please distribute to potentially interested students
and lists, thank you.


--
Tomas Klos CWI, Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
http://homepages.cwi.nl/~tomas/ T: +31 205924113, F:
+31 205924199

You don't need eyes to see, you need vision - Maxi
Jazz (Faithless)



======================================================================

1 PhD Student in Plan Coordination for Multi-agent
Systems (Computer
Science / Artificial Intelligence)

Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Electrical
Engineering,
Mathematics and Computer Science

======================================================================


++ Job description ++
There exists a vacancy for a Ph.D. student position
(AIO) in a joint
project “Task Coordination for Non-cooperative
Agents”, to be carried
out at both the Faculty of Engineering, Mathematics
and Computer
Science (EWI) of TU-Delft, and in the Theme Group
“Computational
Intelligence and Multi-agent Games” of CWI Amsterdam.
The project is funded by NWO, the Dutch Organization
for Scientific
Research.

The aim of this project is to address task
coordination problems in
multi-agent systems that arise if a complex task
consisting of a set
of interrelated subtasks has to be solved by a number
of non-
cooperative actors (self-interested agents or
competitive companies).
Typical examples are multi-modal transportation
problems, where
different transportation companies are involved in
bringing goods and/
or passengers to their destinations, and patient
health care systems,
where a sequence of treatments has to be assigned to
different
parties. The research can be characterized as
fundamental with a
clear eye on the applications.

The PhD student at TU-Delft will concentrate on Plan
coordination
methods for complex tasks. Plan coordination methods
are required
whenever a complex task has to be performed by several
planning
agents each taking responsibility for a subset of the
total set of
tasks. Since in a complex task, several dependencies
exist between
the subtasks, these dependencies are distributed among
the agents,
preventing them to plan autonomously. The idea of the
research
project is to come up with algorithms and heuristics
to identify and
to distribute suitable constraints that can to be
added to the
complex task such that autonomous planning is ensured.

Keywords are distributed planning, coordination,
self-interested
systems.

++ Project ++

In the project two PhD’s (CWI-Amsterdam and TU-Delft)
will cooperate
on the problem how to interleave the plan coordination
and task
allocation process, in order to find less costly
solutions to the
problem, and they will apply these methods in a
multi-modal
transportation as well as a patient-health care case.

++ Requirements ++
Required education/skills: University Graduate.
Candidates are
expected to have a university degree (MSc) in computer
science,
artificial intelligence, economics, or similar
discipline; good
communication skills, in written as well as spoken
English. He or she
must be open-minded and capable of working
independently and in a
small team. Job type(s): Ph.D. students, research
trainees, non-
tenured lecturers, researchers (Scientific expertise:
Computer Science)

++ Organization ++
Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Electrical
Engineering,
Mathematics and Computer Science (EEMCS)
website: http://www.tudelft.nl

++ Conditions of employment ++
Maximum salary amount in Euro's a month: 2394.
Employment basis: Temporary for specified period
Duration of the contract: Period of 4 years
Maximum hours per week: 38
Additional conditions of employment: According
Collective Labour
Agreement
(CAO) Dutch Universities.

++ Additional Information ++
Additional information about the vacancy can be
obtained from:
Dr. Cees Witteveen, TU-Delft,
Tel. +31 (0)15 278 2521
Email: C.Witteveen@...



++ Application ++

You can apply for this job before April 1, 2005 by
sending your
application to:

Delft University of Technology
Faculty EEMCS
attn: Dr. C. Witteveen
Mekelweg 4
2628 CD Delft
The Netherlands


Tomas Klos
http://homepages.cwi.nl/~tomas/

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