CALL FOR INTEREST

PhD opportunities at the KRDB Research Centre

Faculty of Computer Science
Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
======================================================

The Faculty of Computer Science of the Free University of
Bozen-Bolzano (Italy) offers regular openings for studentships for its
PhD program. Up-to-date information about how to apply for the PhD
program and the studentship - including deadlines, number of positions
and necessary documents - can be found in the university PhD web page

(see "Public Competition Announcement for PhD courses - 24th cycle")
and in the faculty PhD web page
.

The grant amounts roughly to 45,000 Euro over the three years of the
PhD. Substantial extra funding is available for participation in
international conferences, schools, and workshops. The faculty of
Computer Science and its PhD program are entirely based on the English
language.

RESEARCH TOPICS

The KRDB Research Centre for Knowledge and Data
 of the faculty of Computer Science
invites applicants to the PhD program to get in touch with the
research group, in order to have a better understanding of the
possible research activities in which prospective students may be
involved. Relevant research topics in the centre are the following:

 * Computational Logic and Deductive Databases
 * Computational Logic and Constraint Programming
 * Data and Information Integration
 * Description Logics and Ontology Languages
 * Efficient Reasoning Algorithms for Description Logics
 * Intelligent Access to Web Resources
 * Logic Based Approaches to Natural Language Understanding
 * Logic-Based Modelling of Biological Knowledge
 * Natural Language Processing
 * Ontology Development and Evaluation
 * P2P Database Integration
 * Query Answering in Distributed Environments
 * Semistructured Data Management
 * Temporal Logics and Temporal Databases

Other research topics are listed in the personal web pages of the
members of the KRDB Centre, see
.

The research activities in the KRDB research centre require good
knowledge of Logic and of Foundations of Databases, and some
knowledge of Artificial Intelligence and of Knowledge Representation.
Good knowledge of English is also preferred.

THE KRDB RESEARCH CENTRE   

In recent years, knowledge and data base applications have
progressively converged towards integrated technologies which try to
overcome the limits of each single discipline. To be useful in
realistic applications, a modern knowledge representation and
reasoning system must be able to handle large data sets, and to
provide expressive query languages. On the other hand, the information
stored on the Web, in digital libraries, and in data warehouses is now
very complex and with deep semantic structures, thus requiring more
intelligent modelling languages and methodologies, and reasoning
services on those complex representations to support design,
management, flexible access, and integration.

The KRDB Research Centre was founded in 2002, and it now comprises 12
research staff and 9 PhD students. The centre aims at being an
international centre of excellence in basic and applied research on
KRDB technologies and at proposing to selected enterprises innovative
ideas and technologies based on the developed research. The KRDB
centre participated in national and international projects, it is
currently involved in two European projects and three European
Networks of Excellence, and it is a member of the Advisory Committee
of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The international prestige of
the centre is evidenced by the participation of its members as
conference and PC chairs, editors of international journals, invited
speakers at international events, and by their publication score in
international journals and conferences.

CONTACTS

To get in contact with the KRDB Research Centre, send an email to:

  Prof. Diego Calvanese
  Faculty of Computer Science
  Free University of Bozen-Bolzano
  Piazza Domenicani, 3
  I-39100 Bolzano, Italy
  Email: calvanese@inf.unibz.it
  Phone: +39-0471-016-160
  Fax: +39-0471-016-009

To get in touch with the current PhD students, see
.