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Opportunities

PhD Opportunities in a major UK research programme in Systems Engineering
NECTISE – Network Enabled Capability Through Innovative Systems Engineering
The successful candidate will join a multi-disciplinary, multi-university, multi-million £ research programme that seeks to develop systems engineering tools, processes, and technologies to support Network Enabled Capability.

Engineering Dependability Cases for Systems of Systems, supervised by Dr. Tim Kelly in the Computer Science Dept. at the University of York

The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and BAE Systems have funded an £8.4 million multi-university research project in Systems Engineering for Network Enabled Capability (NEC).  A consortium of ten universities are involved in the NECTISE programme.  It is a joint academic-industry research programme that investigates some of the many implications of moving to a capability-based acquisition environment in which the delivered capability is network enabled. The challenges addressed are centred on:

• Through-life provision of military capability: acquisition, service and support
• Decision support within a capability-based acquisition environment: decision support tools and collaborative environments
• Architectures for network enabled capability: service oriented, evolvable architectures for military capability and support organisations
• Control and monitoring for systems of systems: health monitoring, reconfiguration and prognosis

The first two of these are associated with the systems engineering needed for industry to deliver into the NEC environment. The second two apply to frameworks and technologies to support operational effectiveness in that environment.
The advertised post is a new Doctoral Training Accounts ( DTAs) provided to the NECTISE consortium, and candidates must meet the current EPSRC eligibility criteria for such grants. 


Engineering Dependability Cases for Systems of Systems, Dr. Tim Kelly in the Computer Science Dept. at the University of York
There are many dependability attributes of interest for NEC platforms - including safety, security, availability and performance.  It is necessary to justify that the required level of dependability is being achieved by any given NEC configuration, or set of configurations.  Such justifications have typically been presented in separate 'cases' - e.g. safety cases, security cases and reliability cases.  This studentship will investigate how an overall 'dependability case' - showing the inherent trade-offs between individual attributes - can be constructed for NEC. 
This studentship will explore the means of justifying and certifying (to the relevant regulatory authorities) the dependability characteristics of Service-Oriented Architectures for NEC. In particular, to correspond with the anticipated upgrading and adaptation of the elements of the system of systems, the strand will examine how to evolve a dependability case of 'parts' (i.e. a modular dependability case) that can be incrementally certified and adapted alongside systems of systems evolution. The studentship will involve extensive collaboration with BAE SYSTEMS and the other universities involved in the NECTISE research programme.
For more information, contact:
Dr Tim Kelly
Senior Lecturer in Critical Systems
Department of Computer Science
The University of York,
York,
YO10 5DD, UK
Tel: 01904 432764
Fax: 07976 889545
http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~tpk/
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