In the Parallel and Distributed Systems (PDS) Group of the Faculty of 
Electrical Engineering, Mathematics, and Computer Science of Delft
University of Technology (TUD), there is a job opening for a

              PhD Student in COMPUTER SCIENCE 

in the area of Application-Oriented Resource Management and Scheduling 
in Clouds
 
in the project Infrastructure Virtualization for e-Science (IV-e)
as part of the Dutch national COMMIT program.


DESCRIPTION OF THE RESEARCH
The objective of this research is to study how to develop support for specific
application types and application areas in schedulers for large-scale systems 
such as grids and clouds. Different application types, both old (e.g., workflows)
and new (e.g., data-mining at unprecedented scales), may want to take advantage 
of the capabilities of evolving large-scale computing infrastructures, such as 
(inter-operating, federated) grids and clouds with their heterogeneous hardware 
(processor types) and high-speed networks. No single scheduler can incorporate 
support for all imaginable types of applications for all types of computing 
infrastructures. Therefore, there is a need to design and build application-support 
modules in schedulers of large-scale distributed systems.

More specifically, the goal is to develop support in the KOALA scheduler for 
specific application types and for applications in specific application areas 
(e.g., medicine) that are studied in other projects in COMMIT. For this 
purpose, the current KOALA scheduler has to be extended with application-support
modules for these application types and application areas in such a way that
users do not have to deal with all kinds of details of the underlying systems,
but can concentrate on application design, and that applications can run 
(energy-)efficiently. This research will be carried out in collaboration with
other COMMIT projects.


RESEARCH ENVIRONMENT
In the PDS group in Delft, currently two staff members and three PhD students 
are active in the area of resource management and scheduling in grids and
clouds, with the research centering around the KOALA grid scheduler, which was
developed in the PDS group in Delft. The research in the PDS group is 
experimental in nature, with a strong emphasis on designing, implementing,
deploying, and analyzing prototypes in real systems.

Over the last decade, the PDS group has built up a very strong portfolio of 
research in resource management and scheduling in grids and clouds, with
four completed PhD theses and a large set of papers in the top conferences
and journals publishing in this field. TUD participates in the DAS4 project,
and with the DAS4 has an excellent grid and cloud experimental facility.


REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS 
Applicants must have a Master's degree in computer science with an
emphasis on computer systems and performance analysis, and preferably
on experimental computer science.


EMPLOYMENT CONDITIONS 
This is a position for four years, with a salary according to the 
standard guidelines of Dutch universities.


FURTHER INFORMATION and APPLICATION
Further information can be obtained from, and an application (including
a CV, transcripts of BSc and MSc results, and a copy of an MSc thesis)
can be sent to:

- prof.dr.ir. D.H.J. Epema
  Parallel and Distributed Systems Group (PDS)
  Delft University of Technology
  Delft, the Netherlands
  e-mail: d.h.j.epema@tudelft.nl
  tel.: +31.15.2783853


RELATED WEB SITES:
www.pds.ewi.tudelft.nl
www.pds.ewi.tudelft.nl/~epema
www.st.ewi.tudelft.nl/koala
www.cs.vu.nl/das4