APPLICATION PROCEDURE CHINA SCHOLARSHIP COUNCIL

荷兰 TU/e博士生国家公派招生项目TU/e（Eindhoven University of Technology）成立于 1956年,是荷兰的三所工

科大学之一，其所坐落的爱因霍芬市位于荷兰东南部发达的工业区,距离德国及比利时边界仅 50英里,很多著名的国际化大公司包括著名的飞利浦公司总部都建在该地区,是世界公认的高科技工业化基地，国际性的高科技机构和高科学研究学院保证了爱因霍芬大学优秀的科研水平。根据国家留学基金管理委员会（China Scholarship Council）与 TU/e签署的合作备忘录，双方共同设立了国家留学基金管理委员会与爱因霍芬科技大学联合奖学金项目。该项目将选派我国优秀人员赴爱因霍芬科技大学(TU/e)攻读博士学位。攻读博士学位的申请人在得到该校的入学通知书与免学费证明后，按照相关的 2011年“国家公派研究生项目”的时间和程序安排参加该项目的评选。通过国家留学基金委的审核并被录取后，国家留学基金将资助一次往返国际旅费和在外期间的奖学金生活费，资助标准及方式按照国家有关规定执行。具体申请办法、部分项目与流程如下（最新）。如计划开展其他项目的研究，欢迎同闫克平教授联系 [email protected]。

APPLICATION PROCEDURE FOR THE CHINA SCHOLARSHIP COUNCIL PROGRAM

Application procedure for CSC-sponsored PhD studentsEindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) has signed an agreement with the China Scholarship Council (CSC), which enables excellent Chinese students to finish their Phd degrees at TU/e with a 4-year scholarship from the CSC. Students from all Chinese universities are eligible for this program.

Interested PhD candidates need to apply to the International Office of TU/e via the following procedure:- All applicants need a relevant Masters Degree and an IELTS score of at least 6.5 IELTS overall.- Candidates should have an agreement on the content and planning of a PhD project with a professor from TU/e. - If the candidate does not have an agreement about the PhD project yet, the International Office will help the candidate to contact professors of TU/e in order to find a project.- Candidates should fill out the application form and mail it with additional following documents to the following address of the International Office of Eindhoven University of Technology.

Additional documents:o Letter of recommendation from supervisor at home universityo Letter of approval from supervisor at Eindhoven University of Technology (if available)o Curriculum Vitae of applicanto Certified copy of master degree (if available)o Copy of passport (if available)

mailto:[email protected]

o Copy of English test (IELTS or TOEFL)o Certified English translation of all non-Dutch or non-English documents.

Send the application form and the additional documents to:Eindhoven University of TechnologyEducation and Student Service CenterMarleen van HeusdenP.O. Box 5135600 MB Eindhoven The Netherlands

Deadline for receiving the application form and documents: Feb 1, 2011

- The International Office will check the eligibility of the candidate, and if necessary, support the candidate in finding a suitable project. If the candidate is eligible and has a suitable project, the International Office will send an admission letter to the candidate by February 20, 2011.

- Students accepted by TU/e need to apply to the CSC according to CSC’s requirements. Deadline: March 20, 2011.

- The CSC will select candidates and inform the candidates about the outcome of their application (May/June 2011).

- The candidates need to inform TU/e as soon as they receive a CSC-scholarship.

Application Form Chinese CSC candidates

ApplicantTitle:First name:Last name:Male/Female:Date of birth:Place of birth:Country of birth:Home address:Home phone number:E-mail address:Work address:Work phone number:

Supervisor at Eindhoven University of TechnologyName: Dr. P.C.W. SommenDepartment: Electrical EngineeringE-mail address: [email protected]

Home UniversityName of the University:Name of contact person:E-mail address of contact person:

Home University SupervisorTitle:First name:Last name:Address:

Phone Number:E-mail address:Research field:

1, Research plan for project at Eindhoven University of Technology (max. 800 words):

Title “Ad-hoc wireless microphone network for audio conferencing”

AimAlthough conventional dedicated microphone arrays yield a higher performance than single-microphone systems, their performance is still limited by the fact that up to now typically a static configuration has been considered where the microphones are wired connected with a central host computer. The aim of this project is to develop, as an alternative for the conventional fixed microphone array, novel array signal processing techniques that extract the desired source signal(s) with enhanced quality from an ad-hoc wireless microphone network. The new paradigm that is introduced in this project aims to unlock the large potential of an ad-hoc wireless network that consists of the microphones of available mobile devices, eliminating the need for a dedicated device, and leading to improved mobility, performance, flexibility and user comfort.

Background Comfortable high quality hands-free speech communication, regardless of room conditions, distance to the communication device, or the need to wear a headset, remains a highly desired goal due to its several applications. In the professional segment, examples include audio conferencing, which is becoming a preferred method of multi-party interaction due to the financial and environmental impact of long distance travel. In the home segment, the trend of families being increasingly spread over the world coupled with the emergence of inexpensive communication options such as Skype, has led to long conversations becoming common. However busy lifestyles demand the ability to multi-task during such conversations, which in-turn demand comfortable high quality hands-free communication. Current hands-free conferencing systems suffer from several problems. First, a dedicated device capable of such functions is needed. Secondly, the range of such devices, e.g., hands-free mobile phones or even professional solutions, is limited. Furthermore, such systems exhibit unsatisfactory performance in the presence of background noise or in reverberant rooms. Our proposal aims to address these limitations by exploiting the trend that microphones and loudspeakers are becoming more and more ubiquitous, as portable devices such as mobile phones, PDA’s, and laptops are all equipped with them. Using a network of such already available audio-enabled devices to create a hands-free communication system is the cornerstone of our proposal.

Description of the projectIn ad-hoc wireless microphone networks, the individual devices have to be used as they are and this makes them different from a conventional microphone array in multiple aspects: The characteristics of the individual microphones, such as gain and signal-to-noise ratio, are unknown and will differ, the portable devices do not share the same common clock and they can have a different sampling frequency, the microphone array geometry is unknown and may even vary in time, the inter-microphone spacing is generally large, leading to spatial aliasing, etc. In addition, the portable devices are generally resource-constrained, e.g. with respect to battery consumption or processing power. There may also exist a constraint on the number of bits/sec that can be exchanged between the devices as wireless transmission of data is power intensive. Furthermore, the channel over which data is exchanged may also be error-prone especially when multiple devices attempt to exchange data simultaneously. In the context of a real-time application such as audio conferencing or in hearing aids, low latency is critical and is a further challenge that needs to be solved. The aim of this project is to develop, as an alternative for the conventional fixed microphone array, novel array signal processing techniques that extract the desired source signal(s) with enhanced quality from an ad-hoc wireless microphone network accounting for the various limitations outlined above. First, a theoretical analysis of the relative importance of several of the limitations identified above will be performed to determine the most critical ones. These will be validated through practical experiments. Next, distributed and collaborative array processing algorithms that can cope with the set of identified errors will be developed. Special attention will be paid to methods that reduce power and complexity requirements, e.g., compressive sensing and non-uniform sampling. Aspects of rate-distortion theory will be applied to study the impact of limited bit-rate availability for source coding as well as the effect of noisy channels. Practical coding schemes that provide performance close to the derived theoretical bounds will be developed and validated through extensive simulations. Several use-cases will be tested, the primary use-case being the audio conferencing application. Other use-cases include improving the performance of hearing aid algorithms, hands-free mobile phones, and speech recognition systems.

