PhD position on Sustainable Communications and Computing

Communications and computing infrastructures play a key role in the operation of the modern economy from education to transportation, as they process massive information to make transportation, health, or other systems more efficient and sustainable. However, the growing need for environmental sustainability calls for these vital infrastructures themselves to become more sustainable in their design, deployment, and operation.

• The goal of this PhD project is to design and develop resource management schemes to improve the sustainability of communications and computing infrastructures, e.g., data centers, considering cloud and edge computing, i.e., the cloud-edge continuum. This PhD position is part of MISD project and the candidate will be working in the DACS research group under the supervision of dr. Suzan Bayhan and prof.dr.ir. Geert Heijenk. Moreover, the PhD candidate will be collaborating with other researchers and external partners in the consortium.
• The tentative tasks in the scope of the project are as follows:
• Characterization and design of interfaces among stakeholders (e.g., telco edge, edge providers);
• Application requirement analysis (e.g., new applications emerging with LLMs, telco-functions, XR/VR), models for renewable energy dynamics of different sites;
• Orchestration and (predictive) service placement in the continuum considering e.g., sustainability indicators, carbon intensity, renewable energy resources and PUE of different computing sites, communication network capacity, hardware capabilities (CPU, GPU), sleeping patterns of telco-edge nodes;
• Learning and prediction-based orchestration;
• Performance analysis in simulators and experimentation in a testbed;

Expected starting date: January 2025

Tentative first interview date: September 2024. The 1st (online) meeting for the selected candidates serves as an introduction, where we introduce ourselves to you and you to us. You may be asked to give a short presentation. This will be further explained in the invitation.

Tentative 2nd interview date: October 2024. In the second interview, we will further discuss the job content, your skills, and your talents.

Requirements:

• You have an MSc degree in Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, or in a related field;
• You have a good command of computer communications and networking;
• You are familiar with analytical modeling and optimization approaches or willing to develop these skills;
• You are goal-oriented, independent, and have a structured work style;
• You are familiar with prototyping or are willing to develop skills to conduct experiments in a test environment;
• You are curious and interested in learning how things work and how to make them better;
• You have a good team spirit and like to work in an internationally oriented environment;
• You are proficient in English.

Salary Benefits:

• As a PhD candidate at UT, you will be appointed to a full-time position for four years, with a qualifier in the first year, within a very stimulating and exciting scientific environment;
• The University offers a dynamic ecosystem with enthusiastic colleagues;
• Your salary and associated conditions are in accordance with the collective labour agreement for Dutch universities (CAO-NU);
• You will receive a gross monthly salary ranging from € 2.872,- (first year) to € 3.670,- (fourth year);
• There are excellent benefits including a holiday allowance of 8% of the gross annual salary, an end-of-year bonus of 8.3%, and a solid pension scheme;
• The flexibility to work (partially) from home;
• A minimum of 232 leave hours in case of full-time employment based on a formal workweek of 38 hours. A full-time employment in practice means 40 hours a week, therefore resulting in 96 extra leave hours on an annual basis.
• Free access to sports facilities on campus
• A family-friendly institution that offers parental leave (both paid and unpaid);
• You will have a training programme as part of the Twente Graduate School where you and your supervisors will determine a plan for a suitable education and supervision;
• We encourage a high degree of responsibility and independence while collaborating with close colleagues, researchers and other staff.

40 hours per week

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