Topic 2006

Classifications, ontologies, contextual ontologies, relational data bases

One Position

GOAL: Build a database management system which will allow to handle and perform operations on multiple classifications.
TOPICS: Classifications, ontologies, contextual ontologies, relational data bases.
PRESEQUISITES: Knowledge of Java, of relational databases. Some knowledge of logic is an added value.

Knowledge management, classifications, contextual ontologies

One Position

GOAL: Build a system for handling documents on the PC desktop.
TOPICS: Knowledge management, classifications, contextual ontologies.
PRESEQUISITES: Knowledge of Java, of web browsing (in particular Mozilla), graphical interfaces.

Multilingual Corpora for Machine Translation

One Position

GOAL: Aligning Multilingual Corpora for Machine Translation.
TOPICS: Statistical Modeling of discrete sequences. Natural Language Processing. Machine Translation. Dynamic Programming, Machine Learning.
PRESEQUISITES: Probability Theory. Statistical Modeling. Advanced Programming skills. Machine Learning.

Stochastic local search development in autonomic communication systems

One Position

GOAL: Develop stochastic local search methods and software for solving challenging optimization tasks in autonomic communication systems.
TOPICS: algorithms, self-management, complex systems, biologically-inspired heuristics, local search.
PRESEQUISITES: The candidate should have a master degree or be at the last year of a master curriculum in Computer Science or Electrical Engineering, with a specialization in Computer Networks or Software Engineering. A good knowledge of advanced programming skills is required. Machine learning and complex systems competence is a plus.

Security and digital trust, reputation techniques in autonomic systems

One Position

GOAL: Develop methods for security and digital trust and reputation techniques in autonomic systems.
TOPICS: Security, algorithms, self-management, digital trust and reputation, recommendation systems.
PRESEQUISITES: The candidate should have a master degree or be at the last year of a master curriculum in Computer Science or Electrical Engineering, with a specialization in Computer Networks or Software Engineering. A good knowledge of advanced programming skills is required. Security competence is a plus.

Analytical and simulative techniques for the evaluation of the use of directional antennas in WLAN/WMAN networks

One Position

GOAL: Develop analytical and simulative techniques for the evaluation of the use of directional antennas in WLAN/WMAN networks.
TOPICS: Wireless Networks, Protocol Design, MAC protocols, Access Networks.
PRESEQUISITES: The candidate should have a master degree or be at the last year of a master curriculum in Computer Science or Electrical Engineering, with a specialization in TLC Networks or Computer communications. A good knowledge of simulation techniques together with advanced programming skills are required. Statistical analysis of results requires a backgound in probability theory and stochastic systems.

Performance models (analytical and simulative) for content delivery over P2P networks

One Position

GOAL: Develop performance models (analytical and simulative) for content delivery over P2P networks.
TOPICS: Simulation and combinatorial techniques, Protocol Design, Distributed systems, P2P systems.
PRESEQUISITES: The candidate should have a master degree or be at the last year of a master curriculum in Computer Science or Electrical Engineering, with a specialization in TLC Networks or Computer communications. A good knowledge of simulation techniques together with advanced programming skills are required. Statistical analysis of results requires a backgound in probability theory and stochastic systems.

Clustering Hierarchies

One Position

GOAL: The aim of this project is the analysis of the output of a hierarchical clustering algorithm. The end result will be a set of hints that can be used in order to derive useful information for a database designer. More specifically, these hints will be the driving force for identifying dependencies (functional and muti-valued) in large collections of data.
TOPICS: Analyzing Clustering Hierarchies.
PRESEQUISITES: Very good understanding of Database Systems concepts and specifically database design, very good programming skills, very good communication skills in English, high marks in related Computer Science courses, willingness to pursue a research topic and possibly extend their studies further. This translates to having the ability to read, undertand and criticise related articles as well as being capable to performing basic experimentation on the topics suggested.