Tasks and planningThe project can be subdivided into the following main subtasks:

1. Array signal processing with ad-hoc heterogeneous microphone network:In this subtask we will consider centralized processing, i.e. all signals are ideally transmitted to and processed by a central processor. The main task is to develop extraction algorithms that are able to cope with: a) different sensor characteristics (gain, SNR, clock, sample frequency) and b) unknown and time varying array geometry.2. Distributed and collaborative signal processing:In order to handle the data collected by the microphones of the wireless devices and to limit power consumption of the individual devices, distributed processing, where not all processing is performed on a central processor, is desirable. This implies that the limited processing capability of the devices is exploited for part of the signal processing itself and for dynamically selecting the relevant subset of sensors. Basically, all centralized algorithms developed in subtask 1 need to be reconsidered for distributed operation. In addition, due to the limited bandwidth channel, compression of the transmitted signals needs to be considered and its effect on the performance of the array signal processing techniques needs to be investigated. Moreover, in order to further reduce power consumption and computational complexity, compressive sampling strategies will be investigated.3. Use-case specific optimizationsThe first two tasks are generic and independent of a particular application, and provide the foundation for processing in an ad-hoc wireless microphone network. In this subtask, a practical set-up where heterogeneous sensors collaborate to provide new or improved functionality will be built4. Validation of practical use-casesFinally, the algorithms and solutions developed in the project will be validated through user tests to study the practical benefit in the different application domains.

Year 1: Literature study ans subtask 1.Year 2: Subtask 2. Year 3: Subtask 2 and 3.Year 4: Subtask 4 and completion of Ph.D. thesis.Results will be presented at international conferences, and published in scientific journals.

EmbeddingThe research proposed is a continuation of previous work of Dr. Sommen on non uniform sampling and source extraction (see e.g. [1 and 2]). This work is performed in close co-operation with Dr. Srinivasan from Philips research (see e.g. [3]). The project resides in the Signal Processing Systems group that is headed by Prof. Bergmans. [1] “On the relationship between uniform and recurrent nonuniform discrete-time sampling schemes”; P. Sommen and K. Janse.; IEEE Trans. On SP; Oct. 2008; Issue 10; pp 5147-5156[2] “Robust blind extraction of a signal with the best match to a prescribed autocorrelation”; B. Bloemendal, J. Van de Laar and P. Sommen; Proceedings EUSIPCO 2010; Aalborg, Denmark; August 23-27, 2010 [3] “Rate constrained beamforming in binaural hearing aids”; S. Srinivasan and A. Den Brinker; EURASIP Journal on advances in signal processing – special issue on digital signal processing for hearing instruments; vol. 2009; Januari 2009

Motivation (max. 200 words)


Title: “Models and Simulation for Personalized Cardio Pulmonary Resuscitation”

AimThe aim of the present is to build up understanding of the physiology and modeling of blood flow during Cardiac Pulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) of cardiac arrest victims. The blood flow during CPR is marginal and just sufficient to buy time for further advanced treatment. Furthermore there is a strong dependence on the person and there is a large desire to personalize care during resuscitation treatment. The final goal is to improve outcome from 6% to 25% or higher.

Background Cardiac arrest is one of the main causes of death. Presently the survival rate is low (6% in the US) and survivors have often reduced neurological functions. Hence the impact on society is huge. The low rate has been attributed to many factors. It is generally accepted that the quality of CPR, in particular chest compressions as well as its timely application are essential to success.Advanced life support (ALS) is performed by professionals along the lines of a strongly standardized protocol. Within this protocol compression depth, frequency and medication doses have been generalized and do not take into account specific properties of the victim. There is a consensus among the leading researchers that CPR and ALS treatment should be optimized for the specific victim as well as to the specific time during the resuscitation. This is called personalized CPR (PCPR). PCPR will be a key technology to improve outcome and quality of life of survivors. To successfully implement PCPR an increased understanding of the physiology of CPR induced blood flow and the strong person-to-person variation in CPR induced flow is required.

Description of the projectThe project build upon an already ongoing activity at Philips Research Laboratories and the TUe on modelling and simulation of CPR induced blood flow. Recently a simulation model which takes into account vessel collapse has resulted in new insights that will be the starting point for the research. The models are complex and highly non-linear. The present model needs to be extended to be more complete and take into account details of the human circulation that are relevant for CPR conditions (non-linear inertance, lung circulation, heart and brain circulation, gas exchange) . The model has also to be further extended towards modelling of inter thoracic pressures, ventilation and gas transport. The model results need to be validated by comparing model results with data obtained during animal studies and real human data obtained in a clinical environment using automated chest compressions. The PhD student will be part of a multidisciplinary environment with involvement from University, Industry and Clinical Sites.ExpertiseThis work can be done well by EE engineers or physicists with affinity for the medical field or by biomedical Engineers with a proven strong affinity for the EE and Physics sciences.

Tasks and planningYear 1: Literature study , physiology study and extension of the SPICE simulation model.(inertance, lung circulation, gas transport)Year 2: Modelling of the perfusion of the heart and brain during CPRYear 3: Modelling of the inter thoracic pressures generated by chest compressions and inclusion in simulation model development.Year 4: Final experiments. Completion of Ph.D. thesis.Results will be presented at international conferences, and published in scientific journals.

EmbeddingThe research that is proposed here is a continuation of a previous project with TUe. There is interaction of the proposed project with other projects in the faculty of Biomedical Engineering. The project resides in the group of Prof. Bergmans. This group has a strong background in Signal Processing for Communication and Storage and on Information Theory and on Biomedical Signal Processing and Clinical modelling. Interest from industry is present because of the involvement of Philips. Clinical input and data are coming from a clinical partner in Tilburg, Motivation (max. 200 words)


Title: “Limits and Codes for Biometric Authentication and Identification with Protected Templates”

Aim

The aim of the present project is to develop coding techniques for biometric systems that aim at minimizing privacy leakage while at the same time the reliability in authentication or in identification is close to optimal. Privacy leakage is defined as the amount of information (in bits) that a protected biometric template contains about the corresponding biometric data. The amount of privacy leakage that cannot be avoided was recently determined by Ignatenko and Willems [2009].

Background

Biometric data as e.g. fingerprints and iris-scans can be used to authenticate or identify persons. To compensate for the noise that is typically present in biometric data, for every person, a template determined by the biometric data observed during enrollment, has to be stored in a database. Since the database is assumed to be publicly accessible it must be hard to reconstruct the biometric data from this template, i.e. the privacy-leakage should be small. Moreover the reliability of a biometric system should be high, i.e. its false-reject and false-accept probabilities should be small. The signal-processing techniques that are used to transform and convert the biometric data to the digital domain, but also the coding methods that correct the errors occurring between enrolled biometric data and authentication or identification data, have a strong impact on the reliability and privacy-leakage of a system. The trade-off between reliability and privacy leakage was investigated and determined recently by Ignatenko and Willems [2009]. Their approach has an information-theoretical nature and their results (only) claim the existence of codes that achieve the optimal trade-off. Finding the codes whose existence is claimed is a process which is still in a preliminary stage. Initial studies demonstrate however that there is a lot to gain in this field of research.

