Permanent Faculty Position in Computer Science, University of Camerino, Italy

Emanuela Merelli has asked me to distribute this announcement for a faculty position, which may be of interest to some readers of this blog.

Permanent Faculty Position in Computer Science
School of Science and Technology
University of Camerino

http://www.cs.unicam.it/home

The University of Camerino has opened a faculty permanent position at the level of Associate Professor in Computer Science for the School of Science and Technology.

We are interested in an lively and self-motivated candidate who is interested in working with existing faculty in one or more of the research areas within the Computer Science Division, in particular software engineering  and theoretical computer science. See
http://www.cs.unicam.it/home/component/content/section/2-research

for detailed information on the current research areas within the CS Unit.

Applicants should have published in international journals, had papers in proceedings of relevant conferences and given evidence of participation in international projects. The teaching language for some courses at Computer Science Division is English, hence applicants should have a track-record of teaching in English. Computer Science Associate Professor is expected to teach in the undergraduate, masters and PhD programs. Effective productivity and leadership in research, and interest in teaching are expected.

Applications must be sent, within 14 April 2012, to: Magnifico Rettore dell'Universita' di Camerino – Piazza Cavour 19/f, 62032 Camerino (MC).

See

http://www.unicam.it/servizi_online/cerca_bandi.asp

for detailed information.

Requirements for applicants: applications are welcome from candidates with the following qualifications:

a) candidates who received positive judgments according to “ Legge 210/1998” for the position corresponding to Associate Professor, candidates who were deemed fit for the position corresponding to Associate Professor according to “ Legge 210/1998” provided certification of fitness is still valid;

b) candidates who are already employed as associate professors in other universities i.e., since legislation “Legge 240/2010”;

c) scholars who are permanently employed in research or teaching activities at university level outside Italy in positions which are equivalent to those required in this call (according to ministerial equivalences).

Informal communication and discussions on any aspect related to the position are encouraged, and interested candidates are welcome to contact the chairman of the computer science division, Prof. Emanuela Merelli (emanuela.merelli@unicam.it), for further information.

The Computer Science Division of the School of Science and Technology at University of Camerino has about 500 students and 14 permanent staff members. The school offers undergraduate and graduate programs in computer science and the doctoral programme in Information Science and Complex Systems that currently hosts 18 PhD students. 

Situated up on the hill, Camerino, a beautiful little town of Central Italy with its medieval historical center hosts one of the most ancient university in Italy.

See

http://www.cs.unicam.it/home/component/content/category/15-living-in-camerino

for more information about living in Camerino.

Second Alan Turing Year Event at Reykjavik University

Last Friday, my colleague Ýmir Vigfússon delivered the second talk in the Alan Turing Year at Reykjavik University. His talk was entitled Alan Turing: The man who won the Battle of Britain and was organized jointly by ICE-TCS , the School of Computer Science at Reykjavik University and the Icelandic Mathematical Society.  In case anyone is interested, the audio of the talk, with the accompanying slides, is here in .avi format. I thoroughly enjoyed Ymir's talk and I strongly encourage my readers to listen to it. Thanks Ymir!

We plan to record all the talks in the series and to make them available on line here.

Faculty Position at IMT, Institute for Advanced Studies Lucca

Readers of this blog might be interested in this position, which has just been advertised. The call for applications states that:

Preference will be given to candidates performing research at the intersection between algorithms, theory and applications, and who are active in one or more of the following fields: analysis and modeling of massive data structures; graph theory and random structures; analysis and modeling of complex networks; machine learning; data mining; parallel and distributed computation.

Faculty Position
IMT Institute for Advanced Studies Lucca

IMT Institute for Advanced Studies Lucca  is an international Graduate School and Institute of Technology that strives to reach the fusion of theoretical comprehension and practical relevance. The following goals are at the core of IMT's mission statement:

* to establish itself as a research center that promotes cutting-edge research in key areas, structuring its Ph.D. Programs in close connection with research activity;
* to attract top students, researchers and scholars through competitive international selections;
* to contribute to technological innovation, economic growth and social development.