Database relations

One Position

GOAL: In order to re-design a database relation, the existence of functional dependencies is mandatory. This project aims at putting specific techniques in practice that relax the condition of having such dependencies to perform the decomposition. The successful candidate will be given specific suggestions from existing bibliography and will be asked to implement these techniques and present the corresponding results.
TOPICS: Dependency-free decomposition of database relations.
PRESEQUISITES: Very good understanding of Database Systems concepts and specifically database design, understanding of basic Information Theoretic concepts, very good programming skills, very good communication skills in English, high marks in related Computer Science courses, willingness to pursue a research topic and possibly extend their studies further. This translates to having the ability to read, undertand and criticise related articles as well as being capable to performing basic experimentation on the topics suggested.

Distributed web content

One Position

GOAL: Distributed crawling and semantic enrichment of web content.
TOPICS: Development and deployment of distributed web searching engine. Semantic annotation of digital content. Computational analysis of annotated content.
PRESEQUISITES: Professional knowledge of Java Programming environment. Web searching skills. Data analysis skills.

Tropos project: protype tool for analyze and restructure dependency diagrams

One Position

GOAL: Tropos project: protype tool for analyze and restructure dependency diagrams.
TOPICS: Tropos is an agent-oriented methodology for developing software systems (see http://www.troposproject.org for more details). The methodology uses the agent paradigm and agents? mentalistic notions (such as goals, intentions, beliefs, plans, and social dependency) for analyzing, design and develop software systems. The methodology uses a set of diagrams, such as goal diagrams (in which goals are decomposed and analyzed) and dependency diagrams (where the soacial dependencies among actors/agents are specified analyzed). The objective of the stage is developing a first protype tool for analyzing and restructuring Tropos dependency diagrams. The tool will support and drive the user during the requirements engineering phases of the methodology. The tool will be used for a first (simple) real-life case study (to be defined). The stager will work and collaborate with the Tropos team.
PRESEQUISITES: Last year students in Computer Science; top marks. Notes: We are only interested in students who want to pursue a PhD.

Tropos project: protype tool for secure Tropos

One Position

GOAL: Tropos prject: protype tool for secure Tropos.
TOPICS: Tropos is an agent-oriented methodology for developing software systems (see http://www.troposproject.org for more details). The methodology uses the agent paradigm and agents? mentalistic notions (such as goals, intentions, beliefs, plans, and social dependency) for analyzing, design and develop software systems. The methodology uses a set of diagrams, such as goal diagrams (in which goals are decomposed and analyzed) and dependency diagrams (where the soacial dependencies among actors/agents are specified analyzed). Secure Tropos extends Tropos methodology in order to accommodate security in the requirements engineering phases. The key intuition that underlies secure Tropos is the identification of distinct roles for actors that manipulate resources, accomplish goals or execute tasks (functional requirements), and actors that own or permit usage of resources or goals (non-functional requirements). Objective of the stage is developing a protype tool for secure Tropos. In particular, the tool should support and drive the analyst during the requirements analysis phase. The tool will be used for a first (simple) real-life case study (to be defined). The stager will work and collaborate with the Tropos team.
PRESEQUISITES: Last year students in Computer Science; top marks. Notes: We are only interested in students who want to pursue a PhD.

Formal Ontology and Conceptual Modeling for Social Interactions

One Position

GOAL: "Formal Ontology and Conceptual Modeling for Social Interactions" - The student will be part of the research activity at the Laboratory of Applied Ontology and will write an overview of his research on the chosen topic.
TOPICS: The internship project will focus on the application of foundational ontologies and related methodologies for modeling social relationships like trust, delegation, ownership and security at large. The proposed research is part of a wider study of organizations and social interactions. The work will involve theoretical study and modeling of specific cases (depending on the interest of the applicants). On the theoretical side, the topics may vary from the evaluation and comparison of ontological primitives needed to model the above notions (including the rationale for which they have been proposed) to the study of approaches to agency and action that are ontologically sound. On the applicative side, the case studies will be related to the project MOSTRO (Modeling Security and Trust Relationships within Organizations) whose focus is on capturing security requirements at the high organizational level.
PRESEQUISITES: Basic knowledge of formal logic (in particular first order logic and modal logic), general notions on ontologies and their application.