Description of the project

The project should more or less be a copy of the investigations that were done to make Shannon’s promise come through. Shannon in 1948 found out what the transmission capacity is of an additive Gaussian noise channel given a constraint on the transmit power. He showed that codes that achieve capacity should exist. Roughly 45 years later with the discovery of Turbo Codes it became clear that these codes approach the Shannon limit quite closely, see Costello and Forney [2007].While the development of biometric codes is the main objective of the project, integration of these codes into existing biometric systems is also quite important. We aim more specifically at systems based on fingerprints and iris-scans.

[2007] D.J. Costello, Jr., & G.D. Forney, Jr., “Channel Coding: The Road to Channel Capacity,” Proc. IEEE, Vol. 95, No 6, pp. 1150 – 1176, June 2007. [2009] T. Ignatenko & F.M.J. Willems, “Biometric Systems: Privacy and Secrecy Aspects,” IEEE Trans. Information Forensics and Security, Vol. 4, No. 4, pp. 956 – 973, Dec. 2009.

Tasks and planning

Year 1: Literature study (Information Theory, Coding Theory).Year 2: Design and evaluation of biometric codes. Year 3: Integration of codes into existing systems. Performance-evaluations, code-redesigns.Year 4: Final experiments. Completion of Ph.D. thesis.Results will be presented at international conferences, and published in scientific journals.

Embedding

The research that is proposed here is a continuation of a previous project on biometric template protection carried out by Dr. Willems nad Dr. Ignatenko. Interaction of the proposed project with other projects guided by Dr. Willems on coding issues in communications is to be expected. The project resides in the group of Prof. Bergmans. This

group has a strong background in Signal Processing for Communication and Storage and on Information Theory. In the region Eindhoven there are several companies active in the field of biometrics and security. Motivation (max. 200 words)


Title: Mechanical identification of Circulating Tumor Cells

Aim

The aim of the present project is to investigate the mechanical properties of Circulating Tumor Cells (CTCs) using a micro-fluidic approach and to develop a method that allows for CTC identification on the basis of mechanical properties.

Background

Circulating Tumor Cells are cancer cells that are released into the blood from primary and metastatic tumors. Aside from a functional role in establishing metastatic tumors, CTCs have high clinical diagnostic potential in oncology. It has been well-established that counting the number of CTCs in blood of cancer patients has a highly predictive value for the effectiveness of cancer treatments. Perhaps even more important, the molecular and protein diagnostics of CTCs could help revolutionize cancer therapy, in that it enables new targeted molecular cancer therapies to be applied. With this development metastasized cancer can be anticipated to turn into a chronic disease where tumor growth can be kept under control for long periods of time, and people diagnosed with cancer can relatively normally continue with their lives.

The challenge is to build a system that makes it possible to perform both the isolation and the molecular characterization of CTCs, preferably at a single cell level. The biggest problem is that the CTCs, in clinically relevant concentrations, are very rare: they are found in numbers in the order of 1 to 10 CTCs per mL of whole blood in patients with metastatic disease. For comparison, one mL of blood contains a few million white blood cells and a few billion red blood cells. This poses the tremendous challenge of isolating a very small amount of CTCs from a huge amount of other cells in a relatively large total volume of blood (typically 7.5 mL or more). Another big challenge is to harvest the CTCs in such a form that they are suitable for subsequent (molecular) analysis necessary for future therapy guidance; most importantly, the captured cell population should be pure, and the cells should be viable.


The internal structure of most biological cells is governed by the cytoskeleton that is composed of arrays of protein filaments forming a network. The cytoskeletal structure determines the mechanical properties of a cell, such as its stiffness and its time-dependent response to mechanical stimuli. As a consequence, different types of cells having a different cytoskeleton, will have different mechanical properties. It is expected that CTCs have significantly different mechanical properties than other cells present in the blood, since their cytoskeletal structure is different.

Existing methods for the characterization of mechanical cell properties are not suitable for application as CTC identification, since they are too slow, too tedious, or damaging to the cells. We will develop a micro-fluidic device that enables the characterization of the stiffness of circulating cells in blood in a rapid and sensitive manner. The basic idea is to design the flow in the microfluidic device such that the flow itself stretches the cell in areas with strong elongational flows, during which the change in shape of the cells is recorded optically. Possible device geometries include cross-slot flows, and contracting micro-channels. We will follow a combined numerical-experimental approach, but with an emphasis on experiments. A basic mechanical model of the cell cytoskeleton will be used to simulate the cell deformation as it is fed through the microfluidic device. The results should give guidance to the design of the experimental microfluidic device. The experimental part consists of making the device, selecting the cells and fluids to be used, and performing measurements of the cell deformations as well as the fluid flow. At first, during development of the technology itself, we will use cell lines representing white blood cells, since these provide stable and well-known cell sources. In a later stage, well-characterized cancer cell lines

will be used to study the ability of the approach to distinguish the cancer cells from the white blood cells. Finally, patient samples containing actual CTCs will be used to study the clinical utility of the approach. In the experiments, the structure change of the different cytoskeletal components will be observed using special visualization techniques. The final result of the project will be a microfluidic demonstration device that proves the principle of the microfluidic stretching method being able to distinguish between CTCs and normal circulating blood cells, in particular leukocytes..

Tasks and planning

Year 1: Literature study; set up the first basic model; get experienced with cell culture and handling.Year 2: Further development of the model; design of the microfluidic device using the model; make the first devices and set up the experiment; first experiments.Year 3: Flow characterization experiments; experiments using cell lines; interpretation of the results.Year 4: Final experiments using patient samples; write thesis.

Results will be presented at international conferences, and published in scientific journals.

Embedding

The described research connects well with other projects running in the group of professor den Toonder at the TU/e. Also, it is complementary to a running collaboration program between TU/e, Zhejiang University, and Philips: the BrainBridge program, in which one of the projects is “Microfluidics for high throughput single cell diagnostics”. The collaboration with these projects ensures a good embedding, and, in particular, a good access to cells and the availability of the required infrastructure.



TITLE: Algorithms

Description of thesis topics

The design and analysis of algorithms and data structures forms one of the core areas within computer science. The Algorithms Group performs fundamental research in this area, focusing on algorithmic problems for spatial data. Such problems arise in geographic information systems (GIS) and automated cartography, robotics, computer graphics, CAD/CAM, and many other application areas. Our research can be grouped into four closely related and partially overlapping areas:

Computational geometry. This field combines clever algorithmic techniques with beautiful geometric concepts to obtain efficient solutions to algorithmic problems involving spatial data. Computational geometry can be seen as the fundamental study of algorithmic problems arising in the application areas mentioned above.

I/O-efficient algorithms. Modern computer systems have an increasingly complex memory architecture, organized hierarchically registers, several cache levels, main memory, and disk (or other external memory devices). An effective use of this memory hierarchy is often essential to obtain the best performance. Our research in this area focuses on algorithms with provable guarantees on their I/O- and caching behavior.

