PhD in Advanced Software Development for Complex Systems Modelling

Applications are invited for a PhD studentship starting in September 2017 (or beforehand). The candidate will join a growing team of researchers and research software engineers working in this area.

This Ph.D. project will focus on software development of the highly scalable multi agent modelling framework (FLAME-II) based on the existing Flexible Large-scale Agent Modelling Environment (FLAME). The software is used by a wide range of researchers and research domains including computational biology, physics, economics and transportation. FLAME allows multi agent simulations to scale to unprecedented levels and has been used for projects simulating millions of pedestrians (with Virtual Reality interfaces), large sections of highways and the European economy. The ongoing development forms an active area of research around data-structures, load balancing and scheduling, algorithms and application of the software to specific domains. The Ph.D. will focus on the further development of the core methods and algorithms used within FLAME-II to parallelise agent based applications. The project will offer the opportunity to work alongside other Ph.D students in the group, full time research staff as well as interacting with researchers, industrial contacts and FLAME developers/users from around the world.

The project will be supervised by Dr Paul Richmond (Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellow and EPSRC Research Software Engineering Fellow) and Dr Mozhgan Kabiri Chimeh (Research Associate/ Research Software Engineer) from the Research Software Engineering Sheffield and Visual Computing groups in the Department of Computer Science.

The Department of Computer Science, within the Faculty of Engineering, was established in 1982 and has since attained an international reputation for its research and teaching. Currently there are over 100 members of staff in Computer Science, including 35 Academics. The Department has consistently rated highly in UK national research assessment exercises. Further information about the Department can be found at www.sheffield.ac.uk/dcs

This Studentship will cover tuition fees at the UK/EU rate and provide a tax-free stipend at the standard UK Research Council rate (currently £14,296 for 2016/17) for three years. International students are eligible to apply, however will have to pay the difference between the UK/EU and Overseas tuition fees.

Candidates must have an excellent first degree in Computer Science, or a closely related subject, and have excellent programming skills. The Ph.D is highly applied and will suit a skilled software developer ideally with experience of modern C++. Prior experience of general software development is essential and some experience of performance oriented computing is highly desirable. Previous exposure to complex systems simulation would be a distinct advantage, as is any previous experience of carrying out research.

Potential candidates are welcome to discuss their application informally with Dr Paul Richmond (p.richmond@sheffield.ac.uk)

Applicants should apply using the University Application System online at:
http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/postgraduate/research/apply/applying