For further information on the research subject please contact Claudio Masolo (http://www.loa-cnr.it/masolo.html).

Distributed Systems and Agent-Oriented Computing for the UNICUIQUE SUUM project

One Position

GOAL: Distributed Systems and Agent-Oriented Computing for the UNICUIQUE SUUM project.
TOPICS: The proposed internship project will be focused within the research program Unicuique Suum aimed to develop an universal mobile telecommunication framework for communities of users implementing quality oriented services and utilities. J2EE or .NET are the reference software frameworks, embedded Linux and Microsoft Windows Mobile are the reference operating systems. The internship is manly focused on routing agents.
Agent Oriented Programming, Service Oriented Computing, Routing algorithms, QoS modeling for telecom services, The interested student is requested to select one or more topics from the above list.
PRESEQUISITES: Competence required: Object Oriented Programming (Java, C++, .Net or similar).
Plus: Distributed Systems Programming, Web Services: architectures and programming XML, Eclipse programming and SourceForge attending, UML practice.

Real Time software development for the UNICUIQUE SUUM project

Two positions

GOAL: Real Time software development for the UNICUIQUE SUUM project.
TOPICS: The proposed internship project will be focused within the research program Unicuique Suum aimed to develop an universal mobile telecommunication framework for communities of users implementing quality oriented services and utilities. J2EE or .NET are the reference software frameworks, embedded Linux and Microsoft Windows Mobile are the reference operating systems. The internship is manly focused on kernel development for mobile devices.
Agent Oriented Programming, Kernel operating system development, Micro device low level programming, Assembler development.
PRESEQUISITES: Object Oriented Programming (excellent C++ and at least good Java).
Plus: Driver and kernel mode programming, Distributed Systems Programming, Web Services: architectures and programming XML, Eclipse programming and SourceForge attending, UML practice.

Software Radio for UNICUIQUE SUUM project

One Position

GOAL: Software Radio for UNICUIQUE SUUM project.
TOPICS: Software radio is the technique of getting code as close to the antenna as possible. It turns radio hardware problems into software problems. The fundamental characteristic of software radio is that software defines the transmitted waveforms, and software demodulates the received waveforms. This is in contrast to most radios in which the processing is done with either analog circuitry or analog circuitry combined with digital chips. GNU Radio is a free software toolkit for building software radios.
Software radio is a revolution in radio design due to its ability to create radios that change on the fly, creating new choices for users. At the baseline, software radios can do pretty much anything a traditional radio can do. The exciting part is the flexibility that software provides you. Instead of a bunch of fixed function gadgets, in the next few years we'll see a move to universal communication devices.
Antenna design and performance evaluation, Real Time software programming, FPGA programming.
PRESEQUISITES: Object Oriented Programming (excellent C++ and at least good Java).
Plus: GNU and SourceForge attending, XML, Eclipse programming, UML practice.

Ad-hoc and Mesh Networks and Middleware

One Position

GOAL: The student will work on the development of middleware / midlets for supporting proximity communications among mobile users and information collection from sensors and its diffusion within mobile ad-hoc networks and/or mesh networks, formed by a mixture of embedded devices and users' devices.
PRESEQUISITES: C, C++ and/or Java programming, UML, Design Patterns, knowledge of Bluetooth, Zigbee protocol stacks.
Plus: Distributed Systems Programming, UPnP, Jini.

Embedded Systems & Pervasive Computing

One Position

GOAL: The student will work on the development of network simulator modules for the design and validation of protocols and algorithms related to: proximity communications among mobile users' devices (e.g. mobile phones, PDAs, wearable computers, implants), and information collection from sensors and its diffusion within mobile ad-hoc networks and/or mesh networks, formed by a mixture of embedded devices and users' devices.
PRESEQUISITES: C, C++ and/or Java programming, ns2 and/or Omnet, MAC/network protocols for mobile ad-hoc networks and/or wireless sensors networks and/or wireless mesh networks, detailed knowledge of Bluetooth, Zigbee protocol stacks.
Plus: Distributed Systems Programming, knowledge of stochastic process theory.

