PhD Candidate Positions within Safe and Resilient Control Systems for Autonomous Ships

About the job

We are currently seeking highly motivated PhD candidates to join our team. Both positions are part of the research project SAFECOAST (Safe and Resilient Control Systems for Autonomous Ships) that is led by NTNU in close collaboration with DNV and Kongsberg Maritime. The objective of the SAFECOAST project is to develop methods and tools that enhance the safety and security of autonomous ships. Our approach involves ensuring that the collection of onboard and remote control systems not only address their intended purpose but also are able to collectively handle unforeseen critical situations. We aim to create resilient and fault-tolerant control systems capable of coping with unexpected disturbances, deviations, and failures, while making safe decisions under uncertainty. 

The topics of the two PhD candidates are described in the following:

PhD 1: Resilient control architectures and robust decision-making for autonomous ships

Develop resilient control systems that can adapt and reconfigure to deal with hazardous situations and ensure that local control loops satisfy varying constraints necessary to create a safe and resilient system. Examples of such reconfigurations or adaptations include bringing human operators into some parts of the decision process in a critical situation, removing an autonomous ship´s engine protection system´s authority to shut down engines in critical navigation situations, increasing power supply reliability (e.g., by starting a redundant engine) in critical navigation situations, adapting the control system to use alternative sources of information or to include extra safety margins in situations with high uncertainty, and to implement contingency plans in a hazardous situation instead of continuing the planned operation.

PhD 2: Safety assurance of adaptive and self-reconfigurable autonomous control architectures

Research how to assess the actual resilience and fault tolerance of an autonomous system through system analyses and simulation-based testing. This requires the development of smart methods for eliciting potentially hazardous scenarios, as well as methods for automatically simulating, evaluating, and adjusting the scenarios to either build confidence in the system´s ability to handle the scenario, or identify the need for design improvements based on failures by the system to deal with a given scenario. 

You will work on an interesting research project, benefiting from cooperation with the highly engaged industrial partners Kongsberg Maritime and DNV. Your supervision team will consist of Professor Tor Arne Johansen and Associate Professor Børge Rokseth from the Department of Engineering Cybernetics, as well as Professor Ingrid Utne Bouwer from the Department of Marine Technology. A third PhD candidate (separate announcement) will have Professor Ingrid Bouwer Utne as main supervisor, while PhD 1 will have Professor Tor Arne Johansen as main supervisor, and PhD 2 will have Associate professor Børge Rokseth as main supervisor. The immediate leader for both positions is Prof. Sebastien Gros, Head of Dept. of Cybernetics.

Applicants are welcome to apply for one or both positions. In your application, please clearly specify the position(s) you are interested in and outline your qualifications accordingly. 

Based on the candidate's skills and qualifications, the hiring committee may consider applicants for a position other than the one applied for. This flexibility ensures that we can maximize the talent within our team. Candidates will be informed if this is the case. 

Duties of the position

• Develop an optimization-based control and decision-making framework to enable a control architecture consisting of a set of interconnected control loops, to collectively deal with unexpected hazardous situations. (PhD 1)
  •  Research how fields such as fault tolerant control theory, optimization-based control and decision-making, and reinforcement learning can be extended to manage the behavior emerging from sets of interconnected control loops in the presence of faults or disturbances. 
  •  Develop a cost/utility modelling framework for determining the effect of different decisions or control outputs including estimates on uncertainty.
• Develop a method for effectively facilitating the creation and structuring a body of evidence that testify an autonomous ship´s ability (or lack thereof) to handle unexpected hazardous situations (PhD 2):
  •  Designing methodologies, algorithms, and tools for simulation-based testing to automatically search for hazardous scenarios that the system cannot handle. 
  •  Developing procedures for using system design and analysis tools, such as hazard analyses and safety cases to generate relevant classes of scenarios for testing.
• Collaborative Work (both positions): Collaborate closely with project partners to understand their requirements, develop relevant tools and methodologies, and integrate them into their work processes, ensuring practical applicability and industry relevance.
• Use Case Demonstrations (both positions): Collaborate with the project team to demonstrate the developed framework on the project´s case studies. This involves implementing developed methods on the case study systems, executing simulations, and analyzing the results to validate the capabilities of the methods.
• Publication and Dissemination (both positions): Actively publish research findings in reputable scientific journals and present at relevant conferences to contribute to the academic community's knowledge in the field. Disseminate research outcomes and insights to research partners within the consortium.

Required selection criteria

• Your education must correspond to a five-year Norwegian degree program, where 120 credits are obtained at master's level.
• You must have a strong background from your previous studies and an average grade from the master's degree program, or equivalent education, which is equal to B or better compared with NTNU's grading scale. If you do not have letter grades from previous studies, you must have an equally good academic basis. If you have a weaker grade background, you may be assessed if you can document that you are particularly suitable for a PhD education.
• Master's students can apply, but the master's degree must be obtained and documented by 30.08.24. 
• You must meet the requirements for admission to the the PhD programme in Engineering Cybernetics  .
• You must have documented knowledge through courses, projects, or former professional experience within modelling and simulation of dynamical systems, maritime systems, system safety engineering, control engineering, and/or cybernetics and robotics.
• You have a solid background in engineering mathematics, statistics, and experience in scientific computing using languages such as C++, Python and/or Matlab.
• Good written and oral English.

