PhD - Performance Evaluation of Component-Based Software

The Design and Analysis of Communication Systems (DACS) at the University of Twente group is looking for a full-time PhD student in the COMMIT project Allegio.

Performance Evaluation of Component-Based Software

The Allegio project aims at defining and integrating a set of methods and techniques to support a systematic “Right by Design” component-based software design approach for complex embedded systems. This ensures that incremental changes become predictable and meet the required system qualities such as performance and safety.

The contribution of DACS in Allegio is on developing models and techniques for performance evaluation of component-based software for embedded systems in the healthcare domain.

We strive to build a performance analysis tool that connects well to existing design tools. Integrating design space exploration will help to explore combinations of parameter settings to handle and optimize performance budgets. As evolvable software architectures play an important role in the project, their impact on the overall system performance needs to be studied. Hence, research is needed to find appropriate models for software architectures, such that performance models and performance attributes can be extracted from them. Regarding the component‐based approach, again, research is needed to find useful models to specify performance constraints and requirements for components. The ultimate goal woult be to automate genaration of performance models and their solutions from designspecifications.

The research will mainly be carried out at Philips Healthcare (Business Unit Interventional X-ray in Best, Netherlands) in close collaboration with the University of Twente and the Embedded Systems Institute (ESI). The ESI is project leader, cf. http://www.esi.nl/. The research will follow an industry-as-laboratory style: actual research problems are drawn from industry and solutions are evaluated in the industrial context, i.e., Philips Healthcare.

The University of Twente:

The University of Twente (UT; http://www.utwente.nl/en) is an entrepreneurial research university, located in Enschede, the Netherlands. The research of the involved groups is part of the multidisciplinary research institute Centre for Telematics and Information Technology (http://www.ctit.utwente.nl).

Within the CTIT, the DACS group (http://www.utwente.nl/ewi/dacs) concentrates on the design of dependable communication systems, e.g., for car-to-car communications, SCADA-based systems, and embedded systems, as well as on network security.

What we offer:

We offer a contract for four years. The extent of each position is a maximum of 38 hours per week (1 fte) according to the Dutch university rules. The monthly salary of a PhD student, in accordance with the collective labor agreement for Dutch universities (CAO-NU), ranges from EURO 2042 gross in the first year to EURO 2612 gross in the fourth year. Additionally, the University of Twente provides excellent facilities for professional and personal development, a holiday allowance and an end-of-year bonus, and a number of additional benefits.

We offer our PhD students the opportunity to broaden their knowledge by joining international exchange programs, by participating in national and international conferences and workshops, and by visiting other research institutes and universities worldwide.

Requirements for the candidate:

We expect a Master's degree in computer science, embedded systems or electrical engineering. Good knowledge of modern performance evaluation techniques is regarded crucial for this assignment. Good communication skills and strong social skills are required as well. The candidate is expected to have an independent working style, and an excellent command of the English language.

When applying, make sure to include the following documents (pdf) in English:

Please apply via mail to Silvia Meijran (S.Meijran@utwente.nl) or Dr. Anne Remke (anne@cs.utwente.nl) or Prof. Dr. Ir. Boudewijn R. Haverkort (brh@cs.utwente.nl).