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 Catedra de Calculatoare
Facultatea de Automatica si Calculatoare
Universitatea Politehnica Bucuresti, Romania
 Address
Splaiul Independentei 313a
Bucuresti
Romania

Burse de Excelenta in Cercetare - Competitia 2018

Scopul acestor burse este de a oferi cercetatorilor cu potential, aflati la inceputul carierei, sprijin financiar pe o perioada de 2-3 ani, pentru realizarea de cercetare independenta si cu impact semnificativ.

Criterii de evaluare: un singur criteriu, si anume excelenta. Fiecare propunere va fi evaluata de comitetul organizator din Departamentul de Calculatoare, pentru triaj. Cele mai promitatoare propuneri vor fi trimise catre experti evaluatori externi; fiecare propunere finantata va avea minim o recenzie din partea unui expert international recunoscut in domeniu.

Cuantumul finantarii: 1000 eur/luna.

Durata proiectelor: intre 24 si 36 luni (durata trebuie sa reflecte complexitatea proiectului propus)

Domenii cercetare: toate directiile de cercetare din computer science incluzind (dar nu numai):

Aplicabilitatea programului:

Proiectul ideal trebuie sa articuleze clar problema abordata si importanta ei, solutia propusa, si sa descrie de ce aplicantul (sau echipa) este potrivita pentru a duce la indeplinire acest proiect. Vor fi preferate proiectele indraznete de tip "high risk/high gain" celor cu caracter incremental.

Rezultate dorite: scopul burselor este sa incurajeze cercetarea independenta si de impact. Pentru publicatii se urmareste calitatea in detrimentul cantitatii: articole in conferinte A si A* (si workshop-uri asociate acestora) si jurnale din zona rosie/galbena. Articolele in conferinte/jurnale lipsite de vizibilitate internationala si prestigiu sunt descurajate.

Evaluarea proiectelor in timpul derularii: anual, cercetatorul (sau echipa) care a castigat un grant de cercetare va preda un document tehnic (e.g. raport tehnic sau articol) comitetului de evaluare ce sintetizeaza munca din acel an (prototip software, rezultate experimentale, teoreme, etc). Cercetatorul va sustine deasemenea o prezentare in fata comitetului de evaluare. In urma evaluarii documentului si a prezentarii, comitetul va decide continuarea sau intreruperea bursei in functie de calitatea muncii depuse si a angajamentului cercetatorului.

Termen limita de depunere a propunerilor: 31 Ianuarie 2018 4 Februarie 2018 (23:59 PST).

Depunerea propunerilor se poate efectua online la aceasta adresa.

Important: din motive de securitate, platforma poate expedia mesaje de email doar catre conturi de email din departament (cs.pub.ro). Este necesar sa folositi emailul din cs.pub.ro atunci va creati cont in platforma. Aplicantii care nu au cont de email in cs.pub.ro pot folosi propria adresa de email pentru crearea contului, insa sunt rugati sa il contacteze pe Costin Raiciu (costin.raiciu@cs.pub.ro) pentru recuperarea parolei.

Formatul propunerii: numarul total de pagini este de maxim 12 excluzand referintele. Dimensiunea fontului folosit trebuie sa fie minim de 10 pt, cu single spacing intre linii (12pt lead). Dimensiunea maxima a blocului de text este de 16.5cm latime si 23cm inaltime. Propunerea trebuie sa fie elaborata in limba engleza si sa includa urmatoarele sectiuni:

  1. Abstract
  2. Problem statement
  3. State of the art overview
  4. Proposed approach and feasibility
  5. The PI: brief curriculum vitae.
  6. Track record: top 5 papers and description of how prior work relates to the proposed project.

Sursa de finantare: proiect suport ERC CORNET UEFISCDI (330.000 euro/5 ani)

Comitet organizator:

Contact: Costin Raiciu (costin.raiciu@cs.pub.ro) pentru clarificari si probleme ale site-ului pentru aplicatii.

