Research Fellow in Verification or Security or Concurrent/Distributed Systems

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About the role

The Department of Computer Science at the University of Surrey is seeking to recruit a full-time postdoctoral research fellow to work on a range of topics in the areas including:

• emerging hardware architectures (weak memory, RDMA, persistent memory, CXL);
• formal modelling, verification and/or logic;
• interactive and automated tools, such as theorem provers and model checkers;
• proofs of safety and/or security properties;
• programming languages and/or type systems;
• concurrent and/or distributed algorithms; and related topics.

The positions are funded by the UK Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC) projects: Safe and secure Concurrent programming for Advanced Architectures (COVERT) (https://gow.epsrc.ukri.org/NGBOViewGrant.aspx?GrantRef=EP/X015149/1).

The successful applicant will work in a multidisciplinary team under the guidance of Brijesh Dongol (PI) and Gregory Chockler (co-I), as well as a large team of academics (Imperial, Kent, Sheffield, MPI-SWS, Cornell, IMDEA, etc) and industrial collaborators (Arm, NVIDIA, Galois), researchers and PhD students.

Research Environment

Surrey is recognized by the NCSC as an Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research and offers a thriving research environment with world-leading researchers. Brijesh Dongol is a Director of the NCSC/UK Research Institute on Verified Trustworthy Software Systems (VeTSS, https://vetss.org.uk/)hosted jointly at Surrey and Imperial.

Our research includes security verification, protocol design and analysis, distributed and network systems, concurrency, data privacy, privacy preserving security, and applied cryptography. We offer access to a variety of cutting-edge hardware testbeds including a 7-node RDMA cluster (NVIDIA) as well as machines equipped with persistent memory (Intel Optane) and trusted execution environments (Intel SGX).

The University is committed to equality and diversity. Research staff at the Department are supported and encouraged in their career development through mentoring and early career researcher training. The Department fosters a collegial and collaborative atmosphere, in which individuals are valued for the varied skills and perspectives they bring.

About you 

We are looking for applicants that demonstrate strong research in one or more of the above areas backed by a strong publication record.

Applicants must have or be close to obtaining a PhD in Computer Science.

How to Apply

Please submit your CV, cover letter, Research Proposal and Recent Relevant Publication with your application on the university website, The deadline for applications is 3^rd November’24.

This is a fixed term contract up to 31/08/2026, with the possibility of an extension.

Further details

For more information and to apply online, please download the further details and click on the 'apply online' button above.

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