These objectives are met by means of the fundamental principles (the IMT Policy) adapted by the governing bodies of the Institute.

IMT has opened an international scouting procedure to recruit for a tenured faculty position in the following fields:

Computer Science and Engineering, Large Scale Data Mining, Graph Theory, Mathematical Statistics, Machine Learning

We will consider highly qualified candidates with a strong theoretical background in computer science, physics, statistics, information science, engineering, or mathematics, with an orientation towards research on processing huge amounts of complex data in the analysis of technical, socio economic or biological systems. Candidates must have an excellent record of high-impact international publications. They should have demonstrated remarkable ability in leading research groups, as well as experience in conducting/coordinating international projects.

Preference will be given to candidates performing research at the intersection between algorithms, theory and applications, and who are active in one or more of the following fields: analysis and modeling of massive data structures; graph theory and random structures; analysis and modeling of complex networks; machine learning; data mining; parallel and distributed computation.

Submit your confidential expression of interest at: http://www.imtlucca.it/faculty/positions/professors_positions/2011/application.php

Deadline is May 15th 2012.

Visit the Institute on YouTube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4gE-_2RrB8).

Nicolaas Govert de Bruijn (1918-2012)

I recently heard from MohammadReza Mousavi that Nicolaas Govert de Bruijn passed away on the 17th of February. In his long and productive life, de Bruijn gave contributions to several areas of mathematics and to theoretical computer science. Examples of his contributions are the De Bruijn sequence, De Bruijn's theorem, the De Bruijn–Erdős theorem in graph theory, the De Bruijn notation for terms in the λ calculus and his pioneering work on the project Automath, which was aimed at designing a language for expressing complete mathematical theories in such a way that a computer can verify the correctness of proofs in those theories. (Automath can be seen as the predecessor of type theoretical proof assistants such as the well known Nuprl and Coq.)

To celebrate de Bruijn's 90th birthday, TU/e organized a festive event.  Quoting from the web site for that event:

A number of colleagues, friends and admirers of Dick de Bruijn, from all over the world, wrote a personal letter as a birthday present for his 90th birthday, on July 9, 2008. The collection of these letters can be downloaded here.

Dick de Bruijn's lecture at the day of the symposium has been recorded on film. This film can be seen via this link.

Addendum: One of the letters in the above-mentioned collection is from Donald Knuth. In the letter, Knuth says that de Brujin coined the word "multiset" in a letter addressed to him from 1968. Knuth's letter also mentions the work of three of my former colleagues and ICE-TCS members: Anders Claesson, Mark Dukes and Sergey Kitaev.

ERC Advanced Investigator Grant to Dale Miller

Even though this is not really news any more, I am happy to report that  Dale Miller has been awarded one of the prestigious Advanced Investigators Grants by the ERC for the project ProofCert: Broad Spectrum Proof Certificates. This is a 2.2 million euro grant (about 3 million USD) for the five years 2012-2016. A news item pertaining to this award is here and the list of all awards for 2011 is available from this link.

The following excerpt is taken from the proposal’s abstract.

The ProofCert proposal aims at building a foundation that will allow a broad spectrum of formal methods—ranging from automatic model checkers to interactive theorem provers—to work together to establish formal properties of computer systems. This project starts with a wonderful gift to us from decades of work by logicians and proof theorist: their efforts on logic and proof has given us a universally accepted means of communicating proofs between people and computer systems. Logic can be used to state desirable security and correctness properties of software and hardware systems and proofs are uncontroversial evidence that statements are, in fact, true. The current state-of-the-art of formal methods used in academics and industry shows, however, that the notion of logic and proof is severely fractured: there is little or no communication between any two such systems. Thus any efforts on computer system correctness is needlessly repeated many time in the many different systems: sometimes this work is even redone when a given prover is upgraded. In ProofCert, we will build on the bedrock of decades of research into logic and proof theory the notion of proof certificates. Such certificates will allow for a complete reshaping of the way that formal methods are employed.

More technical details are available from the project's web page.

It is good to see that the ERC is actively supporting researchers of Dale's calibre in carrying out this kind of work. I look forward to seeing the outcome of this five-year project.