INRIA (French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control)
The ARLES team from the INRIA research institute in France has an open post-doc research fellowship position in relation with project
PERvasive Service cOmposition (PERSO) (http://anr-perso.ibisc.univ-evry.fr/) funded by the French National Agency for Research (ANR).

Topic

Service-Oriented Computing (SOC) is a computing paradigm which seems particularly appropriate to Pervasive Computing and Ambiant Intelligence. Therein, networked devices and their hosted applications are abstracted as services delivered and consumed on demand. The interest in SOC (e.g., using Web Services) has vertically increased in the last five years as it can provide the answer to the integration of heterogeneous devices, software platforms, applications and, finally, whole systems, whether on the Web, on wireless networks or on enterprise intranets.
Nevertheless, the SOC paradigm alone cannot guarantee valid (automatic) service composition in the open pervasive environment where (i) services are highly dynamic and may appear and disapear at any time, and (ii) services are developped by different third-parties and often present mismatch and interoperability problems.
The objectives of the PERSO project comprise the study, analysis and elaboration of a comprehensive approach to service composition and adaptation in such environments. We explicitly aim at supporting three description levels enriching standard service interfaces description languages -- behavioural level, non-functional level and semantic level -- together with their integration towards a thorough approach to service composition.

Research detail

The postdoctoral candidate will particularly work on automatic algorithms for service composition at these different description levels, for which preliminary results have already been proposed, see: http://anr-perso.ibisc.univ-evry.fr/Documents/publications/ Additionally, he/she will contribute to the development of an approach integrating composition at different levels, together with a demonstration prototype. To this purpose, the proposed solutions will follow a model-based approach, working on language independant (formal) models such as labelled transition systems, timed automata or Petri nets. In a second step, relation to existing languages (WSDL, WS-BPEL, WS-CDL) or extensions developped in the project will be studied.
The position is for one year, starting from November 2008.
Application Deadline: October, 2008
Income:
2,338 EUROS/month (gross)
1,907 EUROS/month (net).

The ARLES project is located in the Paris area, France. The postdoctoral position will be achieved in collaboration with two research institutions in the Paris metropolitan area: University of Evry and University Paris Dauphine.

Candidate Profile

The project seeks a motivated and innovative candidate interested in investigating models and techniques for the automatic composition and adaptation of services in Pervasive Computing environments.
Candidates should meet the following requirements:

• PhD in Computer Science, Information Systems or a closely related field.
• background in Component-based Software Engineering (CBSE) or Service Oriented Computing (SOC), distributed systems and Web services. A background on the application of Formal Methods to the above- mentioned domains would also be strongly appreciated.
• good programming skills (e.g., Java, J2EE, ..).
• be ready to conduct autonomous research activities, to work collaboratively with several research teams, to be willing to submit his/her work in the best international conferences and journals, and to be ready to develop software platforms and prototypes to assess his/her research results.

Application Procedure

Interested candidates are requested to send their application in form of:

• a detailed CV and
• a motivation letter

together with any relevant additional information, possibly including:

• digital versions of research contributions (PhD manuscript, journal and/or conference papers)
• recommendation letters

Application files (single pdf file preferred) and additional information should be send to:
pascal.poizat@inria.fr
CC'ed: pascal.poizat@lri.fr

Application Deadline: October, 2008