Graph drawing. Networks play an important role in real life—think for example of road networks, computer networks, or social networks—and their mathematical counterpart, graphs, forms a central concept in computer science. To get more insight into a graph structure, it often helps to visualize it. The subarea within algorithms research studying the visualization of graphs is called graph drawing, and it is one of the focus areas of our group.

Algorithms for GIS and automated cartography. Spatial data play a central role in geographic information systems (GIS) and automated cartography, and there are many challenging algorithmic problems in these areas, often dealing with massive amounts of data. We apply our expertise in computational geometry and I/O-efficient algorithms to solve these problems in a rigorous way.

We offer thesis projects in all four areas. The exact topic of the thesis project is defined depending on the interest and skills of the students. Projects can range from purely theoretical projects to projects involving significant implementation and experimentation. For more information on the group and its projects, see

http://www.win.tue.nl/algo/

Group leader: prof.dr. M. de Berg

Mark de Berg received an M.Sc. in computer science from Utrecht University (the Netherlands) in 1988. He received a Ph.D. from the same university in 1992, after which he became a permanent faculty member. In 2002 he moved to the TU Eindhoven, where he became a full professor and head of the TU/e Algorithms Group. His research area is algorithms and data structures and, in particular, computational geometry. In 2003 he obtained a prestigious VICI grant for his research from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). He is (co-) author of two books on computational geometry, one of which has become the standard textbook in the area, and he published over 160 papers in peer-reviewed journals and

conferences. He was on the program committee of numerous international conferences on computational geometry, on algorithms, and on computer graphics, and he is on the editorial board of three international journals.


6 Research plan for project at Eindhoven University of Technology (max. 800 words):

TITLE: Visualization


The mission of the Visualization group is the development of methods, techniques and tools that enable people to obtain insight in data via interactive computer graphics. Data Visualization exploits the unique capabilities of the human visual system to detect patterns and trends in imagery. The central research question is how data should be presented such that this process is most efficient and effective. Our approach in this area is characterized by the application of know-how from 3D computer graphics and geometric modelling and by an experimental approach involving fast prototyping, close cooperation with end users, and validation in practice. Scalability of methods is a key issue. Within the large field of Visualization we currently specialize in the following areas:

Information visualization. We study how large amounts of abstract data, such as trees and networks, can be visualized. Typical use cases are the visualization of the contents of a computer hard disk and the visualization of the structure of a large software system.

3D interaction and virtual reality. Visualization requires often interaction with 3D data and objects for interrogation and navigation. In cooperation with CWI we study how affordable desktop Virtual Reality systems (hard- and software) can be designed to simplify these tasks.

Scientific visualization. Scientific visualization concerns data from simulations and measurements, defined over geometric spaces. Within this area we study the visualization of fluid flow and architectures for flexible visualization.

Thesis projects are possible in each of these areas. The exact topic of the thesis project is defined depending on the interest and skills of the students. For more information on the group and its projects, see

http://w3.win.tue.nl/nl/onderzoek/onderzoek_informatica/visualization/

Group leader: prof.dr.ir. J.J. van Wijk

Jarke J. van Wijk received a MSc degree in industrial design in 1982 and a PhD degree in computer science in 1986, both from Delft University of Technology, both with honours. He worked at a software company and at the Netherlands Energy Research Foundation ECN before he joined the TU Eindhoven in 1998, where he became a full professor of visualization in 2001. He is cofounder of MagnaView BV, a company that aims at providing visual tools for large datasets, and is since 2005 vice-president scientific affairs. His main research interests are information visualization, visual analytics, flow visualization, and mathematical visualization. He has (co-)authored more than 100 papers, including many papers in prestigious venues such as ACM SIGGRAPH and IEEE Visualization. He has been

paper co-chair for many international conferences in the area of visualization (including IEEE Visualization and IEEE InfoVis, and IEEE PacificVis 2010). In 2007 he received the IEEE Visualization Technical Achievement Award for his work on flow visualization, and he received the Henry Johns Award 2009.



Title： Databases and Hypermedia


The Databases and Hypermedia group concentratse on three aspects of data access and management: (a) the management of semi-structured and semantically linked data, (b) data mining technology for aiding information discovery, (c) user modeling, personalization and adaptive information delivery.

The work on the management of semi-structured (and linked) data concentrates on representing and retrieving information, using semantically meaningful metadata. It ranges from the study of XML, RDF and XMLand RDF query languages (XPath, XQuery, OWL) to concrete strorage, indexing and retrieval technology to effectively and efficiently handle setmi-structured data. This work has practical applications in Web-Information Systems, where we concentrate on the aspects of navigation and adaptation. We are currently in the process of hiring a new assistant professor to strengthen this research direction.

The work on data mining technology for aiding information discovery combines fundamental research into data structures and algorithms for data mining (to improve the performance of data mining processes) with application-oriented research into specific data mining problems like detecting concept drift and classifying without discriminating. The former has concrete applications in many areas, including detecting trends and fluctuations in industrial processes but also detecting a shift in customer interest in on-line shops and predicting sales in order to

optimize (wholesale) store inventory. The latter has applications in e-business where business decisions based on patterns discovered through data mining must obey certain anti-discrimination laws. For the data mining work we also collaborate with the AIS research group in which the topic of process mining is studied (which is essentially data mining on process data).

The work on personalization and adaptation in information access and delivery concentrates on designing and implementing generic (models and technology for) adaptive information systems. This work has applications in e-culture, e-entertainment, e-learning and e-business. Personalization is the only way in which humans can continue to use the ever increasing amount of information that is available on-line. Personalization and adaptation not only help the human information consumer but also the providers who can to more targeted information delivery.

Projects in the group can be internal, research-oriented projects, and indutsry-oriented projects, and are defined in depending on the student’s interest. For more information on the group and its projects, see

http://www.win.tue.nl/dh/doku.php

Supervisor: prof.dr. P.M.E. de Bra

Paul De Bra studied mathematics and computer science at the University of Antwerp, where he graduated with "greatest distinction". In December 1989 he joined the Computer Science department of the Eindhoven University of Technology, where he heads the Database and Hypermedia Research Group. He performs research on different aspects of hypermedia systems and databases. Currently he is most active in the area of adaptive hypermedia and adaptive Web-based systems. He has been program chair of many important international conferences on hypermedia. He has been steering committee member for EdMedia, and is or has been associate editor and guest editor of several international journals. He is currently vice-president of UM Inc,

the non-profit organization that promotes research on and development of User Modeling.


8， Research plan for project at Eindhoven University of Technology (max. 800 words):

Title： Architecture of Information Systems


The Architecture of Information Systems (AIS) research group investigates methods, techniques and tools for the design and analysis of process-aware information systems, i.e., systems that support business processes (workflows) in organizations. We are not only interested in these information systems and their architecture, but also try to model and analyze the business processes and organizations they support.

