PhD funding available - Theory of constraints

Funded PhD Studentships, Department of Computer Science, Royal Holloway,
University of London, UK.

Applications are invited for funded PhD studentships in the Department
of Computer Science at Royal Holloway, starting on 19th of September
2016. We particularly welcome female applicants as they are
under-represented among our PhD student population.

The constraints group is particularly interested in application sin one
of the following areas:
*) how the constraint representation affects tractability.
*) Any aspect of valued constraints.
*) Hybrid classes that are tractable (neither language, nor structure)
*) forbidden patterns or minor patterns that allow tractability or
variable/value elimination.
*) A proper description of the current state of tractability, by
describing the classes of global relations, rather than abstruse algebra.
*) The workflow scheduling problem: aka a characterisation of fixed
parameter tractable conservative languages.

but any good constraints theory topic, or application of algorithms to
real world problems would be great.

These studentships are for three years and include a stipend of circa
£16,000 per year plus a Home/EU fee waiver. Applicants are expected to
have obtained a first-class degree in Computer Science or a cognate
discipline, and must obtain the support of a potential supervisor in the
Department prior to submitting an applications. Initial contact with
supervisors should be made at least two weeks prior to the closing date
for applications.

Closing date for open topic applications: 10th of April 2016.

To apply, please use our on-line system

https://www.royalholloway.ac.uk/studyhere/researchdegrees/applying/home.aspx

to submit the following items:

(1) appropriate research topic/area;

(2) a covering letter describing your reasons for wishing to pursue a
PhD in the proposed area, incuding why you think that you are qualified
to do research in that area;

(3) a research proposal where you expand on your research topic: why the
topic is important, what is the state of the art in the area, and what
are the research contributions that you would like to make beyond the
state of the art – this does not need to be too long but it should
contain enough information for us to make a judgement on the viability
of carrying out such a research project in the Department;

(4) a current CV;

(5) any documents proving your actual or expected degree
classifications, as well as results of any previous University
examinations;

(6) two academic references.

ABOUT COMPUTER SCIENCE AT ROYAL HOLLOWAY
The Department is one of the UK’s leading centres for research into
Computer Science. In the most recent Research Excellent Framework (REF
2014), we rank 11th in the UK for the quality of our research output. We
offer a very vibrant research culture that includes interdisciplinary
links with several other departments. Our research is strongly supported
by external funding from various sources, including companies.

Royal Holloway was ranked 129th in the world and 19th overall in the UK
in the Times Higher Education (THE) World University Rankings 2015/16.
We are situated in a beautiful campus in Egham, Surrey, ranked alongside
Oxford and Cambridge as one of the twelve most beautiful universities in
the world. We are both close to Central London and 10 minutes by taxi
from Heathrow Airport.

For information about the Department of Computer Science at Royal
Holloway, visit our web-site in http://www.rhul.ac.uk/computerscience/.