Information and Network Security

One Position

GOAL: The candidate will work in a research team in the areas of information and network security, security protocols, AAA. Possible topics include: software security in mobile environments (Java based), security and quality of service in communication networks and security in GRID.
PRESEQUISITES: Good programming skills (C,C++), solid knowledge of basics of computer and network security, good academic results in the area and good communication skills are welcomed.

Trust management and negotiation

One Position

GOAL: The candidate will work on identity management and reputation for trusted negotiations, and in particular on the implementation of a Trust Negotiation prototype based on X.509 Certificate Framework and OASIS SAML protocol.
PRESEQUISITES: Good knowledge in Java programming. Familiarities with public/private-key concepts: encryption, decryption and digital signatures.

One position in "Classifications, ontologies, contextual ontologies, relational data bases"

	GOAL: Build a database management system which will allow to handle and perform operations on multiple classifications. TOPICS: Classifications, ontologies, contextual ontologies, relational data bases. PRESEQUISITES: Knowledge of Java, of relational databases. Some knowledge of logic is an added value.

One position in "Knowledge management, classifications, contextual ontologies"

	GOAL: Build a system for handling documents on the PC desktop. TOPICS: Knowledge management, classifications, contextual ontologies. PRESEQUISITES: Knowledge of Java, of web browsing (in particular Mozilla), graphical interfaces.

One position in "Multilingual Corpora for Machine Translation"

	GOAL: Aligning Multilingual Corpora for Machine Translation. TOPICS: Statistical Modeling of discrete sequences. Natural Language Processing. Machine Translation. Dynamic Programming, Machine Learning. PRESEQUISITES: Probability Theory. Statistical Modeling. Advanced Programming skills. Machine Learning.

One position in "Stochastic local search development in autonomic communication systems"

	GOAL: Develop stochastic local search methods and software for solving challenging optimization tasks in autonomic communication systems. TOPICS: algorithms, self-management, complex systems, biologically-inspired heuristics, local search. PRESEQUISITES: The candidate should have a master degree or be at the last year of a master curriculum in Computer Science or Electrical Engineering, with a specialization in Computer Networks or Software Engineering. A good knowledge of advanced programming skills is required. Machine learning and complex systems competence is a plus.

One position in "Security and digital trust, reputation techniques in autonomic systems"

	GOAL: Develop methods for security and digital trust and reputation techniques in autonomic systems. TOPICS: Security, algorithms, self-management, digital trust and reputation, recommendation systems. PRESEQUISITES: The candidate should have a master degree or be at the last year of a master curriculum in Computer Science or Electrical Engineering, with a specialization in Computer Networks or Software Engineering. A good knowledge of advanced programming skills is required. Security competence is a plus.

One position in "Analytical and simulative techniques for the evaluation of the use of directional antennas in WLAN/WMAN networks"

	GOAL: Develop analytical and simulative techniques for the evaluation of the use of directional antennas in WLAN/WMAN networks. TOPICS: Wireless Networks, Protocol Design, MAC protocols, Access Networks. PRESEQUISITES: The candidate should have a master degree or be at the last year of a master curriculum in Computer Science or Electrical Engineering, with a specialization in TLC Networks or Computer communications. A good knowledge of simulation techniques together with advanced programming skills are required. Statistical analysis of results requires a backgound in probability theory and stochastic systems. .

One position in "Performance models (analytical and simulative) for content delivery over P2P networks."

	GOAL: Develop performance models (analytical and simulative) for content delivery over P2P networks. TOPICS: Simulation and combinatorial techniques, Protocol Design, Distributed systems, P2P systems. PRESEQUISITES: The candidate should have a master degree or be at the last year of a master curriculum in Computer Science or Electrical Engineering, with a specialization in TLC Networks or Computer communications. A good knowledge of simulation techniques together with advanced programming skills are required. Statistical analysis of results requires a backgound in probability theory and stochastic systems.