The research concentrates on formalisms for modeling and methods to discover and analyze models. On the one hand formal methods are being used, e.g., the group has a long tradition in Petri-net modeling and analysis. On the other hand, we are interested in modeling languages widely used in industry (EPCs, UML, BPMN, BPEL, etc.). In contrast to many other research groups we do not accept a model as an objective starting point, i.e., we also try to discover process models through process mining and check the conformance of models based on reality.

The AIS group tries to make research results accessible by providing (open-source) software. Notable examples are ProM (process mining and process analysis) and YAWL (workflow management). These implementation efforts illustrate that the problems of tomorrow’s practice are the driving force behind the development of new theory, methods, and tools by AIS.

The group offers master thesis projects on a variety of topics in this area. Examples topics are (i) modeling of (process-aware) information systems, (ii) development, prototyping, and evaluation of (process-aware) information systems, (iii) Process mining, (iv) Model transformation, (v) verification of models, and (vi) simulation of models. Many master projects are linked to some external organization. Examples are IBM, Pallas Athena, SAP, ING, Deloitte, AMC Hospital, Justice Department, ASML, Philips Medical Systems, Océ, etc. For more information on the group and its projects, see

http://w3.win.tue.nl/nl/onderzoek/onderzoek_informatica/ais/

Supervisor: prof.dr.ir. W.M.P. van der Aalst

Wil van der Aalst is a full professor of Information Systems at the TU Eindhoven having a position in both the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science and the Department of Technology Management. Currently he is also an adjunct professor at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) working within the BPM group there. His research interests include workflow management, process mining, Petri nets, business process management, process modeling, and process analysis. Wil van der Aalst has published more than 115 journal papers, 15 books (as author or editor), and over 230 refereed conference/workshop publications, and 40 book chapters. Many of his papers are highly cited, making him the Dutch computer scientist with the

highest h-index (65). He has been a co-chair of many conferences and he serves on the editorial board of several journals.



Title： Security


Research in the Securty group spans two areas vital to the security of decentralized and embedded systems, and has its center of gravity in the intersection of these areas. The two areas are security policy specification & enforcement and security of embedded systems.

Policy Specification and Enforcement. While the Internet allows for a free exchange of data, the security boundaries needed to guarantee privacy and confidentiality have become the main obstacle to flexible cooperation within and between (virtual) organizations. The classical preventive access control mechanisms cannot cope with heterogeneous distributed systems and they have to be at least partially replaced by more elaborate trust management and compliance control systems. This is where SEC expertise lies: in the specification and implementation of policies for distributed systems.

Security of Embedded Systems. Securing networked embedded systems is particularly challenging because of their lack of computational and physical resources. In this area, SEC focuses presently on the security of mobile (e.g. smart-card

based) systems; for instance in the PinpasJC project we are studying side channel attacks on smart cards. One of the challenges that embedded devices face is secure key storage. This issue is addressed by SEC's research on Physical Unclonable Functions, a novel approach based on the extraction of randomness from the physical components of the device itself. Also in this area and closely linked to coding and crypto we have the project PinpasJC (on the analysis of smart card algorithms to identify possible side-channel attacks).

These areas overlap to a great extent and their intersection forms the core of SEC's research: compliance control for distributed and embedded systems. SEC's approach is to start from a concrete security problem and solve it by addressing the fundamental issues behind it. SEC's strength lies precisely in the ability to understand deeply both the user's concern as well as the theory behind it. There are many options for master thesis projects, both internal projects and projects in industry. For more information on the group and its projects, see

http://www.win.tue.nl/sec/

Supervisor: prof.dr. S. Etalle

Sandro Etalle joined TU/e in October 2007, where he leads the group of Security of Embedded Systems. From 2001-2007, he worked at the University of Twente, where he still has a part-time appointment as professor of trust and risk management. His research interests include trust management, access control, policy compliance, intrusion detection and ICT risk management. Etalle has served on many program committee, including being chair for LOPSTR in 2004, ICLP in 2006 and IFIPTM in 2006. He was guest editor of international journals and is one of the founders of the IFIP working group on Trust Management and is a member of the Scientific Committee of

the International School on Foundations of Security Analysis and Design. Etalle leads and participates to several national and international projects.



Title： Software Engineering and Technology


The overall objective of the group Software Engineering and Technology is to develop methods and tools for time- and cost-efficient evolution of high-quality software systems: from inception, through development and maintenance, to phase-out. SET recognizes the importance of both legacy systems and state-of-the-art development methodologies such as model-drive software development driven by formal models, domain-specific modeling and generic tooling. Therefore SET will not limit its investigations to recent software development phenomena, but will also focus on a variety of other topics dealing with software migration, re-engineering and reuse. SET believes that it is of the utmost importance to integrate the daily software development practice with with cutting-edge research and high-profile education. SET welcomes collaboration with industrial and academic partners that will foster a better understanding of the nature of software and software-related processes. The research of Software Engineering & Technology group is on software engineering in general, but with a strong focus on theory, methods and tools for maintaining consistency between models and code. SET has the following research themes:

Theory, methods and tools for model-driven software engineering. The ultimate goal of model-driven software engineering is increasing the quality of the resulting products and the reduction of development costs. The latter can be achieved by re-use of developed models, reduction of their maintenance, and application of software generation tools. Topics addressed in this theme are: generation of code from models, reconstruction of models from code, and analysis and transformation of models and code.

Verified software engineering. Topics addressed in this theme are: integration of specification language and programming language, consistent incremental development of specifications and code, correctness by design, and static and dynamic assertion checking.

Master thesis projects are possible in both areas, and can be done internally but also in an industrial context. For more information on the group and its projects, see

http://w3.win.tue.nl/nl/onderzoek/onderzoek_informatica/set/

Supervisor: prof.dr.ir. M.G.J. van den Brand

Mark van den Brand studied computer science from 1982 up to 1987 at the Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen and he received a PhD from the same university in 1992. Since then he has been working at the University of Amsterdam, the CWI and the Hogeschool of Amsterdam, before becoming full professor and leader of the Software Engineering and Technology group at the TU Eindhoven. His research interest lies in the field of generic language technology, in area in which he has published many papers and where he has served on numerous program committees. He was keynote speaker at the Software Language Engineering (SLE2008)

conference and he was three times guest editor of special issues of Science of Computer Programming devoted to academic software development.



Title： Design and Analysis of Systems


The focus of the group Design and Analysis of Systems is on modelling and verifying behavior of systems and programs. Behavior must be understood as all possible actions that a system can consecutively perform during its lifetime. Computer-based systems are so complex, that it is impossible to program them without understanding how the different software components communicate, and what the responsibilities of these parts are. By modeling the behavior, these responsibilities are made explicit. Due to the complexity of the matter at hand, it is also non-trivial to get these behavioral models correct. For this purpose we use analysis techniques. Primarily, these are used to find flaws in the model, and ultimately these are employed to show that the modeled behavior satisfies all the requirements. For instance, a data communication protocol must not lose messages, and a firewall should under no circumstance let an intruder pass.

