MSCA-IF: Joint application at the University of Granada. Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence

Professor David A. Pelta, from the Department of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Granada, welcomes postdoctoral candidates interested in applying for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (MSCA-IF) in 2019 at this University. Please note that applicants must comply with the Mobility Rule (more information: http://sl.ugr.es/09Qg).

Brief description of the institution:

The University of Granada (UGR), founded in 1531, is one of the largest and most important universities in Spain. It serves more than 60000 students per year, including many foreign students, as UGR is the leader host institution in the Erasmus program. UGR, featuring 3650 professors and more than 2000 auxiliary personnel, offers a total of 75 degrees through its 112 departments and 28 centers.

UGR is also a leading institution in research, located in the top 5/10 of Spanish universities by a variety of ranking criteria, such as national R&D projects, fellowships awarded, publications, or international funding. UGR is one of the few Spanish Universities listed in the Shanghai Top 500 ranking (http://www.arwu.org/), and it is also well recognized for its web presence (http://www.4icu.org/top200/).

Internationally, we bet decidedly by our participation in the calls of H2020, both at partner and coordination. For the duration of the Seventh Framework Programme, the UGR has obtained a total of 66 projects, with total funding of 17.97 million euros, and for H2020, until 2015, more than 25 projects with total funding of more than 6 million euros. Our more than 3,000 researchers are grouped into 365 research groups covering all scientific fields and disciplines.

Brief description of the Centre/Research Group

The candidate will be at the Department of Computer Science and AI, hosted in the Higher Technical School of Information Technology and Telecommunications Engineering of the University of Granada (UGR).  In the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), also known as the Shanghai Ranking, the UGR has substantially improved its position over the past decade, rising almost 200 places in total. The 2018 edition of the ARWU places the University of Granada in 278th position in the world and as the third-highest ranked University in Spain, reaffirming its position as an institution at the forefront of national and international research.

The candidate will join The Models of Decision and Optimization Research Group (MODO, modo.ugr.es), headed by Prof. José L. Verdegay.  

MODO has a long and well established research tradition with an outstanding record of scientific publications, ongoing research projects and more than 15 Phd thesis advised in the last 10 years. MODO’s members actively participate teaching at different levels (degree and master studies). A key aspect of the group is the record of international collaborations that is reflected in publications with worldwide renowned scientists, the management of joint Phd programs with Latin-American Universities, the development of research projects with external researchers and so on.

A showcase of publications is available at https://bit.ly/2T7FNIa

Project description

The European Union’s Framework Programme for Research and Innovation “Horizon 2020”, the Spanish Strategy for Science, Technology and Innovation, the Spanish Strategy for Local and Urban Sustainability and the Spanish Strategy for Sustainable Mobility identify a set of challenges that our societies will have to face in the middle and long term to obtain, among many other aspects, the tools needed to develop the so called Sustainable Cities.

This concept defines a wide working framework which is relevant from an economics, social, and environmental points of view. This research proposal focuses on Sustainable Mobility (associated with the people movements in the city).

Many specific problems in this area are either optimization or decision problems sharing several features along three axis: 1) the need to manage imprecise and/or qualitative information, 2) the need to consider the user’s preferences, and 3) the “context” in which the problem must be solved (the solution will be different in an Emergency Context than in a Sustainability Context).

Departing from the use of Computational Intelligence techniques, the global aim of this research proposal is: to study, analyze and propose in one hand, modelling schemes for imprecision and contexts, and  management of preferences, and in the other hand, decision and optimization methods to solve some problems arising in Sustainable Mobility.

It is expected that the candidate will produce substantial contributions along the three axis mentioned. There will be certain freedom to select specific problems as testbed, as well as regarding the computational tools to use.

Research Area

Information Science and Engineering (ENG)

Physics and Mathematics (PHY-MAT)

For a correct evaluation of your candidature, please send the documents below to Professor David A. Pelta (dpelta@ugr.es):

• CV
• Letter of recommendation (optional)