Funded Doctoral Studentship in the Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research working in the area of Program Verification

Doctoral Studentship in the Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research

Supervisor: Professor Daniel Kroening

Start Date: October 2013 End Date: April 2017  

The Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in Cheltenham has agreed to sponsor a Doctoral Studentship at Oxford University’s Department of Computer Science in the area of Cyber Security, working in the area of Program Verification.

The studentship is only open to UK nationals and the successful candidate will be required to spend in the region of 2 - 4 weeks per year at GCHQ headquarters in Cheltenham. To be considered for this studentship, candidates must therefore be prepared to undergo GCHQ's security clearance procedures.

The studentship will be funded for a period of 3.5 years. GCHQ will cover the costs of university and college fees (currently £6360 per annum) and will provide an annual stipend to the student corresponding to the National Minimum Stipend (£13,726 per annum) plus an additional sum of £7,000 per annum.  There will also be provision for a laptop and for travel to meetings and conferences.

This is an exciting opportunity to gain an understanding of the range of Cyber Security problems faced by government and business. The project will be working to build a platform that combines binary analysis tools with source code analysis tools allowing us to work with much larger programmes and to run much quicker.  The project will help developers triage bugs and allow them to prioritise their efforts on fixing critical problems in cyber security. 

We will consider students with strong programming skills. Candidates must also have good writing, communication, presentation, and organisational skills. Applicants must satisfy the usual requirements for studying for a doctorate at Oxford:

http://www.cs.ox.ac.uk/admissions/dphil/dphil-criteria.pdf

Applications can be made online here:

https://apply.embark.com/grad/Oxford/16/

When applying for these studentships, please quote the following studentship codes:

ACE-DK-WEB (if you are applying from Computer Science Departmental web pages)

ACE-DK-JOBS (if you are applying via jobs.ac.uk)

ACE-DK-FIND (if you are applying via findaphd.com)

The closing date for applications is 28th August, 2013. If you have any questions about the studentship or application process please email:  Julie.sheppard@cs.ox.ac.uk