With current modeling techniques it is no problem to model the communication patterns of even the most complex systems. Using modal formulas most requirements can be formulated in a formal, precise way. Using one of the many existing process equivalences, it is very well possible to state the behavioral equivalence between implementations

and specifications. So, in general, it is not really problematic (but sometimes hard) to formulate the properties that a system ought to have. The current technological bottleneck is our capability to prove that a requirement holds for a given model (the model checking problem) or that two processes are actually equivalent (the equivalence checking problem). The major research activity of this group is to increase the strength of the analysis tools. The core problem of the analysis of behavior is the state space explosion problem. There are so many states in which a system can end up, that it is generally impossible to explore these all individually. For this purpose, we must use so-called symbolic techniques to enable the verification. These techniques come from the realm of automatic reasoning, term rewriting and computer assisted theorem checking. Also, state space reduction techniques (abstract interpretation, confluence checking) are relevant to reduce the problem size.

The group Design and Analysis of Systems offers many interesting master thesis projects in this area. For more information on the group and its projects, see

http://w3.win.tue.nl/nl/onderzoek/onderzoek_informatica/ontwerp_en_analyse_van_systemen_oas/

Supervisor: prof.dr.ir. J.F. Groote

Jan Friso Groote studied at University of Twente (1983-1988) obtaining an engineering degree in computer science. In 1991 he obtained a Ph.D. degree at the University of Amsterdam. After having a tenure teaching position at Utrecht University in Philosophy, and being a group leader at CWI, he became a full professor at TU/e in software specification and analysis. His research has mainly been directed towards the development of mathematically sound and tractable behavioural specification and analysis techniques suitable to effectively deal with real systems (μCRL, mCRL2 and modal mu-calculus with data), an area in which he is one of the leading researchers world-wide. He has over 200 publications and he has been a member of numerous

program committees. He is a founding father of the laboratory of quality software at TU Eindhoven University (LaQuSo).



Title： System Architecture and Networking


Networking and distribution is at the heart of modern ICT systems. Embedded systems evolved towards networking more recently. While embedded computer systems originally just replaced mechanics, in the course of time we see programmable and communicating electronics in all kinds of equipment that surround us. The convergence of networking, user interfaces and embedded computing is usually called ambient intelligence. The System Architecture and Networking group studies ambient intelligence, i.e., networked embedded systems, from a few overlapping and closely connected perspectives.

Cooperative distributed systems. Distributed systems are increasingly developed as the composition of independent services. These services encapsulate functionality, resources and content, and they are composed in ways not known during their construction. This development results in a separation between functionality on the one hand and

coordination, including management and control, on the other hand. We study distributed applications based on this concept from the perspectives of system architecture, service quality, service management and system design.

Predictable platforms. Predictable embedded systems require predictability of both platform and interconnect. This amounts to scheduling and resource management, as well as control of the installed software. For real-time scheduling we study applications of fixed priority scheduling with deferred preemption (FPDS), which is underlying many real-time connection technologies such as CAN and FlexRay; we combine FPDS with budget-based scheduling. In order to predict the behavior of a platform plus installed software we investigated how to specify the resource use of software components and how to predict resource properties of compositions. We studied both analytical and scenario-based approaches. As a sidestep of this work we have studied the quality of software architecture in an empirical way.

Embedded computations. With embedded systems growing more powerful and connected, the complexity of embedded computations has grown tremendously. Strict budgets of computation, memory and energy apply, and the challenge is to map these computations as efficiently as possible to a platform.

We offer master projects in all three area, often also in collaboration with industry. For more information on the group and its projects, see

http://www.win.tue.nl/san/

Supervisor: prof.dr. J.J. Lukkien

Johan Lukkien received his MSc in Mathematics and PhD from the Rijksuniversiteit Groningen. After a two-year leave at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena he joined the TU Eindhoven, where is is currently a full professor leading the System Architecture and Networking group, with a research focus on resource-constrained networked embedded systems. Since 2008 he is also scientific director of the post-master Professional Doctorate in Engineering (PDEng) degree program in Software Technology. He is author of around 100 peer reviewed scientific publications, many of which were published in highly respected journals. Since 2005, he is the chair of the Networking Track of the IEEE International Conference on Consumer Electronics. He has developed

strong collaborations with industry and European research parties and participated in a large number of national and international projects.



PhD project van Prof Anton Darhuber


Engineering the structure and morphology of organic (semi-)conductor layers Department of Applied Physics, Eindhoven University of Technology

The project involves the design, setup and analysis of dip- and die-coating flows on chemically patterned surfaces as well as the development and evaluation of post-processing steps for layer thickness homogenization. Hydrodynamic deposition techniques used for small-area OLED manufacture such as spin-coating or inkjet printing become impractical or have insufficient throughput for large-area device fabrication, which is envisioned to be performed in a roll-to-roll fashion using flexible substrates. The Holst Centre is interested in high-speed solution processing, where active OLED materials are dissolved in suitable solvents.

Due to the intrinsically low solubility limit in the few weight percent range, 90% or more of the liquid must be removed by evaporation subsequent to deposition. The electronic material properties require that the final film thickness, which is on order of 100 nm, be homogeneous after solvent evaporation over the device area to within 1%. Evaporation typically drives lateral fluid flow, which redistributes the solute and leads to an inhomogeneous layer thickness. A well-known example of such a process is the so-called "coffee-stain effect". Several methods for elimination of the coffee-stain effect, i.e. for mitigation of evaporation-driven material redistribution, will be evaluated. The project will be done in collaboration with the Holst Centre Eindhoven (www.holstcentre.com).

This project is suitable for students who are fluent in English and who obtained an MSc degree in physics, applied mathematics, chemical and mechanical engineering or related fields.

For further information please contact Prof. Anton A. Darhuber (Department of Applied Physics, Eindhoven University of Technology, e-mail: [email protected]).



PhD-Projecten van Niek Lopes Cardozo


Vanuit Fusion twee concrete projecten waarvoor we graag een Chinese beurs-AiO willen inzetten.

a.Simulation of the scrape-off layer of ITER in a magnetized plasma generated by a cascaded arc in MAGNUM-PSI

- Measurements of plasma flows and electric fields in Magnum-PSI plasma- Blobby transport at ITER-relevant high densities, where Magnum-PSI is the unique experiment in the world to achieve the required conditions- Modelling of linear magnetized plasma transport with boundary conditions at the target with the existing numerical codes B2.5-Eirene or Eunomia, together with modeling experts

- Development of a simple 2-point model taking into account the sheath boundary conditions

b. Development of a ITER 'flight-simulator',

i.e. a numerical environment which captures the essential physics as well as electronics and mechanics, including the control systems, of a fusion reactor. To a point where the flight-simulator provides a realistic training facility for fusion students. Integrating existing numerical codes for partial problems (such as the magnetic equilibrium, transport, edge physics) and paying attention to graphical user interfaces.

