UK: EPSRC / BAE Systems PhD Studentship in Distributed System Evaluation through Fault Injection, University of Leeds

EPSRC/BAE Systems PhD Studentship: Distributed System Evaluation through Fault Injection

School: Computing, University of Leeds
Funding Type: EPSRC/BAE Systems.
Award type: Studentship package of maintenance and fees.
Number of Awards: 1
Entry Requirements: BSc 2(i) level (or equivalent) background in Computer Science, Software Engineering or other relevant discipline.
Supervisor Name: Professor Jie Xu
Value: £12,940 (Tax Free) per annum maintenance allowance, fees, and an additional £6000 per annum.
Closing date: 31 December 2008

Project Description: Fault injection is a useful tool for assessing the dependability and robustness of systems. It is considered an important evaluation tool but its use requires detailed knowledge of the system architecture being applied to along with available fault models. This studentship will be linked to the evaluation of architectures work package, investigating the evaluation of system dependability through the use of fault injection.

The studentship will examine the application of heuristic rules to automate fault injection placement. Whilst it is relatively easy to implement fault injection tools or hand insert fault injection code, it requires a great deal of skill and detailed knowledge of the system under test to place the fault injection points in a system so that they provide optimal coverage.

Research projects have implemented fault injection frameworks that semi-automate the creation of fault injection campaigns for a system. Unfortunately, these systems fail to automate the actual placement of fault injection points within a system and thus require experienced domain experts to operate them with detailed knowledge of system under test. Published work indicates that a method based on heuristic rules may allow automation of the process by guiding fault injection point placement.

The aim of this studentship is to devise a method to guide automated fault placement enabled by organizing heuristic rules, their associated fault models and coverage statistics as well as the system descriptions into a number of ontologies which will determine appropriate injection points. The method will be implemented as an example tool, either as a standalone tool or as an add-on to an existing tool, for example a plug-in for the Eclipse integrated development environment.

The studentship is part of the EPSRC/BAE Systems funded research project in system engineering addressing the question: “Are you prepared for NEC (Network Enabled Capability)?” The NECTISE (Network Enabled Capability Through Innovative Systems Engineering) project is a five and half year research endeavour involving the Universities of: Loughborough, Bath, Cambridge, Cranfield, Leeds, Leicester, Manchester, Queen’s Belfast, Strathclyde, and York, with a value of around £8.4M. The University of Leeds is one of the four academic leaders for the entire programme, leading research activities on System Architectures and contributing to the development of Through Life System Management. This post will be linked with the Systems Architecture topic group.

This project is appropriate for a software engineering graduate with a strong validation and verification background or a computer science graduate with a strong programming background. The student will join the Distributed Systems and Services research group located within the School of Computing at the University of Leeds (see http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/distsys/).

The project will provide an opportunity for the successful candidate to attend national and international conferences and provides a studentship package of £12,940 (Tax Free) per annum maintenance allowance, fees, and an additional £6000. The successful candidate will be also encouraged to contribute towards the publication of work and to define opportunities within the project.

The successful candidate should fulfill the eligibility criteria for EPSRC funding through UK/EU nationality and residency status (See http://www.epsrc.ac.uk) and is therefore only open to UK and EU students.

For further details please contact Dr. Duncan Russell (duncanr[ at ]comp.leeds.ac.uk). Interested candidates should send a letter of application and a detailed CV with the names and addresses of three referees to:

Dr. Duncan Russell
Senior Research Fellow
Distributed Systems & Services group
School of Computing
University of Leeds
LS2 9JT
Tel: +44 (0) 113 3431707
Email: duncanr[ at ]comp.leeds.ac.uk

Applications will be considered up to 31st December 2008. Early applications will be considered immediately.