Postdoctoral Research Fellow

Post status: Specific Purpose Contract – Full Time

Tenable immediately

Reports to: Prof. Vinny Cahill & Prof. Ivana Dusparic

Hours of work: 39 hours per week

Closing Date: 17:00 (GMT) on Friday 1st March 2024. Late applications will be considered if the post remains unfilled.

Post Summary

We are seeking to recruit a Postdoctoral Research Fellow to investigate the use of deep reinforcement learning (RL) and swarm intelligence techniques to optimize urban and highway traffic in the presence of autonomous and conventional vehicles within the ClearWay project funded by Science Foundation Ireland from 2022-2026.

The increasing availability of sensor data, including from connected and autonomous vehicles, will make it possible to capture the detailed state of a road network in real time. Along with the ability to exercise an increasing level of control over individual vehicles either indirectly, e.g., via urban traffic control or driver guidance systems, or directly, in the case of (semi-)autonomous vehicles, this offers the opportunity to deploy new approaches to traffic management with the explicit goal of optimizing end-to-end travel-time reliability.

Extending the state of the art in deep RL and swarm intelligence, ClearWay will design algorithms for optimization of urban and highway traffic as a function of the increasing levels of sensor data and increasing levels of control over individual vehicles available. Such algorithms will need to take account of the scale, complexity, and inherent non-stationarity of traffic systems, while adapting to the many transient perturbations that effect traffic flow. The focus is on decentralized and multi-agent algorithms that allow traffic controllers to cooperate towards system-wide optimal solutions. The successful candidate is expected to make contributions to the state of the art in deep RL applied to cyber-physical systems in areas such as multi-agent cooperation, lifelong learning, transfer learning, and explainability.

The position will be based in the School of Computer Science and Statistics at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland under the direction of Prof. Vinny Cahill and Prof. Ivana Dusparic. For informal

inquiries please contact [email protected]  or [email protected]

Required Qualifications

The successful candidate must have a PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Electronic Engineering, or a related field. The post is applicable to both new and experienced PhD holders, and salary will be commensurate with experience and achievement. The successful candidate will join an inter-disciplinary team of highly-skilled and innovative researchers in the areas of RL and intelligent mobility.

Application Procedure

Please send applications by email to [email protected] and [email protected] quoting “ClearWay Fellowship” in the subject line and containing three PDF files as follows:

• A cover letter,
• A curriculum vitae (giving full details of qualifications and experience, including transcripts of degrees, a description of your contribution to relevant project work, identification of your three most-significant publications relevant to the ClearWay project, and the names and contact details of two referees), and
• A 1-2 page research

The closing date for applications is Friday 1st March 2024. Late applications will be considered if the posts remain unfilled.