PhD student position in Formal Verification of Smart Contracts

Do you want to develop techniques to guarantee correctness of future international business and trade?

Information about the research group
The Automation Group, within the Department of Electrical Engineering conducts research on formal verification of safety and security of smart contracts. Smart contracts are computer programs that change the way future business and trade are executed. The smart contracts are openly stored and executed in a blockchain ecosystem, enforcing a contractual agreement between mutually distrusting users, including the exchange of crypto currencies. An important feature of smart contracts is that once they are deployed on the blockchain they cannot be changed. Smart contracts successfully address the problem of guaranteeing the execution of agreements in a setting where parties neither need to trust each other, nor do they need to involve a third party (like bank, layer, or authority). At the same time, they provide a surface for security attacks.

Given the high usage of smart contracts in a variety of applications such as insurance, supply chain, etc., and the large volume of digital assets being transferred, there is strong demand for verification techniques. Formal verification is the process of mathematically proving or disproving that a model of the system satisfies some requirements. The automation group has a solid track record and solid research on formal verification of manufacturing systems and software verification of autonomous vehicles, and production systems. These approaches we now want to develop for and apply to verification of smart contracts

Information about the division
The Automation group has a wide span, from theoretical foundations to applied systems development. We provide high quality education at Bachelor's, Master's and graduate levels. We also have extensive national and international collaborations with academia and industry.

Major responsibilities
In the past several years extensive research has been done on techniques to verify smart contracts. The topic of the position is to identify different security specifications, which can be checked with formal verification, theorem proving, etc. as well as designing algorithms for automatically modeling smart contracts and possible safe repair. You are expected to develop your own ideas and communicate scientific results orally as well as in written form in related conferences and journals. Moreover, the position includes 20% department work, mostly as a teaching assistance.

Contract terms
The PhD student position is a full-time temporary employment, limited to a maximum of 5 years. During this time you are expected to obtain a PhD degree. This encompasses 20% departmental duties (typically teaching), 20% studies for credits towards your PhD and 60% research.

Qualifications
To qualify for this PhD student position you must have a master's level degree corresponding to at least 240 higher education credits in Computer Science or Electrical Engineering or in a related field, with a good foundation in programming. As a person, you are energetic, creative, independent and enthusiastic about research. It is beneficial if you are an analytical person that enjoys solving complex problems.

Application procedure
The application should be marked with Ref 20210604 and written in English. The application should be sent electronically and be attached as pdf-files, as below:

CV: (Please name the document: CV, Family name, Ref. number)
• CV
• Other, for example previous employments or leadership qualifications and positions of trust.
• Two references that we can contact.

Personal letter: (Please name the document as: Personal letter, Family name, Ref. number)
1-3 pages where you:
• Introduce yourself
• Describe your previous experience of relevance for the position (e.g. education, thesis work and, if applicable, any other research activities)
• Describe your future goals and future research focus

Other documents:
• Copies of bachelor and/or master’s thesis.
• Attested copies and transcripts of completed education, grades and other certificates, e.g. TOEFL test results.

Learn more and apply on Chalmers website: https://www.chalmers.se/en/about-chalmers/Working-at-Chalmers/Vacancies/Pages/default.aspx?rmpage=job&rmjob=10086&rmlang=UK

Application deadline: 31 March, 2022


*** Chalmers declines to consider all offers of further announcement publishing or other types of support for the recruiting process in connection with this position. *** 
   



Chalmers University of Technology conducts research and education in engineering sciences, architecture, technology-related mathematical sciences, natural and nautical sciences, working in close collaboration with industry and society. The strategy for scientific excellence focuses on our six Areas of Advance; Energy, Health Engineering, Information and Communication Technology, Materials Science, Production and Transport. The aim is to make an active contribution to a sustainable future using the basic sciences as a foundation and innovation and entrepreneurship as the central driving forces. Chalmers has around 11,000 students and 3,000 employees. New knowledge and improved technology have characterised Chalmers since its foundation in 1829, completely in accordance with the will of William Chalmers and his motto: Avancez!