One postdoctoral research position in the scientific project "Infinity in reasoning about data and knowledge"

The project aims to bring together the paradigms of databases on one hand and knowledge representation and reasoning on the other hand, mainly in the area of query processing and reasoning.

Eligible candidates should hold a PhD degree in computer science and have an excellent background in one or more of the following fields:

• database theory
• knowledge representation and reasoning
• logic in computer science.

Application deadline: November 16, 2024

The National Science Center project „Infinity in reasoning about data and knowledge”, led by dr hab. Filip Murlak, is offering a postdoctoral research position in the Institute of Informatics at the Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Mechanics of the University of Warsaw.

Terms of employment

Selected candidate will be employed as full-time researcher (pol. adiunkt). The duration of employment is for fourteen months. The starting date can be set between December 1, 2024 and February 1, 2025, as agreed upon by the candidate and the principal investigator. The offered salary is around 8 200 PLN per month pre-tax. The position comes with no teaching obligations and travel budget. Selected candidate will work on problems in the intersection of the fields of database theory as well as knowledge representation and inference.

Description of the project

The project aims to bring together the paradigms of databases on one hand and knowledge representation and reasoning on the other hand, mainly in the area of query processing and reasoning. The fundamental difference between these two paradigms concerns the assumption that the represented models are finite, which is present in databases and absent in knowledge bases. A similar opposition can be seen between low-level parallel data processing (circuits, FPGA, SIMD) and processing streamed data, although this time it concerns not finiteness but boundedness of the input. The research in the project focuses on the following directions:
● processing streamed structured data, especially with the use of low-level parallelism;
● problems of evaluation, static analysis, and optimization, especially in the context of designing new formalisms for graph databases;
● reasoning in knowledge bases in the regime of finite, infinite and mixed models.

Requirements

We expect that candidates at the moment of employment hold a PhD degree in computer science and have an excellent background in this discipline, in particular in one or more of the following fields:
● database theory
● knowledge representation and reasoning
● logic in computer science.
Research experience in any of the following areas will be an advantage:
● description logics, modal logics
● ontology-mediated query answering, reasoning in knowledge bases
● data stream processing
● computational complexity
● automata theory, finite model theory
● low-level programming.

At the moment of employment, the successful candidate will be expected to hold a PhD degree in a discipline related to mathematical logic. The degree must be obtained no earlier than 7 years before the year of employment in the project. A PhD degree is not required at the time of application. The competition may be entered by candidates who meet the conditions set out in art. 113 of the Law on
Higher Education and Science of July 20, 2018 (Journal of Laws of 2023, item 742, as amended).

Applications

An application should include Curriculum Vitae that:
● presents an overview of the background and scientific achievements of the candidate
● lists all the candidate’s research works (including not yet published manuscripts)
● gives a list of three experienced researchers that may serve as references for the candidate.
In addition, there should be a signed cover letter addressed to the Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Mechanics, University of Warsaw together with the personal data clause (attached). No research statements are required. Applications, as well as further questions on both the scientific topic of the project and formal details of the call procedure should be directed to dr hab. Filip Murlak: f.murlak@uw.edu.pl

In order to apply for the position, candidates should send an e-mail and submit the documents as attached .pdf files.

Application deadline: November 16, 2024