Dear colleagues, A postdoctoral Research Fellowship lasting 32 months is available in the School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, starting any time from 1 July 2005 to 1 January 2006, working in the semantics of nondeterminism. The application deadline is 22 July 2005. Application details can be found at http://www.punit.bham.ac.uk/vacancies/furtherParticulars.htm?refNo=36914 The School of Computer Science is a major centre for research and teaching in Computer Science and has around 130 researchers, with a lively and friendly atmosphere that encourages research straddling different themes. The vibrant Theory Group spans the spectrum from programming languages to mathematical foundations. Its research includes game, domain, effect, pointer and categorical semantics, topology, logic, model-checking and much else besides. The School has recently hosted the Midlands Graduate School (April 2005) and Mathematical Foundations in Programming Semantics (May 2005). Semantics of nondeterminism --------------------------- To reason about a computer system, it is often necessary to idealize it as nondeterministic, i.e. possessing a range of possible behaviours. The factors that determine its actual behaviour are too low-level and complex to consider explicitly. But this apparently simple idea has ramifications for the theory of programming language semantics that are not well understood. They centre on the question: what does it mean for 2 programs to be equivalent? Previous research has used mathematical structures known from the theory of deterministic programs. But these have limited applicability to nondeterministic programs, and lead to somewhat awkward notions of equivalence. This research will proceed in the opposite direction: begin with certain computationally natural notions of equivalence, and investigate what structures they lead to. Aspects of this research may include: - formulating game semantics that build on existing game models and on existing ways of reasoning about nondeterminism (e.g. Howe's method for congruence of bisimilarity) - studying higher-order languages with nondeterminism, building on existing calculi (e.g. call-by-push-value, Affine HOPLA, etc.), and diverse semantics of such languages - analyzing definability of functions at low order. There is plenty of scope for developing these themes in different directions. Applicants must hold a PhD (or expect to attain one before taking up the appointment). A research background in any or all of the following would be useful: * category theory * semantics of programming languages * game semantics * semantics of concurrency Please do not hesitate to contact me with any queries. Regards Paul -- Paul Blain Levy email: pbl@cs.bham.ac.uk School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham Birmingham B15 2TT, U.K. tel: +44 121-414-4792 http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~pbl 30-Jun-2005 12:03:57 -0300,1786;000000000000-00000020