One position in "Clustering Hierarchies"

	GOAL: The aim of this project is the analysis of the output of a hierarchical clustering algorithm. The end result will be a set of hints that can be used in order to derive useful information for a database designer. More specifically, these hints will be the driving force for identifying dependencies (functional and muti-valued) in large collections of data. TOPICS: Analyzing Clustering Hierarchies. PRESEQUISITES: Very good understanding of Database Systems concepts and specifically database design, very good programming skills, very good communication skills in English, high marks in related Computer Science courses, willingness to pursue a research topic and possibly extend their studies further. This translates to having the ability to read, undertand and criticise related articles as well as being capable to performing basic experimentation on the topics suggested.

One position in "Database relations"

	GOAL: In order to re-design a database relation, the existence of functional dependencies is mandatory. This project aims at putting specific techniques in practice that relax the condition of having such dependencies to perform the decomposition. The successful candidate will be given specific suggestions from existing bibliography and will be asked to implement these techniques and present the corresponding results. TOPICS: Dependency-free decomposition of database relations. PRESEQUISITES: Very good understanding of Database Systems concepts and specifically database design, understanding of basic Information Theoretic concepts, very good programming skills, very good communication skills in English, high marks in related Computer Science courses, willingness to pursue a research topic and possibly extend their studies further. This translates to having the ability to read, undertand and criticise related articles as well as being capable to performing basic experimentation on the topics suggested.

One position in "Distributed web content"

	GOAL: Distributed crawling and semantic enrichment of web content. TOPICS: Development and deployment of distributed web searching engine. Semantic annotation of digital content. Computational analysis of annotated content. PRESEQUISITES: Professional knowledge of Java Programming environment. Web searching skills. Data analysis skills.

One position in "Tropos project: protype tool for analyze and restructure dependency diagrams"

	GOAL: Tropos project: protype tool for analyze and restructure dependency diagrams. TOPICS: Tropos is an agent-oriented methodology for developing software systems (see http://www.troposproject.org for more details). The methodology uses the agent paradigm and agents? mentalistic notions (such as goals, intentions, beliefs, plans, and social dependency) for analyzing, design and develop software systems. The methodology uses a set of diagrams, such as goal diagrams (in which goals are decomposed and analyzed) and dependency diagrams (where the soacial dependencies among actors/agents are specified analyzed). The objective of the stage is developing a first protype tool for analyzing and restructuring Tropos dependency diagrams. The tool will support and drive the user during the requirements engineering phases of the methodology. The tool will be used for a first (simple) real-life case study (to be defined). The stager will work and collaborate with the Tropos team. PRESEQUISITES: Last year students in Computer Science; top marks. Notes: We are only interested in students who want to pursue a PhD.

One position in "Tropos project: protype tool for secure Tropos"

	GOAL: Tropos prject: protype tool for secure Tropos. TOPICS: Tropos is an agent-oriented methodology for developing software systems (see http://www.troposproject.org for more details). The methodology uses the agent paradigm and agents? mentalistic notions (such as goals, intentions, beliefs, plans, and social dependency) for analyzing, design and develop software systems. The methodology uses a set of diagrams, such as goal diagrams (in which goals are decomposed and analyzed) and dependency diagrams (where the soacial dependencies among actors/agents are specified analyzed). Secure Tropos extends Tropos methodology in order to accommodate security in the requirements engineering phases. The key intuition that underlies secure Tropos is the identification of distinct roles for actors that manipulate resources, accomplish goals or execute tasks (functional requirements), and actors that own or permit usage of resources or goals (non-functional requirements). Objective of the stage is developing a protype tool for secure Tropos. In particular, the tool should support and drive the analyst during the requirements analysis phase. The tool will be used for a first (simple) real-life case study (to be defined). The stager will work and collaborate with the Tropos team. PRESEQUISITES: Last year students in Computer Science; top marks. Notes: We are only interested in students who want to pursue a PhD.

