MSCA-IF: Joint application at the University of Granada. Department of Software Engineering

Professor José Luis Garrido, from the Department of Software Engineering 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 Research Centre on Information and Communications Technologies of the University of Granada (CITIC-UGR) has built up a strong reputation as an international ICT Centre. The CITIC- UGR faces relevant scientific and technological challenges, transfers knowledge to the productive sector and trains researchers under a PhD programme in ICT. Currently, the CITIC-UGR brings together leading researchers in ICT from the University of Granada, which is ranked among the top 50 universities in the world in the field of Computer Science, being pioneer in this area in Spain (according to the 2014 Academic Ranking of World Universities).

The research group on Modelling and Development of Advanced Software Systems - MYDASS (Spanish government ref. TIC-230) is formed by 15 researchers. The group has coordinated several R&D&i (Research, Development and Innovation) national/regional collaborative projects in the health application domain with public/private nonprofit institutions and companies. The group research is focused on the development of quality user-centric mobile/ubiquitous and collaborative systems, by applying methods and techniques from specific areas such as: conceptual modelling, system/software architectures, distributed systems, user interface design for usability, middleware technologies for integration of heterogeneous devices and systems, service-oriented design for scalability and availability, and component based design for reuse. Most of the expertise has been acquired working in collaboration with experts on medicine, psychology, and education.

Project description

Medical staff benefit from ICT advances in collection of physiological data, to perform their evaluation and intervention tasks. ICT allows professionals to evaluate the physical or the cognitive state of patients in controlled environments (laboratories or medical centers). However, it is of interest to evaluate both (physical and cognitive state) not only in patients, but also in handicap and elderly people, in order to improve their wellness and increase their autonomy and independence. Additionally, data can be also collected while handicap and elderly people are performing their daily life activities (ADLs) by using built-in sensors (heart rate, GPS, accelerometer, EDA, ...) in smart watches and phones.

We focus on the design of a health systems based on a SOA 2.0 architecture to be deployed in mobile/wearable devices in order to collect and analyze data by using machine learning techniques. These health systems are part of medical interventions in prevention, and they can improved by considering other advanced aspects such as users’ emotional regulation, behavior and social relationships, thus promoting the self-determination to make decisions or problem solving.

Under an Internet of People (IoP) paradigm, this project includes the following tasks to be carried out for the development of health systems for handicap and elderly people: (1) definition of emotional- social user profiles on the basis of contextual and physiological data collected while they are performing their daily life activities (ADLs); (2) user-centered design and evaluation of applications, as technical aids or assistive technology, that make use of the user profile for achieving usability, accessibility, customization and adaptation.

Research Area

Information Science and Engineering (ENG)

For a correct evaluation of your candidature, please send the documents below to Professor José Luis Garrido (jgarrido@ugr.es):

• CV
• Letter of recommendation (optional)