UCD Dublin is looking for potential PhD students interested in wireless location systems.

Ph.D. and M.Sc. Studentships in WiFi Location

UCD Dublin is currently potential Ph.D. and M.Sc. students in the Complex and Adaptive Systems Laboratory and the School of Computer Science and Informatics, University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland. The studentships are part of a collaborative international project to research and develop novel algorithms, solutions and applications for indoor localization based on WiFi. The successful candidates will have obtained, or will expect to obtain, a 1st class or 2.1 Honours degree in Computer Science, Electronic Engineering, or a related discipline. For the Ph.D. position, a Masters degree or commercial experience in a relevant area is an advantage. Preference will be given to applicants with expertise in one or more of the following areas: Digital Signal Processing, Location Estimation, and Wireless Communications. We expect that the Ph.D. positions will be funded for 4 years while the M.Sc. position will be funded for 2 years. All positions are full-time. The positions will include payment of a tax-free student stipend and fees. The anticipated starting date for the positions is 1st October 2012, or as soon as possible thereafter. Enquiries should be sent to Dr Chris Bleakley, Complex and Adaptive Systems Laboratory (CASL), School of Computer Science and Informatics (CSI), University College Dublin (UCD), Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland; email: chris.bleakley@ucd.ie; tel: +353 1 716 5353. http://www.csi.ucd.ie/vacancy/phd-and-msc-studentships-wifi-location [Updated 13Aug2012 with final confirmation of the grant.]

We have some short-term Scholarship positions available in dependable systems. The University of St Andrews and NUI Maynooth have the first edition of the new Erasmus Mundus MSc in Dependable Software Systems (DESEM) starting in September. There are EMMC Scholar positions available on this programme. These scholars will engage in teaching and help with the evaluation of student project work among other duties. Positions have to be held for a minimum of 2 weeks. The Scholarship value is € 2,400 for a two-week stay with a maximum of € 14,400 for a three-month stay. We have the equivalent of 17 two week scholarships available for 2012/13. Applicants have to be associated with a third country (non-European) HEI. Details are available from: http://erasmusmundus.nuim.ie/courses/desem/node/53

The Seventh International Workshop on Middleware Tools, Services and Run-time Support for Sensor Networks (MidSens’12) will be co-located with Middleware 2012 (December 3rd - 7th, 2012) in Montreal, Canada The aim of MidSens'12 is to stimulate research in the specific domain of middleware for sensor networks. The particular focus of MidSens'12 is the realization of multi-user, multi-purpose and federated sensing platforms that are capable of supporting next-generation application scenarios such as smart cities. Along with the core topic of middleware architectures, services and tool support, MidSens'12 will also seek papers describing novel programming languages, run-time support and relevant experience reports. MidSens'12 will investigate how middleware support can relieve developers from low-level, platform specific concerns, while enabling the optimal exploitation of heterogeneous resources to create sensing infrastructures of massive scale. Effectively developing, deploying and managing sensor network platforms requires supporting middleware services, tools and run-time support. MidSens'12 welcomes papers on the following research topics:

• Middleware Tools and Architectures:
• Software architectures for sensor networks
• Novel programming abstractions for large-scale sensor networks
• Architectures to combine mobile devices and sensor motes
• Lightweight autonomic middleware for embedded systems
• Testing and simulation tools for sensor network middleware
• Fault identification, diagnosis and repair
• Middleware services:
• Location tracking, localization, and synchronization.
• Support for real-time and safety-critical systems.
• Data management, aggregation and filtering.
• Energy-aware middleware mechanisms.
• Fault tolerance, reliability and quality of service.
• Privacy and security services.
• Virtualization, sharing and trading of resources.
• Run-time Support:
• Overlay and topology creation, maintenance and management.
• Resource/Service discovery and management.
• Support for reconfiguration and adaptation.
• Effective naming and addressing schemes.
• Support for modeling and enacting safe software reconfiguration.
• Management and Experiences:
• Managing heterogeneity and network dynamism.
• Integration of embedded systems with web services.
• Experience and evaluation of middleware platforms.
• Support for the unification of various embedded platforms.
• Shared infrastructure embedded systems.

Submitted papers must be original work in English without substantial overlap with papers that have been published or that are simultaneously submitted to a journal or conference with proceedings. Submissions must not exceed 6 pages, must strictly follow the ACM conference proceedings format, and must be submitted in PDF format. All accepted papers will appear in the ACM Digital Library and will be indexed in DBLP.

Important Dates:

• Paper Submission deadline: August 15, 2012
• Acceptance notification: September 21, 2012
• Author registration deadline: October 5, 2012
• Camera-ready version due: October 5, 2012
• Workshop: December 3-7, 2012

The Sapere project (of which I'm a member) is running a workshop at SASO 2012 in Lyons on new ways to design service ecosystems. Emerging distributed computing scenarios (mobile, pervasive, and social) are characterised by intrinsic openness, decentralisation, and dynamics. According, the effective deployment and execution of distributed services and applications calls for open service  frameworks promoting situated and self-adaptive behaviours, and supporting diversity in services and long-term evolvability. This suggests adopting nature-inspired and/or socially-inspired approaches, in which services are modelled and deployed as autonomous individuals in an ecosystem of other services, data sources, and pervasive devices. Accordingly, the self-organizing interactions patterns among components and the resulting emerging dynamics of the system, as those of natural systems or of social systems, can inherently exhibit effective properties of self-adaptivity and evolvability. Although many initiatives (like those named upon digital/business service ecosystems) recognise that the complexity of modern service systems is comparable to that of natural ecosystems, the idea that nature – other than a mean to metaphorically characterise their complexity – can become the source of inspiration for their actual modelling and implementation is only starting being metabolised. The goal of this workshop is to bring together researchers and practitioners, with the aims of unfolding the many challenges related to the modelling, design and implementation of adaptive service ecosystems in natural and social terms, and identifying promising approaches and solutions. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Software architectures for  emergent distributed systems.
• Bio-inspired self-organising patterns design patterns.
• Coordination models and languages.
• Middleware platforms
• Dynamic services composition.
• Adaptive coordination models and patterns
• Self-organisation and coordination
• Coordination in systems of feedback loops
• Middleware for adaptive coordination
• Multiagent systems
• Methodologies for adaptive and self-organising system engineering

All accepted papers will be published by IEEE Xplore following the workshop. Submission deadline is 4 July 2012. For more details please see the workshop web site. UPDATE: Fixed typo in the submission deadline