The appointment is to be made in accordance with Regulations on terms of employment for positions such as postdoctoral fellow, Phd candidate, research assistant and specialist candidate  and Regulations concerning the degrees of Philosophiae Doctor (PhD) and Philosodophiae Doctor (PhD) in artistic research national guidelines for appointment as PhD, post doctor and research assistant 

Preferred selection criteria

• Documented knowledge in artificial intelligence, embedded systems, naval architecture, or electrical engineering.
• Good collaborative skills as the candidate will work closely with other people in the SAFECOAST-consortium.

Personal characteristics

• Motivation and a desire to make an impact on the development and application of autonomous systems. 
• Adaptive and oriented towards finding solutions.
• Good at communication.

Emphasis will be placed on personal and interpersonal qualities.

We offer

Salary and conditions

As a PhD candidate (code 1017) you are normally paid from gross NOK 532 200 per annum before tax, depending on qualifications and seniority. From the salary, 2% is deducted as a contribution to the Norwegian Public Service Pension Fund.

The period of employment is 3 years.

Appointment to a PhD position requires that you are admitted to PhD program in Engineering Cybernetics  within three months of employment, and that you participate in an organized PhD programme during the employment period. 

The engagement is to be made in accordance with the regulations in force concerning State Employees and Civil Servants , and the acts relating to Control of the Export of Strategic Goods, Services and Technology. Candidates who by assessment of the application and attachment are seen to conflict with the criteria in the latter law will be prohibited from recruitment to NTNU.

After the appointment you must assume that there may be changes in the area of work.

It is a prerequisite you can be present at and accessible to the institution on a daily basis.

About the application

The application and supporting documentation to be used as the basis for the assessment must be in English.

Publications and other scientific work must be attached to the application. Please note that your application will be considered based solely on information submitted by the application deadline. You must therefore ensure that your application clearly demonstrates how your skills and experience fulfil the criteria specified above.

The application must include:

• CV and certificates 
• Transcripts and diplomas for bachelor's and master's degrees. If you have not completed the master's degree, you must submit a confirmation that the master's thesis has been submitted.
• A copy of the master's thesis. If you recently have submitted your master's thesis, you can attach a draft of the thesis. Documentation of a completed master's degree must be presented before taking up the position.
• Name and contact information of minimum 2 referees.
• If you have publications or other relevant research work
• Information about which of the two positions you are applying for (you may apply for both)

If all, or parts, of your education has been taken abroad, we also ask you to attach documentation of the scope and quality of your entire education, both bachelor's and master's education, in addition to other higher education. Description of the documentation required can be found here . If you already have a statement from NOKUT, please attach this as well.

We will take joint work into account. If it is difficult to identify your efforts in the joint work, you must enclose a short description of your participation.

In the evaluation of which candidate is best qualified, emphasis will be placed on education, experience and personal and interpersonal qualities. Motivation, ambitions, and potential will also count in the assessment of the candidates. 

NTNU is committed to following evaluation criteria for research quality according to The San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment - DORA.

General information

Working at NTNU

NTNU believes that inclusion and diversity is our strength. We want to recruit people with different competencies, educational backgrounds, life experiences and perspectives to contribute to solving our social responsibilities within education and research. We will facilitate for our employees’ needs.

NTNU is working actively to increase the number of women employed in scientific positions and has a number of resources to promote equality.  

The city of Trondheim is a modern European city with a rich cultural scene. Trondheim is the innovation capital of Norway with a population of 200,000. The Norwegian welfare state, including healthcare, schools, kindergartens and overall equality, is probably the best of its kind in the world. Professional subsidized day-care for children is easily available. Furthermore, Trondheim offers great opportunities for education (including international schools) and possibilities to enjoy nature, culture and family life and has low crime rates and clean air quality.

As an employee at NTNU, you must at all times adhere to the changes that the development in the subject entails and the organizational changes that are adopted.

A public list of applicants with name, age, job title and municipality of residence is prepared after the application deadline. If you want to reserve yourself from entry on the public applicant list, this must be justified. Assessment will be made in accordance with current legislation . You will be notified if the reservation is not accepted.

If you have any questions about the position, please contact Associate Professor Børge Rokseth on email: [email protected]  . If you have any questions about the recruitment process, please contact HR Consultant Berit Dahl, e-mail: [email protected]  .

If you think this looks interesting and in line with your qualifications, please submit your application electronically via jobbnorge.no with your CV, diplomas and certificates attached. Applications submitted elsewhere will not be considered. Upon request, you must be able to obtain certified copies of your documentation.  

Application deadline: 15.01.2024.

NTNU - knowledge for a better world

The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) creates knowledge for a better world and solutions that can change everyday life.

Department of Engineering Cybernetics (ITK)

Engineering cybernetics is the study of automatic control and monitoring of dynamic systems. We develop the technologies of tomorrow through close cooperation with industry and academia, both in Norway and internationally. The Department contributes to the digitalization, automation and robotization of society. The Department of Engineering Cybernetics  is one of seven departments in the Faculty of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering .

Deadline 15th January 2024
Employer NTNU - Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Municipality Trondheim
Scope Fulltime (2 positions)
Duration Project
Place of service NTNU, 7491 Trondheim