Please distribute (apologies for multiple postings):

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Two PhD positions in LIAFA
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Contact: Tayssir TOUILI   (touili@liafa.univ-paris-diderot.fr)

Two PhD positions are  available in the "Verification" team in LIAFA, Paris.


Subject 1: Software  verification
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The subject of the thesis is about   concurrent programs verification.
The PhD student is expected to investigate and develop novel techniques,  algorithms and tools for
the analysis of  software.

Indeed, nowadays, software is everywhere: in telecommunication, in navigation, in nuclear plants, etc.
The tasks that software deal with  are becoming more and more complex and critical, in the sense that any
small error can cause huge human and/or economical damages. Therefore,  it is crucial to be sure that
a software does not contain any error before using it.   Programmers need then to have rigorous 
formal mathematical techniques that allow to verify and check their programs.
Unfortunately, programs present several complex features that make their analysis very complex:
concurrency,  synchronisation, recursion, procedure calls, pointers, manipulation of integer and real variables, etc.
Thus, the objective of this thesis is to develop new techniques for software model-checking that can deal with all these complex features.




Subject 2: Model-checking for malware detection
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The  topic  of the thesis is the development of  new original model-checking and static analysis
 techniques for malware detection.  Indeed, the number of malwares is growing extraordinarily fast.
Therefore, it is important to have efficient  malware detectors.
To identify viruses, existing antivirus systems  use either  code emulation or signature (pattern) detection.
These techniques have some limitations. Indeed, emulation based techniques can only check the
 program's behavior in a limited time interval, whereas signature based systems are easy to get around.
To sidestep these limitations, instead of executing the program or making a syntactic check over it,
 virus detectors  need to use analysis techniques that check the  behavior (not the syntax) of the program in a   static way, i.e. without executing it.
Towards this aim, we propose in this thesis  to develop new   model-checking and static analysis  techniques for virus detection.


How to apply:
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The positions are available immediately. Candidates must have a master in  computer science.
The candidate must send a CV, university grades,  recommendation letters, and a motivation letter to Tayssir TOUILI   (touili@liafa.univ-paris-diderot.fr)