Work to be done by a PhD-student skilled in computer science, working alongside a post-doc with strong experience in operation of fusion reactors such a JET.

prof. Niek Lopes Cardozo, prof. Tony Donn en UHD Roger Jaspers hebben uitstekende contacten met de Chinese fusielabs en zouden langs deze weg snel aan goede kandidaten kunnen komen. Als zij nog iwets extra kunnen doen, dan horen zij dat graag.



outbind://80/www.holstcentre.com


Phd-project van prof. Andrea Fiore en UD Andrei Silov (groep Paul Koenraad)

Title： Nuclear Nanomagnet in an Optically Addressed Quantum Dot


Our proposal addresses the long-standing problem of achieving nuclear polarization of the semiconductor crystal lattice at a level close to 100%. We aim at achieving what can be considered as a new state of condensed matter: a nuclear nanomagnet with a typical size of 10 nm for a semiconductor quantum dot providing an effective magnetic field of several Tesla. Such spontaneous magnetic order of the nuclear subsystem in quantum dots will allow the best use of the electron spin itself for the purpose of quantum information processing: the coherence of the electronic system is stretched to its absolute intrinsic limit. The key element of our proposal is to achieve the nuclear polarization by maintaining the electron spins nonpolarized vai g-factor engineering in semiconductor quantum dots whithin an essentially non-polarized optical excitation scheme. This project may also provide a pathway to developing long-term memory for quantum bit states.



PhD-project bij Gerrit Kroesen.

Title： The role of photo-ionization and background in ionization fronts propagating in a direction opposite to the electrical field.


When electrical breakdown occurs between a positive sharp object (pin, wire) and a negative flat object, the discharge will start at the sharp object because of the enhancement of the electrical field by the surface curvature. It will then transmit towards the flat counter-electrode. However, the electron drift is directed in the opposite direction. Therefore, the classical propagation mechanism (acceleration of electrons in the electrical field in the direction of the discharge propagation until they have enough energy to ionize the background gas and create more electrons that all travel parallel to the ionization front) cannot work.

Instead, ionization will have to be generated by acceleration of electrons that are created by other mechanisms. Two candidates are "in the market": photo-ionization and background ionization. EUV photons generated in the propagating plasma can travel in the propagation direction, cross the ionization front, and ionize the background gas ahead. Also, spontaneously ionized atoms ahead of the ionization front (ionized by natural radio-activity and cosmic radiation) can be accelerated and contribute to the propagation.

In this project, these two mechanisms will be studied separately. To this end, a measurement system will have to be built that can determine the spectrum and intensity of the EUV photons. The spectrometer itself is already available. Furthermore, the background ionization will be determined by creating Townsend discharges in the gas and measuring the electrical conductance of the gas. To this end, electrical currents of pico-amperes have to be measured. The measurements will be combined with models of the propagating ionization front.



Title： Nanowire Thermoelectric Energy conversion

Responsible: Dr. R.W. van der Heijden, Dept. Applied Physics, TU/e

Collaboration: Prof. dr. Bakkers, dr. J.E.M. Haverkort, Dept. Applied Physics, TU/e


In this project, Silicon superlattice nanowires, grown by Chemical Vapour Deposition on metal catalyst particles, are investigated for thermoelectric power generation from (waste) heat or for cooling. The extreme dimensions of these nanowires provide relatively strong thermopower, fair electrical conductivity, along with extremely low thermal conductivity, which are the key requirements for efficient thermoelectric energy conversion. The absence of mechanical parts makes such devices attractive because of their high reliability, small size and no noise. The project will imply electrical and thermal characterization of single wires on nm length scales.


18-19， Research plan for project at Eindhoven University of Technology (max. 800 words):

1-2, PhD positions: “Drying of waterborne coatings”

Groups Transport in Permeable Media (TPM) and Mesoscopic Transport Physics (MTP) at the Technological University Eindhoven (TU/e)

The research project is positioned within the field of transport in porous media and coatings. In the group TPM the combined water and ion transport in permeable materials are studied by experimental techniques based on Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, like MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging). A significant part of the research efforts concentrates on imaging processes in coatings. Recently, a unique MRI facility has been built in the group TPM, which enables depth profiling with a resolution of 5 μm. The group MTP has expertise in the field of mesocopic simulation methodologies for complex fluids.

Project description

Coatings are meant to cover substrates for both esthetical and protective reasons. Due to environmental issues the market is shifting from solvent based coatings towards waterborne coatings. Waterborne coatings are dispersions of polymeric particles in water. The drying of waterborne coatings is only partly understood. Especially the distribution of water through the coating and its consequence on the mechanical properties are poorly understood. In this project two PhD students will investigate this topic experimentally and via simulations.

PhD 1 (TPM) – He/she will study drying coating films with high resolution MRI and DWS (Diffusive Wave Scattering) as a function of the environmental conditions and the chemical composition of the polymer in the coating. Water distributions in the coating will be measured with MRI and the mechanical properties will be traced with DWS.

PhD 2 (MTP) – He/she will develop a simulation model based on a hybrid model of MD (Molecular Dynamics) and LB (Lattice Boltzmann). This model will be used to simulate drying of deformable particle dispersions, which represent the water soluble coating system.

This project will be carried in cooperation with TNO, and industrial partners DSM Neoresins and Drywoord.

Requirements

We are looking for a highly motivated candidate who has a master in physics and/or physical chemistry. The candidate has good experimental skills and is motivated for working in interdisciplinary teams. Knowledge of transport phenomena, and/or polymeric systems is an advantage. Foreign candidates should master the English language.

More information and application

More information can be obtained from Prof. Dr. Ir. O.C.G. Adan (Tel: +31.6.51425805, email:

[email protected]) or Dr. Ir. H.P. Huinink (Tel.: +31.40.2475375, email: [email protected])



PhD position: “Transport through polymeric coatings on porous substrates”

Group Transport in Permeable Media (TPM) at the Technological University Eindhoven (TU/e)

The research project is positioned within the field of transport in porous media and coatings. In the group TPM the combined water and ion transport in permeable materials are studied by experimental techniques based on Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, like MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging). A significant part of the research efforts concentrates on imaging processes in coatings. Recently, a unique MRI facility has been built in the group TPM, which enables depth profiling with a resolution of 5 μm.

Project description

Coatings are meant to cover substrates for both esthetical and protective reasons. The barrier property of a coating are important for protecting substrates against water. Especially in the built environment coatings are applied on porous substrates like wood, concrete, bricks, etc. Porous substrates influence the coating structure at the moment of application. Nevertheless, most water uptake studies are done on free polymer films or on coatings applied on non-porous substrates. Therefore, in this project water transport through coatings on wood will be studied. With the MRI facilities within the group water distribution in both the polymer layer and the wood can be imaged.

Requirements

We are looking for a highly motivated candidate who has a master in physics and/or physical chemistry. The candidate has good experimental skills and is motivated for working in interdisciplinary teams. Knowledge of transport phenomena, and/or polymeric systems is an advantage. Foreign candidates should master the English language.



[email protected]) or Dr. Ir. H.P. Huinink (Tel.: +31.40.2475375, email: [email protected])



PhD position: “Chloride transport in cracked concrete”

Groups Transport in Permeable Media (TPM) at the Technological University Eindhoven (TU/e)

The research project is positioned within the field of transport in porous media and coatings. In the group TPM the combined water and ion transport in permeable materials are studied by experimental techniques based on Nuclear Magnetic Resonance, like MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging). A significant part of the research efforts concentrates on understanding the damage mechanisms in porous materials. For this research the group has various state of art NMR scanners for nod destructively measuring the moisture and ion transport.