One position in "Formal Ontology and Conceptual Modeling for Social Interactions"

	GOAL: "Formal Ontology and Conceptual Modeling for Social Interactions" - The student will be part of the research activity at the Laboratory of Applied Ontology and will write an overview of his research on the chosen topic. TOPICS: The internship project will focus on the application of foundational ontologies and related methodologies for modeling social relationships like trust, delegation, ownership and security at large. The proposed research is part of a wider study of organizations and social interactions. The work will involve theoretical study and modeling of specific cases (depending on the interest of the applicants). On the theoretical side, the topics may vary from the evaluation and comparison of ontological primitives needed to model the above notions (including the rationale for which they have been proposed) to the study of approaches to agency and action that are ontologically sound. On the applicative side, the case studies will be related to the project MOSTRO (Modeling Security and Trust Relationships within Organizations) whose focus is on capturing security requirements at the high organizational level. PRESEQUISITES: Basic knowledge of formal logic (in particular first order logic and modal logic), general notions on ontologies and their application. For further information on the research subject please contact Claudio Masolo (http://www.loa-cnr.it/masolo.html).

One position in "Distributed Systems and Agent-Oriented Computing for the UNICUIQUE SUUM project"

	GOAL: "Distributed Systems and Agent-Oriented Computing for the UNICUIQUE SUUM project". TOPICS: The proposed internship project will be focused within the research program Unicuique Suum aimed to develop an universal mobile telecommunication framework for communities of users implementing quality oriented services and utilities. J2EE or .NET are the reference software frameworks, embedded Linux and Microsoft Windows Mobile are the reference operating systems. The internship is manly focused on routing agents. Agent Oriented Programming, Service Oriented Computing, Routing algorithms, QoS modeling for telecom services, The interested student is requested to select one or more topics from the above list. PRESEQUISITES: Competence required: Object Oriented Programming (Java, C++, .Net or similar) Plus: Distributed Systems Programming, Web Services: architectures and programming XML, Eclipse programming and SourceForge attending, UML practice.

Two positions in "Real Time software development for the UNICUIQUE SUUM project"

	GOAL: One position in "Real Time software development for the UNICUIQUE SUUM project". TOPICS: The proposed internship project will be focused within the research program Unicuique Suum aimed to develop an universal mobile telecommunication framework for communities of users implementing quality oriented services and utilities. J2EE or .NET are the reference software frameworks, embedded Linux and Microsoft Windows Mobile are the reference operating systems. The internship is manly focused on kernel development for mobile devices. Agent Oriented Programming, Kernel operating system development, Micro device low level programming, Assembler development. PRESEQUISITES: Object Oriented Programming (excellent C++ and at least good Java) Plus: Driver and kernel mode programming, Distributed Systems Programming, Web Services: architectures and programming XML, Eclipse programming and SourceForge attending, UML practice.

One position in "Software Radio for UNICUIQUE SUUM project"

	GOAL: Two position in "Software Radio for UNICUIQUE SUUM project". TOPICS: Software radio is the technique of getting code as close to the antenna as possible. It turns radio hardware problems into software problems. The fundamental characteristic of software radio is that software defines the transmitted waveforms, and software demodulates the received waveforms. This is in contrast to most radios in which the processing is done with either analog circuitry or analog circuitry combined with digital chips. GNU Radio is a free software toolkit for building software radios. Software radio is a revolution in radio design due to its ability to create radios that change on the fly, creating new choices for users. At the baseline, software radios can do pretty much anything a traditional radio can do. The exciting part is the flexibility that software provides you. Instead of a bunch of fixed function gadgets, in the next few years we'll see a move to universal communication devices. Antenna design and performance evaluation, Real Time software programming, FPGA programming. PRESEQUISITES: Object Oriented Programming (excellent C++ and at least good Java) Plus: GNU and SourceForge attending, XML, Eclipse programming, UML practice.

One position in "Ad-hoc and Mesh Networks and Middleware"

	GOAL: The student will work on the development of middleware / midlets for supporting proximity communications among mobile users and information collection from sensors and its diffusion within mobile ad-hoc networks and/or mesh networks, formed by a mixture of embedded devices and users' devices. PRESEQUISITES: C, C++ and/or Java programming, UML, Design Patterns, knowledge of Bluetooth, Zigbee protocol stacks. Plus: Distributed Systems Programming, UPnP, Jini.

One position in "Embedded Systems & Pervasive Computing"

GOAL: he student will work on the development of network simulator modules for the design and valida