since this project involves working with other PhD students and industrial partner, communication skills and the ability to work in a team environment are especially required.

The scholarship carries a value of AUS$20,000+ p.a., with fee exemption for both Australian and international students. The selection process will be competitive. If you are interested in the research project, please provide the following information via email to lgrunske[at]swin.edu.au:

• detailed curriculum vitae
• an (electronic) copy of undergraduate and postgraduate transcripts (first class honours or equivalent with marks above 80-85% or GPA 3.70/4)
• evidence of English proficiency for non native English speaker (officially required is an IELTS of 6.5 with no band below 6.0, practically scores above 7.0 are preferred).

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