PhD Studentship: Towards Trustworthy AI for Safety-Critical Cyber-Physical Systems

Award Summary: 100% of Home tuition fees paid plus a yearly stipend of £16,062.

Overview

Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are complex networked models combining both cyber (computation and communication) and physical components, which tightly interact with each other in a feedback loop. Examples of such systems span a wide range of real-life safety-critical applications including automotive, robotics, transportation systems, energy, healthcare, critical infrastructures, and so on. Formal verification and policy synthesis for this type of complex systems to enforce high-level control missions are inherently very challenging mainly due to (i) large dimension of underlying systems, (ii) stochastic nature of dynamics, (iii) tight interaction between physical and cyber components, (iv) dealing with complex requirements, and (v) lack of mathematical closed-form models in many real-world applications. The main goal of this research is to focus on developing scalable AI-based techniques with mathematical guarantees to tackle the aforementioned difficulties and design highly-reliable CPS by bringing together interdisciplinary concepts from formal methods in computer science, optimization in operations research, control theory, data science and machine learning.

This studentship provides a unique opportunity to perform interdisciplinary, high-impact research within a group of interdisciplinary researchers. The successful candidate will directly work under the supervision of Dr Abolfazl Lavaei.

Number of awards: 1

Start date: January 2023.

Award duration: 3.5 years.

Sponsor: School of Computing, Newcastle University

Supervisors: Dr. Abolfazl Lavaei, School of Computing.

Eligibility Criteria

The applicant should have or hope to achieve a Master degree in one of the following areas: Mathematics, Computer Science/Engineering, Systems and Control, Data Science, Artificial Intelligence, or a closely related field, and be willing to gain knowledge in other required areas.

The award is available to both Home and International applicants. However please note that International applicants will be required to cover the difference between Home and International tuition fees.

How to apply

The potential applicants are strongly encouraged to send their academic materials (CV, transcripts, etc.) directly to Dr Lavaei before applying via the online portal. E-mail: [email protected] .

To make an application please go to the postgraduate application system  and click ‘create an account’.

All relevant fields should be completed, but fields marked with a red asterisk in the application portal must be completed. The following information will help us to process your application. You will need to:

• Insert the programme code 8050F in the programme of study section
• Select ‘PhD Computer Science (full-time)’ as the programme of study
• Insert the studentship code COMP2130 in the studentship/partnership reference field
• Attach a covering letter and CV. The covering letter must state the title of the studentship, quote reference code COMP2130 and state how your interests and experience relate to the project
• Attach degree transcripts and certificates and, if English is not your first language, a copy of your English language qualifications

Please also forward a copy of your CV to [email protected] .

Contact details

For further details at any stage, please contact Dr. Lavaei, [email protected]