PhD Scholarships in Resilient Situational Awareness through Distributed Sensing in GNSS-Denied Environment and with Limited Communication Capabilities

If you have the ambition of becoming an expert in resilient operation of autonomous systems and you are searching for an internationally leading scientific environment where to thrive, then look no further. At DTU Electrical Engineering, Automation and Control Group (AUT), you will research at the absolute forefront of cyber-resilient autonomous systems and will have the opportunity to break new ground in several research areas as fault-tolerant sensor fusion, cooperative estimation and control of multi-agent systems. You will access world-class research infrastructure to experimentally demonstrate your theoretical achievements. You will also be instrumental for establishing an international collaboration with Aalto Center for Autonomous Systems, where you will have the possibility of being a visiting researcher.  

Scope of PhD project: Continuous monitoring of cyber-physical critical infrastructure is paramount to achieve early detection of potentially disruptive events (natural or malicious). Autonomous multi-agent systems can supply such monitoring function by enabling the deployment of a distributed sensing network to collect diverse data streams. The merging of such data generates a so-called situational awareness about the state of the infrastructure. If one or more autonomous agents feed erroneous information into the situational awareness, then misleading conclusions could be reached, and unnecessary, or even damaging, accommodation actions could be taken to secure the critical infrastructure. The PhD project researches the development of a resilient distributed situational awareness system able to withstand erroneous data feeds from one or more agents.

Expected start of employment: December 1, 2021.

Responsibilities and qualifications
Your overall focus will be to strengthen AUT’s competences within distributed fault-tolerant sensor fusion and constrained optimization for motion planning towards the development of cyber-resilient networks of autonomous systems for monitoring of critical infrastructures. You will research theoretical methods and demonstrate them experimentally on study cases featuring aerial surveillance of ship-shore operations, built in close collaboration with industry leaders.

Your primary tasks will be:

• Perform internationally relevant research in the areas of distributed multi-modal sensor fusion, fault-tolerant state estimation, cooperative estimation in multi-agent systems, motion planning for multi-agent systems
• Publish novel research results in leading scientific journals, and present your research work at international conferences and workshops
• Engage with industry leaders to define the study cases for the experimental verification of developed methods
• Implement developed methods and algorithms in multi-rotor drones, and perform experimental work to verify and validate them
• Co-supervise BSc and MSc projects within the research spectrum of the PhD project
• Support teaching activities at MSc level for courses in the areas of control theory, robotics and autonomous systems

Your profile meets the following qualifications (documented through course, project or research work):

• You must have a two-year master's degree (120 ECTS points) or a similar degree with an academic level equivalent to a two-year master's degree
• You have a major in control theory, or robotics or autonomous systems
• You have good knowledge of control and estimation theory for (at least) linear dynamical systems
• You have good knowledge of fault diagnosis and fault-tolerant control
• You have good knowledge of motion planning for dynamical systems
• You have familiarity with the integration and use of sensing devices within automated systems
• You have experience with implementing, deploying and testing software modules for robotic systems in one or more of these development environments: Matlab, Python or ROS
• You are result-oriented, proactive and able to work independently
• You are fluent in English both in writing and in speaking

Applicable for all scholarships

Approval and Enrolment
The scholarships for the PhD degree are subject to academic approval, and the candidates will be enrolled in one of the general degree programmes at DTU. For information about our enrolment requirements and the general planning of the PhD study programme, please see the DTU PhD Guide .

Assessment
The assessment of the candidates will be done through an interview process assessing the technical qualifications and personal profile. Associate Professor Roberto Galeazzi in close collaboration with relevant colleagues and DTU HR Department will perform the assessment.

We offer
DTU is a leading technical university globally recognized for the excellence of its research, education, innovation and scientific advice. We offer a rewarding and challenging job in an international environment. We strive for academic excellence in an environment characterized by collegial respect and academic freedom tempered by responsibility.

Salary and appointment terms
The appointment will be based on the collective agreement with the Danish Confederation of Professional Associations. The allowance will be agreed upon with the relevant union. The period of employment is 3 years.

You can read more about career paths at DTU here .

Further information
Further information may be obtained from associate professor Roberto Galeazzi, [email protected] .

You can read more about DTU Electrical Engineering at www.elektro.dtu.dk . 

If you are applying from abroad, you may find useful information on working in Denmark and at DTU at DTU – Moving to Denmark .   

Application procedure
Your complete online application must be submitted no later than Tuesday, 12 October 2021 (Danish time). Applications must be submitted as one PDF file containing all materials to be given consideration. To apply, please open the link "Apply online", fill out the online application form, and attach all your materials in English in one PDF file. The file must include:

• A letter motivating the application (cover letter)
• A research plan (max 2 A4 pages) highlighting the specific research actions that the candidate envisages to perform to achieve the project objective. 
• Curriculum vitae
• Grade transcripts and BSc/MSc diploma
• Excel sheet with translation of grades to the Danish grading system (see guidelines and Excel spreadsheet here – in the right hand column)
• Documentation (reports, articles, personal webpages) demonstrating the technical competences aforementioned

In the field “Please indicate which position(s) you would like to apply for”, please indicate which project you are applying for (title from the above list of PhD projectsor individual research projects).

Incomplete applications will not be considered. You may apply prior to ob­tai­ning your master's degree but cannot begin before having received it.

All interested candidates irrespective of age, gender, disability, race, religion or ethnic background are encouraged to apply.

The Automation and Control group performs research and teaching in automation technology, control theory, robotics and autonomous systems at DTU. The group has 54 affiliated researchers and other employees. Please read more about the Automation and Control group on http://www.aut.elektro.dtu.dk/ .  

The Department of Electrical Engineering is organized into five (soon six) sections and a number of centres and research groups which carry out state of the art research and educational activities. Including PhD students we have about 200 staff members. It is our goal to ensure research and engineering training at the highest international level. PhD studies are an integrated part of the research conducted at the department. As a PhD student, you become part of one of our research sections. Please read more about the Department of Electrical Engineering on www.elektro.dtu.dk .

Technology for people
DTU develops technology for people. With our international elite research and study programmes, we are helping to create a better world and to solve the global challenges formulated in the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals. Hans Christian Ørsted founded DTU in 1829 with a clear vision to develop and create value using science and engineering to benefit society. That vision lives on today. DTU has 12,900 students and 6,000 employees. We work in an international atmosphere and have an inclusive, evolving, and informal working environment. DTU has campuses in all parts of Denmark and in Greenland, and we collaborate with the best universities around the world.