MSCA-PF: Joint application at the University of Granada. Department of Systems and Software Engineering

Professor María Bermúdez-Edo from the Department of Systems and Software Engineering at the University of Granada, welcomes postdoctoral candidates interested in applying for a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowships (MSCA-PF) in 2021 at this University. Please note that applicants must comply with the Mobility Rule (more information about the 2020 call: http://sl.ugr.es/0aNV, the 2021 call is not yet open).

Brief description of the institution:

The University of Granada (UGR), founded in 1531, is one of the largest and most important universities in Spain. With over 60.000 undergraduate and postgraduate students and 6.000 staff. UGR offers a total of 89 degrees, 110 master’s degrees and 28 doctoral programmes through its 123 departments and 27 centers. Consequently, the UGR offers one of the most extensive and diverse ranges of higher education programmes in Spain.

The UGR has awarded with the "Human Resources Excellence in Research (HRS4R)", which reflects the UGR’s commitment to continuously improve its human resource policies in line with the European Charter for Researchers and the Code of Conduct for the Recruitment of Researchers. UGR is also a leading institution in research, located in the top 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 - Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) (http://sl.ugr.es/0bsW). The UGR is amongst the 201-300 first universities of the world, between 2nd-5th position of Spanish universities and number 1 in the Andalusian Region in the Shanghai Top 500 ranking. Specialties at UGR that stand out are Library & Information Science (position 32) and Food Science & Technology (position 36). Moreover, the UGR is also situated amongst the first 100 universities in Mining & Mineral Engineering between (76th-100th position), in Mathematics (between 76th-100th position) and in Hospitality & Tourism Management (between 76th-100th position). The edition of the ARWU places the UGR in 201-300th position in the world and as the 4th highest ranked University in Spain, reaffirming its position as an institution at the forefront of national and international research.

Additionally, the UGR has 8 researchers at the top of the Highly Cited Researchers (HCR) list in Computer Sciences & Engineering (position 101-150). It is also well recognized for its web presence (http://sl.ugr.es/0a6i), being positioned at 43th place in the top 200 Universities in Europe.

Internationally, we bet decidedly by our participation in the calls of the Framework Programme of the European Union. For the duration of the last two Framework Programmes, the UGR has obtained a total of 67 projects, with total funding of 18.029 million euros, and for H2020, 118 projects with total funding around 29.115 million euros.

Brief description of the Centre/Research Group:

The 2019 ARWU places the UGR as the fourth-highest ranked university in Spain and among the top 300 universities on the globe. In particular, in Computer Science & Engineering it ranks on the global top 76-100. +60K students follow graduate and postgraduate degrees. UGR hosts a large population of Erasmus students (ca. 2k).

The Research Centre for Information and Communications Technologies of the UGR (CITIC-UGR) has built up a strong reputation as an international ICT Centre. The CITIC-UGR works on relevant scientific and technological challenges, transfers knowledge to the productive sector and trains researchers to be engines of socio-economic growth thanks to new technologies. The research lines include: High Performance Architectures, Bioinformatics, eHealth, Software Engineering, Neural Engineering, Data Mining, Nanoelectronics, Cell Networks and Sensors, Image Recognition, Control Systems, Signal Processing, Virtual Reality and Soft Computing and Artificial Vision. In addition, the Centre offers a PhD programme in Information and Communications Technologies.

Mydass research group is focused on using ICTs to improve the quality life of children with special needs and elders, including active aging. Mydass works in close collaboration with Health specialists. In particular we apply technologies such as Internet of Things (IoT), semantics and microservices architectures to create accessible and personalized apps to help people with special needs.

Project description:

The project seeks to unleash the potential of the Internet of Things (IoT) to transform the lives of older people, and to enable them to stay active, healthy, and independent for longer. This concept is possible thanks to an IoT infrastructure that allows the ecological (collecting data while the users are performing their activities of daily living (ADL), in their real environment) and holistic (taking into account physiological, environmental and context information) monitoring of physical and cognitive parameters. The main focus of this project is to use IoT to evaluate the performance of activities of daily living by older people, in order to assess their health status. Additionally, a screening tool shows the results, with bespoke outputs for different users, that could be used for peace of mind or to enable early detection of health decay and to start an intervention therapy if necessary.

The project includes the use of IoT technologies, which enables: the retrieval of data from sensors; the application of data analytics; and visualization of data. The project will explore different data analytics to detect a variety of aging issues.

The benefits for the older people are related to the increase of independence in their ADL through the early prevention of decay due to age. Benefits to informal caregivers include increased information about the physical wellbeing of the older people in their care. The benefits to society are the early prevention of decay, which allows interventions and reduction in health costs and caregiver dependencies.

Research Area:

• Information Science and Engineering (ENG)

For a correct evaluation of your candidature, please send the documents below to Professor María Bermúdez-Edo (mbe@ugr.es):

• CV
• Letter of recommendation (optional)