The Database and Web group (DBgroup) at Politecnico di Milano is seeking for new international Ph.D. students interested in working on the following topics:
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Title: Stream Reasoning
Data streams are unbounded sequences of time-varying data elements; they occur in a variety of modern applications, such as network monitoring, RFID tags applications, telecom call records, Web logs, click-streams, etc. The combination of reasoning techniques with data streams gives rise to Stream Reasoning, an unexplored, yet high impact, research area. A PhD student majoring on stream reasoning will first focus on stream reasoning as a new computing paradigm, by defining on the concepts that are needed in order to combine reasoning with stream management and continuous queries; will then develop (parts of) a technological framework for experimenting stream computing upon real-life scenarios. The thesis offers a good balance between theoretical issues (such as: language design, optimization, formal properties, computational complexity) and practical problems (system implementation, experimentation). This research is part of the LarkC project (FP7, April 2008 - October 2011).
Advisor: Stefano Ceri, stefano.ceri@polimi.it
Web site: http://dbgroup.elet.polimi.it/tesi/StreamReasoning.pdf
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Title: Search Computing
Where can I attend an interesting database workshop close to a sunny beach? This information is available on the Web, but no general-purpose search system can accept the above queries nor compute the answer. The solution requires the integration of results extracted by querying domain-specific search services. A PhD student majoring on search computing will first focus on the search computing paradigm, by examining how multi-domain queries can be expressed, routed to servers, and then their results can be efficiently composed and sorted according to a "global" ranking. Will then develop (part of) a technological framework for experimenting search computing upon realistic settings, including applications in bio-informatics. This research is part of the NGS PRIN Project (January 2007 - December 2008) and will be the core of the Search Computing (SeCo) project, funded by European Research Council as an IDEAS ADVANCED GRANT in "Physical Sciences and Engineering" (5 year reesearc!
h contract, starting date in December 2008).
Advisor: Stefano Ceri, stefano.ceri@polimi.it
Web site: http://ngs.elet.polimi.it/
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Title: Audiovisual Search Services
The research work addresses the technologies, methods, and architectures necessary for realizing new generation search engines capable of extracting information from multimedia, heterogeneous and distributed data sources. Research topics include, but are not limited to: cross-media indexing of digital content, cross-media significance evaluation and ranking of search results, semantic Web, multi-modal and multi-channel user interfaces for query and result presentation, service-based scalable architectures for content registration and processing, social aspects of audiovisual search, semantic. Research will be highly interdisciplinary and span across such fields as: software architectures, digital signal processing, information retrieval, human-computer interaction, and knowledge management. Thesis work will be connected to the PHAROS European Project and developed within a European network of partners.
Advisor: Piero Fraternali, piero.fraternali@polimi.it
Web site: http://pharos-audiovisual-search.eu/
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Title: Bioinformatics and data reasoning
Description: A high amount of biomedical information is today increasingly available and numerous biomolecular data are continuously generated in genomic and proteomic tests via advanced nano-biotechnologies. Great part of bioinformatics is related to the management and mining of such data and information in order to support better understanding of complex biological patho-physiological phenomena. A PhD student majoring on bioinformatics data reasoning will first focus on bioinformatics data integration and analysis by examining different data types and formats available in many biomolecular databanks, by exploring the bio-terminology and bio-ontologies adopted to describe in a controlled way the current biomolecular knowledge, and by investigating different data and information analysis algorithms to evaluate such available knowledge for specific gene and protein sets and infer new biomedical information; will then develop (parts of) a technological framework for experiment!
ing bioinformatics data reasoning upon real biomedical scenarios. This research is part of the VirtualLab project.
Advisor: Marco Masseroli, marco.masseroli@polimi.it
Web site: http://dbgroup.elet.polimi.it/virtualLab.pdf
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Title: Model Driven Web Engineering
The aim of the research is the integration of mainstream MDD/MDA techniques (based on MOF and ATL) within the existing DSLs for Web application development. The work will consist in developing approaches for automatic model transformation (possibly based on HOT and other techniques, for granting generality of the results), application testing, and code generation for Web applications (with special attention to the WebML modeling language). Examples of models to be transformed include business process models (BPMN and others), LTL formal specifications, and existing DSLs for the Web Engineering domain.
Advisor: Marco Brambilla, marco.brambilla@polimi.it
Web site: http://home.dei.polimi.it/mbrambil/legacytomda/
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For further information on the research topics you can contact the respective advisors. The complete list of research topics in Computer Science is posted at:
http://intranet.dei.polimi.it/dottorato/page_eng.php?id=81&sub=23
For information about the formal application submission you can refer to the Politecnico di Milano Web site. The two .pdf documents of the notices of competitions for the admission to the PhD in Information Technology, together with the procedure for the on line application, are available on the website:
http://pcsiwa12.rett.polimi.it/~phdweb/eng/ammissione_borse/fr_ammissione_borse.htm.
Note that foreign citizens can apply for the selection procedure (2) based purely on the assessment of their curriculum vitae, letter of motivation and letters of presentation. This procedure does not require an entry exam. The detailed list of the scholarships for each DEI research areas and the specific economic conditions can be found on the page:
http://www.polimi.it/dottorato/eng/corsi/elencocorsi.htm, section: Doctoral Program in Information Technology.
By working on funded projects (as the ones cited above) and/or collaborating to teaching activities, PhD students may increase their basic salary. A notification of interest on one or more of the above topics by applicants will be appreciated.
The deadline for the (online) application procedure is September 1st, 2008.