Received: from GLINDA.OZ.CS.CMU.EDU by A.GP.CS.CMU.EDU id aa25443; 12 Jul 95 16:31:10 EDT Date: Wed, 12 Jul 95 15:56:26 EDT From: AI.Repository@GLINDA.OZ.CS.CMU.EDU To: ai+ai-predoc@cs.cmu.edu Subject: Predoc: Planning at Univ. of Edinburgh, UK Sender: ai@A.GP.CS.CMU.EDU From: iwh@aisb.ed.ac.uk (Ian Harrison) Subject: PhD Studentship in AI Planning, Edinburgh Organization: Dept AI, Edinburgh University, Scotland Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 14:15:31 GMT UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH, UK ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE PhD STUDENTSHIP IN AI PLANNING RESEARCH An opportunity exists for a PhD candidate to join the O-Plan Project's research team in the Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute (AIAI) at Edinburgh University. This team is engaged on collaborative work at international level in the areas of planning, scheduling and reactive control for tasks such as logistics, aerospace planning, information management, etc. Recently, the O-Plan project's application focus has been on Logistics planning, and Non-combatant Evacuation Operation (NEO) planning for crisis situations. Work is likely to continue on NEOs, with new work on Air Campaign Planning. These are the focal applications of the ARPA/Rome Laboratory Planning Initiative of which the O-Plan project is a part. Prospective applicants can get access to the work of the O-Plan group on the WWW (http://www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~oplan/). Paper copies are also available to those without access to the Internet by contacting Professor Austin Tate at the address given below. Applicants are encouraged to propose work areas of interest to themselves which they feel would complement the work of the O-Plan team. Possible areas of interest include (but are not limited to): * the improvement of plan feasibility analysis during plan generation * the efficacy of adopting a business case development approach to generating multiple, qualitatively different plans * the dialogue between the task assignment and planning agents * taskable information gathering agents * personable network-aware agents ----------------------------------------------------------------- Support Available Support for living expenses (approximately 5,500 pounds per annum), University of Edinburgh fees (7,860 pounds per annum) and a small travel budget are to be made available to a suitable candidate. The support is available for 3 years to a student starting his or her studies in 1995. ------------------------------------------------------------ O-Plan O-Plan is a command, planning and control architecture with an open modular structure intended to allow experimentation on or replacement of various components. The research is seeking to determine which functions are generally required in a number of application areas and across a number of different command, planning, scheduling and control systems. O-Plan aims to demonstrate how a planner, situated in a task assignment and plan execution (command and control) environment, and using extensive domain knowledge, can allow for flexible, distributed, collaborative, and mixed-initiative planning. The research is seeking to verify this total system approach by studying a simplified three-level model with separable task assignment, plan generation and plan execution agents. O-Plan has been applied to logistics tasks that require flexibility of responses for changing situations. ------------------------------------------------------------------- Edinburgh and AI at Edinburgh Edinburgh is one of the most pleasant capital cities in the world. Travel, historical and general information on Edinburgh can be found in the city's Tourist Guide: (http://www.efr.hw.ac.uk/EDC/Edinburgh.html) The University of Edinburgh is one of the foremost Information Technology Research and Teaching Universities in Europe, and its AI Department is one of the top in the world. The student would be located within the Department of AI with supervision taking place from the O-Plan team within AIAI, including Professor Austin Tate. ------------------------------------------------------------------- University Postgraduate Entry as a Student The objective of the PhD programme is to produce a research worker who has acquired good all-round knowledge of Artificial intelligence, in depth knowledge of a specialist area, and the research skills to carry out and present a piece of original research for submissions for a postgraduate degree. The MPhil and PhD degrees require a minimum of two and three years supervised study respectively, and are awarded on the basis of a thesis and an oral examination. A student who enters the higher degree programme will be registered as a supervised postgraduate student. In the first year, he or she will be expected to attend lectures relevant to his/her research topic. These lectures will be selected from the modules offered to MSc candidates. Students are also encouraged to attend the meetings of Special Interest Groups relevant to their area of interest. Most research groups in the Department have such meetings on a regular basis. Although course work is not examined formally, each student is required to give two presentations during the first year. In order to register as an MPhil/PhD candidate at the beginning of the second year of study, a student must submit a thesis proposal not later than 9 months after the date of entry. An applicant should have a first or upper second class honours degree (or equivalent of) in Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, Education, Electrical Engineering, Psychology, Mathematics, Philosophy or related subject. Preference will be given to applicants with a Masters Degree in Artificial Intelligence/Knowledge Based Systems, or equivalent. If you would like to be considered for admission as a postgraduate student, please obtain an application form, and return along with a copy of your transcripts/degree certificates, to: Admissions Secretary Department of Artificial Intelligence University of Edinburgh 5 Forrest Hill EDINBURGH EHl 2QL United Kingdom E-mail: judith@aifh.ed.ac.uk Fax: +44 (131) 650 6899 An applicant from a non-English speaking country must enclose a copy of an English Language certificate with their application (minimum scores required by the University are: TOEFL - 550; IELTS - 6.0) ------------------------------------------------------------------- Contact for Further Information: Professor Austin Tate Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute University of Edinburgh 80 South Bridge EDINBURGH EH1 1HN United Kingdom E-mail: a.tate@ed.ac.uk Tel: +44 (131) 650 2732 Fax: +44 (131) 650 6513 WWW: URL: http//www.aiai.ed.ac.uk/~oplan/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This message | Submissions ai+ai-predoc@cs.cmu.edu was sent via | Subscribe/Unsubscribe ai+query@cs.cmu.edu the AI-PREDOC | Available mailing lists include mailing list. | AI-JOBS, LISP-JOBS, PROLOG-JOBS, AI-POSTDOC, AI-PREDOC