mercredi 30 janvier 2019

open research positions in collective decision making, ISTC-CNR, Rome, Italy

I’m recruiting the following profiles within the context of the project CODE: Collective Decisions in Dynamic Environments (see below for more info), carried out at the Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Technologies of the Italian National Research Council, in Rome.

The following profiles are required:
- junior post-doc (including those nearing the end of their PhD)
- postgraduate research assistant (with possibility to enrol in a PhD school)
Open positions are for 2 years (with possibility of +1 year). Preferred starting date June the 3rd, 2019.

Ideal candidates should have knowledge about dynamical systems theory, multi-agent systems, swarm robotics. Good programming skills are also required (Python, C++), as well as abilities in data visualisation.
The interested candidate may place an informal inquiry by email to Vito Trianni <vito.trianni@istc.cnr.it>, attaching CV and a short motivation letter. The position will remain open until filled.


CODE: Collective Decisions in Dynamic Environments
The CODE project aims to study collective decision making in dynamical contexts, where the possible alternatives display time-varying features. The study has a theoretical component based on dynamical systems theory, and an experimental component based on multi-agent and multi-robot systems. Dynamical systems are useful to determine the time evolution of collective decision-making under a given parameterisation, with the goal of identifying optimal conditions to maximise efficiency and decision accuracy. Multi-agent models allow to validate the predictions made by analytical models, and to consider heterogeneous interaction topologies that can emerge, for instance, from a complex and dynamic distribution of agents in space, as resulting from non-random motion patterns. The research also includes the possibility to test the identified collective decision strategies with multi-robot systems, exploiting a swarm of kilobot robots.