The Heuristic and Evolutionary Algorithms Laboratory at the Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences (Austria) offers a funded PhD position within the scope of the International PhD Program in Informatics Hagenberg. The group conducts scientific research in the field of metaheuristics for solving business, engineering, and biomedical problems.

The focus of the PhD research project should be to gain a better understanding of the evolutionary process by analyzing the search trajectories of genetic programming (GP) algorithms in different hypothesis spaces for academic as well as real-world data mining applications.

Recent algorithmic achievements like offspring selection in combination with linear scaling have enabled GP to achieve high quality results in system identification in less than 50 generations using populations with only several hundred individuals. Therefore the active gene pool of evolutionary search remains manageable and may be subjected to new theoretical investigations closely related to genetic programming schema theories, building block hypotheses and bloat theories.

We are seeking highly motivated and creative students with a master degree in Mathematics/Informatics or a related technical field. Prior knowledge about heuristic optimization and machine learning and programming experience with C# is a plus. Applications (including your CV, degree certificates, list of publications etc.) and informal queries about the lab and research projects should be addressed to Dr. Michael Affenzeller (michael.affenzeller@fh-hagenberg.at).

Further details about the PhD program can be found on http://www.faw.jku.at/phd/.

A longer, printable description of the PhD position as PDF document is also available.

Application Deadline: July 15th, 2011.