Description

We are looking for a motivated candidate to join the Distributed and Networked Systems lab at the Computer Science Department of TU Darmstadt as

Research Assistant/PhD Student (all genders): Systems Support for

Privacy and Security

The employment contract will be fixed-term for three years, starting as soon as possible.

The PhD student will be part of a larger project that sets out to answer the question of how one can verify, through monitoring, and enforce, through transformations, that data that moves between components of large distributed systems always comply with regulations without negatively impacting performance, while, at the same time, avoiding being overly restrictive. Our proposed solution comes from combining the state of the art in security and privacy with high bandwidth in-network and near-data processing. For this we use specialized hardware devices (FPGAs) and through these will show that it is possible to implement a framework for tracking data movement across different components of data processing pipelines and, given the allowed (and expected) behavior of application components, identify possible privacy leaks at runtime without slowing down the application that is being monitored. This effort is closely related to the topic of trusted computing and secure enclaves in the datacenter as, for security purposes, it is paramount that the framework is itself tamper-free and trustable – this will require us to explore ideas of using FPGAs and similar programmable hardware as Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) in the Cloud.

Qualification Requirements

The following qualifications are required:

The candidate must have an university MSc degree in Computer Science, Electric Engineering or an equivalent field

The candidate must have prior experience with specialized hardware accelerators (ideally FPGAs) and in security/privacy related topics

Experience with projects related distributed computing, operating systems and parallel computation is a plus

Industry experience (internships, placements, employment) in relevant areas is a plus

Opportunity for further qualification (doctoral dissertation) is given. The fulfillment of the duties likewise enables the scientific qualifications of the candidate.

The Technische Universität Darmstadt intends to increase the number of female employees and encourages female candidates to apply. In case of equal qualifications applicants with a degree of disability of at least 50 or equal will be given preference. Wages and salaries are according to the collective agreements on salary scales, which apply to the Technische Universität Darmstadt (TV-TU Darmstadt). Part-time employment is generally possible.

Application

The application must be in English and must include: ▪ a letter of motivation, which provides evidence of independent thinking, novelty and originality ▪ documentation of academic degree(s); grade transcripts that document outstanding academic achievement ▪ CV, which must include two professional/academic references (letters of recommendation will be requested, if needed, directly from the references) ▪ Applications may also include a relevant scientific publication written by the applicant and/or the applicant's master thesis

Applications without the above-mentioned required documents will not be assessed.

Please send inquiries and applications (referencing the vacancy code) to Prof. Zsolt István (zsolt.istvan@cs.tu-darmstadt.de).

By submitting your application, you agree that your data may be stored and processed for the purpose of filling the vacancy. You can find our privacy policy on our webpage.

Code No. 407

Published on

June 20, 2022

Application deadline

August 01, 2022