Available postdoc positions at FIT 2022

The Faculty of Information Technology of the Czech Technical University in Prague offers 5 postdoc positions (partially within the CTU Global Postdoc Fellowship, partially within the faculty’s own postdoc program). This new and attractive fellowship program provides an opportunity for excellent researchers who have recently completed their PhD to continue their research careers at the CTU in Prague. Fellows receive a two-year fellowship and become members of a team led by a mentor. The deadline for applying is 9 January.

Who is the program for?

The fellowship aims primarily at external international scientists who are currently conducting research abroad. Applicants must have completed their PhD within the last seven years (i.e. 2016 or later). The fellowship aims at authors (co-authors) of two or more publications in a journal with IF.

Available positions

Applicants are advised to contact mentors for more details on the position/topic.

Topic #8-22-11: Multi-agent Path Finding

Mentor
Short description of the topic

Multi-agent path finding (MAPF) is a problem of navigating multiple agents to their individual goal positions so that agents do not collide. The problem has been intensively studied recently from the perspective of heuristic search. However, there are still open questions especially in compilation-based approaches to MAPF and in how to reflect properties of real environments such as continuity of space and time in formal models of MAPF. Tests of novel concepts on real robots in a laboratory are an optional part of this research.

PROJECT PAGE RoboAgeLab

Description of an ideal candidate

The ideal candidate should actively publish in artificial intelligence venues (AAAI, IJCAI, …) and/or in specialized venues focused on planning, heuristic search (ICAPS, AAMAS, SoCS, …), or robotics (ICRA, IROS, …) and in related journals (JAIR, AIJ). Strong programming skills preferably in C/C++ are required.

Salary
  • CZK 65,000 per month

Topic #8-22-12: Combinatorics on Words Formalized in Isabelle/HOL

Mentor
Short description of the topic

Combinatorics on words is a research domain dealing with words, finite or infinite, and their various properties, and properties of derived structures, such as word monoids and languages. It is not rare to find very technical proofs, on the limit of what a human reader can soundly check.

An ongoing project of formalization of Combinatorics on words targets such claims and their proofs, and aims to formalize them in the generic proof assistant Isabelle/HOL. The research topic for this position would be part of this project, and its goal would be to work on some of good formalization candidates such as:

  • properties of D0L-systems (such as recognizability);
  • properties of codings of infinite words;
  • synchronization delay of families of infinite words fixed by a morphism.

Project page

Description of an ideal candidate

Ideal candidate should

  1. be familiar with combinatorics on words and be strongly interested in formalization of mathematics; or
  2. be familiar with formalization in Isabelle/HOL with a strong interest in a project of formalization of a previously unformalized research domain.
Salary
  • CZK 65,000 per month

Topic #8-22-13: Algorithmic and Combinatorial Game Theory

Mentor
Short description of the topic

The first topic of the project is the algorithmic game theory, which is a modern branch of classical game theory, focusing on algorithmic aspects of modelling the behaviour of participants (players) of certain competitive process (game). The motivation is the study of methods, how to control competitive environment with many players and without a central authority which may impose demands on players. It is possible to attain this goal by designing locally defined games, whose Nash equilibria correspond to globally desirable outcomes. This fact is captured by the low price of anarchy of the game. The goal of the project is to establish and publish new results in algorithmic game theory, mainly by designing games where the Nash equilibria correspond to globally desirable outcomes and by investigating their algorithmic and computational complexity aspects.

The second topic deals with the broad range of combinatorial games, mainly in the subfield of the various cops-and-robber settings. Here the setting is usually defined as a game on graph between two players controlling two sets of pawns, where the typical goal of one player is to capture the pawns of the second player. There is however great variability on the rules. Here the task is to study the computational complexity of questions like who wins or how many pawns are needed to win.

The project is theoretical, with the expected outcome in the form of publications in high-ranking conferences or prestigious journals.

Algorithmic game theory Combinatorial game theory

Description of an ideal candidate

The applicants are expected to have a strong background in combinatorics, graph theory, foundations of algorithmic game theory or combinatorial game theory. Additionally, specialization in the following areas is a bonus: graph algorithms, cops-and-robber-type problems, computational complexity or approximation algorithms. The applicant must have obtained a PhD in the relevant area no later than 7 years ago.

Salary
  • CZK 65,000 per month

Topic #8-22-14: Non-linear Functional Analysis

Mentor
Short description of the topic

The successful candidate will contribute to the research in the area of non-linear geometry of Banach spaces. This includes, in particular, the Banach space properties, structure and metric characterizations of Lipschitz-free spaces and their biduals, relevant for the Lipschitz classes of Banach spaces, or the problems related to the stability of local and asymptotic structure of Banach spaces under non-linear isomorphisms or embeddings of various regularity.

Description of an ideal candidate

An ideal candidate should have interest and basic knowledge in functional analysis and metric geometry pertinent and complementary to the research topic of the position.

Salary
  • CZK 65,000 per month

Topic #8-22-15: Parameterized and Exact Algorithms

Mentor
Short description of the topic

Parameterized or multivariate analysis became in the last two decades a standard approach for (NP-) hard computational problems. Here, in contrast to classical complexity, the efficiency of algorithms is not measured only with respect to the length of the input instance, but also with respect to a specified parameter. The outcome is a more fine grained complexity landscape which allows for a better prediction of the complexity of particular instances encountered. The goal is to design algorithms with running time that is polynomial in the input size and exponential only in the designated parameter. Fundamentally, the degree of the polynomial is required to be independent of the value of the parameter. Parameterized complexity provides a mathematical framework to analyze these algorithms and also to show that for some problems and parameters there is (probably) no such algorithm.

Description of an ideal candidate

Ideal candidate should be familiar with several of the following areas: Parameterized complexity, integer linear programming, structural graph theory, game theory, computational social choice. Experience in optimization and in particular approximation algorithms or hardness of approximation is appreciated but not required. The candidate’s high scientific potential should be witnessed by publications in the area of algorithms or discrete math in proceedings of highly ranked international conferences and/or journals.

Salary
  • CZK 65,000 per month

Applications

To apply for this program, you need the following documents in English:

  • CV, including a list of publications (max. 4 pages). At least 2 publications in a journal with IF are required. Papers accepted for publication yet waiting to be printed do count if a proof of acceptance is provided.
  • Motivation letter (max. 2 pages).
  • PhD certificate (copy).
  • Filled in a Cover letter (available in DOCX format).
  • You may attach other documents supporting your application, such as recommendation letters.

The application must reach the CTU by 9 January 2023 and should be sent to research@fit.cvut.cz by email or by post to:

Office of Science and Research
Faculty of Information Technology
CTU in Prague

Thákurova 9
160 00 Prague 6, Czech Republic

Selection process

Applications will be assessed by a committee based on documents sent by applicants. The mentor has a strong vote in the selection process. An (online) interview will be organized, preferably within January.

The final decision of the committee will be communicated to applicants by 30 January 2023. Fellows are expected to start their job at the CTU at the latest by April 2023.

The person responsible for the content of this page: Bc. Veronika Dvořáková