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PhD POSITION AVAILABLE
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IRIDIA
Institut de Recherches Interdisciplinaires et de Développements
en Intelligence Artificielle
Université Libre de Bruxelles
Brussels, Belgium
Metaheuristics Network: Doctoral student fellowship is available
For a period of 3 years, starting September 2001.
: Read the following conditions
before applying.
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FRAMEWORK
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The Metaheuristics Network is a Research Network funded by the European
Commission within the Improving
Human Potential Programme. The goal
of the Metaheuristics Network is to deepen our understanding of metaheuristics
so that they can be applied more effectively to the solution of important
practical combinatorial optimisation problems.
IRIDIA, the Artificial
Intelligence laboratory of the Université Libre de Bruxelles and
coordinator of the Metaheuristics Network, offers
a doctoral research position over a three years period starting September
2001.
The person we are looking for should possess a degree that allows him
or her to embark in a doctoral program. The area of competence and/or interest
should be in at least one of the following disciplines: Computer Science,
Operations Research, Computational Intelligence. He or she should be an
experienced programmer in procedural or object oriented programming languages
and should have knowledge of modern operating systems. The working language
of the laboratory is English, though French, German or Italian are spoken
by most of its members.
The right person will have a commitment to research and publication,
and possess good communication and presentation skills (in English).
He or she will be available for traveling between European labs participating
in the research project (these are located in Belgium, France, Germany,
The Netherlands, United Kingdom, and Switzerland)
The ability to work as part of an international team producing pre-defined
deliverables to fixed deadlines is essential.
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CONDITIONS FOR EU GRANTS
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The following conditions apply to the grants provided by the Metaheuristics
Network project:
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The researcher must be 35 years old or less at the time of his appointment
(allowances are possible for special cases like child care and military
service).
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The researcher must be a holder of a doctoral degree or of a degree in
an appropriate subject in Science or Engineering.
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The appointment will be for a fixed-term.
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The applicant must be a national of a Member State of the European Community
or of an Associated State (here
is the list of associate states) or have resided in the European Community
for at least five years prior to his appointment.
-
The applicant must choose a Centre located in a state different from his
national state and he must not have carried out his activities in that
state for more than 12 of the 24 months prior to his appointment.
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APPLICATION DEADLINE
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The position will be filled as an adequate candidate will become available.
Therefore, there is no submission deadline. We suggest you contact
the network co-ordinator as soon as possible.
We explicitly encourage female researchers to apply for the offered
positions. We guarantee that the selection process, based solely on the
research records, will give equal opportunities to female and male researchers.
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CONTACT INFORMATION
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If you wish to apply, please send an email containing (either as text or
as a Word attachment) your CV to Dr. Dorigo:
Marco Dorigo, Ph.D.
Metaheuristics Network Coordinator
Chercheur Qualifie' du FNRS
IRIDIA CP 194/6
Universite' Libre de Bruxelles
Avenue Franklin Roosevelt 50
1050 Bruxelles
Belgium
Email: mdorigo@ulb.ac.be
WWW: http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~mdorigo/
Tel: +32-2-6503169
Fax: +32-2-6502715
Secretary: +32-2-6502729
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FELLOWSHIP AMOUNT
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The amount of the fellowship is 50,000 Belgian Francs net.
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SHORT
DESCRIPTION OF THE METAHEURISTIC NETWORK GOALS
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Many problems of enormous practical importance can be modeled as combinatorial
optimisation problems; examples are vehicle routing in distribution management,
scheduling of jobs in a production line, generating timetables for scheduling
meetings, and many more.
Among the most effective methods to solve combinatorial optimisation
problems are metaheuristics, that is, sets of concepts that can be used
to define approximate algorithms applicable to wide sets of different problems.
The OVERALL GOAL of the METAHEURISTICS NETWORK is to co-ordinate European
research and postgraduate training in the field of metaheuristics for combinatorial
optimization.
The main scientific goal of the METAHEURISTICS NETWORK is to deepen
our understanding of the working principles of metaheuristics through theoretical
and experimental research so that they can be applied more effectively
to the solution of important practical combinatorial optimisation problems.
The results expected are:
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a scientific advancement in our understanding of existing metaheuristics
and the identification of design principles which make a metaheuristic
successful;
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a scientific advancement in our understanding of how metaheuristics components,
problem characteristics and good performance are related,
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the problem-oriented design of new hybrid metaheuristics, and
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the definition of a conceptual tool to help engineers choosing the most
appropriate metaheuristic for a given problem.
The METAHEURISTICS NETWORK will be concerned with the study of a wide variety
of metaheuristics and NP-hard problems. The young researchers involved
in the network will be exposed to a variety of techniques, as well as to
the challenge of applying them to many different situations and problems,
both in academic and industrial settings. The research subject is therefore
very well suited for training purposes because there are many different
techniques involved which require evaluation and experimentation by teams
of people with different background and experience and working co-operatively
to the solution of a common problem.
The main training goals of the network are:
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to let each young researcher learn about all the tested techniques as well
as about a number of important optimisation problems,
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to let them learn how to design experiments in a rigorous way, and
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to develop their project management skills by means of participation in
a strictly co-ordinated team work.