Rezultate Competitia 2018

Au fost depuse 12 proiecte, din care au fost selectate patru proiecte pentru finantare pentru o perioada de 3 ani:

  1. Principal Investigator Marios Choudary
    Project Understanding Leaks in SoC Devices
    Abstract
    Emerging and security critical markets, like IoT and automotive, base their designs on medium to large scale, yet cost driven, System on Chip (SoC) platforms. Such platforms are often exposed to physical attacks, such as the power and electromagnetic emission based side-channel attacks, which are very well known in the context of smartcards and secure ICs. However, these attacks are not yet well understood in the context of SoCs. Furthermore, there is a great lack of understanding of the leakage produced by these devices and the appropriate leakage models. Therefore, throughout this project, I propose to develop a deep understanding of the physical side-channel leakage from popular SoC devices such as those based on ARM's Cortex-A7 or Cortex-A8. Such analysis includes the exploration of different CPU cores and co-processors, the leakage caused by data transfer between these processors and to the different memories available on chip as well as development of suitable leakage models that can be used for the purpose of security evaluations and design of specialised countermeasures. Such detailed understanding provides several benefits. Firstly, we can perform a sound security evaluation, hence assessing the real security of such platforms against physical side-channel attacks. Secondly, it allows us to develop more secure implementations of cryptographic algorithms, by taking into consideration the knowledge of the leaking and non-leaking components as well as the interactions between these components (i.e. an implementation that takes into consideration the real hardware, not just high-level assumptions). Thirdly, it can enable us to evaluate powerful attacks even on secure frameworks such as ARM's TrustZone (or Intel's SGX equivalent). The progress of this project might enable us to develop a strong research team around this important topic and perhaps even obtain further financial help from European or international collaborations.

  2. Principal Investigator Iuliu Vasilescu
    Project Title Pervasive Robotics - A New Hope.
    Abstract
    Most of the current field-robotics research takes pride in creating fully autonomous robots that are self-contained, including computational resources. We propose to take as much computation as possible off the robots and move it to a computer cloud. The benefits will be threefold: (1) much more computationally-complex tasks can be tackled with a remote, unrestricted computer, (2) algorithms that require training (ex. machine learning) will have real-time access to data streams from multiple robots, (3) the computation resources will be shared, improving their use efficiency and therefore lowering the overall system cost. We will try to demonstrate and make full use of these advantages, while identifying and addressing the specific challenges of this approach: (1) dealing with communication limited bandwidth and latency, (2) achieving tolerance to communication faults, (3) splitting the computation tasks between the robot's and the remote computer, (3) maintaining data anonymity. We will concentrate our efforts in solving real-time tasks such as navigation and object identification in the context of aerial drones. A key component will be using the computation latency as a fundamental primitive in the algorithm design process, the same way one would consider that a robot's mechanical motions are not instant.

  3. Principal Investigator Oana Balan
    Project Title SAFE-VR (System for Ameliorating Phobias based on Exposure to Virtual Reality)
    Abstract
    The project proposal is addressed to the Computer and Information Technology domain. The purpose of the SAFE-VR (System for Ameliorating Phobias based on Exposure to Virtual Reality) project is to design and implement a feasible system for treating phobias based on gradual exposure in the Virtual Reality (VR), accompanied by physiological signals monitoring (pulse, electrodermal activity and electroencephalogram (EEG) data), real-time visual feedback and automatic adaptation of the virtual environment (visual stimuli rendered via a Head Mounted Display (HMD) device and 3D audio stimuli) based on the biophysical data recorded from the user. SAFE-VR represents a substantial evolution compared to the actual systems for treating phobias and an economical approach with high perspectives, as it can be used both in the presence of a therapist under clinical surveillance and independently, for home training, on the computer and on Android devices. The application works as a virtual therapist. The user interacts with the virtual environment via gesture recognition and a special motion tracking module detects deviant body postures that can endanger the patient. As music and auditory cues play an important role in setting an immersive and realistic environment, the scenes in VR will be accompanied by relaxing music that changes according to the level of exposure, while 3D audio and carefully selected auditory icons will provide the feeling of realism. There will be designed scenes for the following phobias: acrophobia, agoraphobia, claustrophobia and fear of public speaking.

  4. Principal Investigator Alexandru Radovici
    Project Title A secure execution framework for the IoT
    Abstract
    In this project, we propose an isolated, secure WebAssembly bytecode execution framework for the Internet of Things (IoT). For increased security, this solution mimics all operating system functionalities so that IoT application software is run in separate processes/threads as if a standard operating system directly executed the instructions. Running verified bytecode in an isolated framework will assure that all the security enforcement is done by software and does not rely on the security features provided by hardware components. Security features are essential in IoT applications where replacing or updating hardware components due to security concerns is expensive (or even impossible). With the proposed framework security flaws are corrected with a straightforward software update. We will provide a toolchain to build and package applications for this framework and, finally we validate the approach by evaluating it (regarding both security and performance) on a few real-world IoT case studies.