Project description

The major degradation mechanism in concrete structures is corrosion of reinforcement due to chloride penetration. Corrosion reduces serviceability and safety due to cracking and spalling of concrete and loss of steel cross section. Recently, service life design has moved from prescriptive to model and performance based. The current approach aims at postponing initiation of corrosion until the end of the required service life with a predetermined reliability, based on simplified modelling of transport in uncracked concrete and testing of laboratory samples for chloride diffusion. Real structures under service load contain cracks and execution defects. Cracks are fast transport routes for chloride, but the effect is mitigated by poorly known mechanisms such as self-healing and crack blocking. Current models do not cover the effect of cracks, voids and compaction defects in concrete on chloride transport and corrosion initiation, rendering them less robust than acceptable. This projects aims at understanding of mechanisms that control chloride transport, and the influence of cracks on the transport. The study the transport of chloride and other relevant substances in concrete a non-destructive, high temporal and spatial resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) setup capable of quasi-simultaneously measuring Na, Cl and moisture will be developed within this project.

Requirements

We are looking for a highly motivated candidate who has a master in physics and/or physical chemistry/ civil engineering.The candidate has good experimental skills and is motivated for working in interdisciplinary teams. Knowledge of transport phenomena, and/or concrete technology is an advantage. Foreign candidates should master the English language.



[email protected]) or Dr. L. Pel (Tel.: +31.40.2473406, email: [email protected])



PhD position: NRSCC project – Advanced Catalytic Capillary Microreactors (supervisor Dr.ir. T.A. Nijhuis)

Microreactors have been a topic of great interest in the chemical industry in the recent years. They have excellent heat and mass transfer properties, which allow for a high productivity, as well as a high control over the reaction, which makes high selectivities possible. In this way microreactor technology helps us develop green and clean processes.

Most chemical reactions, however, require the use of a catalyst. A problem is that conventionally shaped catalysts cannot be incorporated easily in a microreactor and that their properties are not optimized for the excellent mass transfer characteristics of a microreactor. In this project, we will develop new and efficient manners to create catalytic coatings inside (capillary) microreactors. The main applications for these catalytic microreactors will be for fine chemistry and pharmaceuticals production.



PhD position: EU project ProAChIm "Combining efforts in enzyme and process engineering to improve access to multifunctional chiral intermediates" (supervisor Prof.dr. V. Hessel)

"As most of the top-selling drugs today contain stereogenic centres, their synthesis often relies on small chiral building blocks. The suggested project addresses the latter issue by focusing on the synthesis of a-amino-alcohols - a building block used for instance in the synthesis of various b-sympathomimetics. Enantiomerically enriched a-amino-alcohols can be provided in an ecological and economical way by using enzymes which are capable of connecting two molecules and forming two stereocenters simultaneously - so called threonine aldolases (TA). Thus one aim of this project is identification of new TAs which are subsequently optimised through directed evolution and site-directed mutagenesis guided by in silico enzyme design. The second main focus of the project - and actually to be done under main involvement of the SCR group at Eindhoven University - is on process engineering which is necessary in order to provide not only enzymes but a whole process allowing for the efficient synthesis of a-aminoalcohols. The latter, quite challenging, task includes shifting the equilibrium of the enzymatic reaction by a consecutive reaction which furthermore enables alteration of the primary product towards desired specifications. As the project aims for generating an efficient and thus industrially viable process, all reactions will be carried out in micro-structured reactors (to be designed and manufactured by the new PhD in the SCR group) and with appropriate flow-chemistry conditions which bring about the desired process intensification (e.g. much higher


selectivity, by orders-of-magnitude higher reaction rates, improved safety in otherwise inaccessible process regimes). Through their unique flow conditions, the improved heat and mass-transfer totally new processing regimes (Novel Process Windows) are accessible."



Few-body systems with strong interactions

Experiments with strongly interacting ultracold atoms have discovered an e_ect which was predicted 40 years ago in the context of nuclear physics. This is the E_mov e_ect, where three particles can be bound together in a scenario of in_nitely many bound states converging onto the dissociation threshold. Universal relations, as well as the tunability of the interaction, make that this e_ect can be studied conveniently in atoms physics. However, not all observations reveal universality, and some experiments are contradicting each other. For this research programme, the Ph.D student will investigate the transition from universal to non-universal three-body physics by manipulating two-body interactions, and study the discrepancies in the experimental observations. Part of the project is also to study how few-body systems such as E_mov trimers can be associated and stabilized by putting them in optical lattices, using radio-frequency techniques. Realization of stable few-body objects allows for a direct experimental observation of such systems. This project will be also of interest to other research fields, such as nuclear and cluster physics, as well as to many-body physics of ultra cold gases and condensed matter systems.

The reason that the E_mov e_ect was not discovered in nuclear systems lies in the fact that it is very di_cult to manipulate the strong nuclear forces. In atomic systems, however, the atom-atom interaction can be tuned via Feshbach resonances by varying the magnetic field. The two-body scattering length diverges on resonance to in_nity, and is typically described by the dispersive formula

with abg the background value of the scattering length, B the magnetic _eld, B0 the resonance position, and _B the width of the resonance. At the basis of a successful research project on ultracold strongly-interacting few-body systems, a thorough understanding of two-body interactions in all its complexities is required, since the few-body properties crucially depend on it. Moreover, detailed knowledge of the interaction potentials is needed to be able to perform high-precision calculations. Our group is highly experienced in ultracold two-body interactions, in particular in the strongly interacting regime. For this project we will make use of numerical calculations, which are based on a coupled-channels method, which allows for an exact treatment of the scattering properties and bound state spectrum of the spin-dependent interaction problem. However, we will also use very powerful analytical methods, for instance the Asymptotic Bound state Model that we developed, and which was very powerful to analyze measured Feshbach resonance spectra.

The two main objectives of this proposal can be summarized as follows:

Objective 1: Study universal to non-universal three-body physics by manipulating two-body interactions. Solve the current discrepancy in observations of universal versus non-universal three-body physics.

Objective 2: Investigate how few-body systems such as E_mov trimers can be associated and stabilized, by using optical lattices and radio-frequency techniques.

Advisor: dr.ir. Servaas Kokkelmans, Coherence and Quantum Technology group, Department of Physics, Eindhoven University of Technology



Nanowire Thermoelectric Energy conversion

Responsible: Dr. R.W. van der Heijden, Dept. Applied Physics, TU/e

Collaboration: Prof. dr. Bakkers, dr. J.E.M. Haverkort, Dept. Applied Physics, TU/e

In this project, Silicon superlattice nanowires, grown by Chemical Vapour Deposition on metal catalyst particles, are investigated for thermoelectric power generation from (waste) heat or for cooling. The extreme dimensions of these nanowires provide relatively strong thermopower, fair electrical conductivity, along with extremely low thermal conductivity, which are the key requirements for efficient thermoelectric energy conversion. The absence of mechanical parts makes such devices attractive because of their high reliability, small size and no noise. The project will imply electrical and thermal characterization of single wires on nm length scales.

Prof. dr. K.A.H. van Leeuwen, Director of Education, Applied Physics

Eindhoven University of Technology

Physics Dept., room Nlaag a1.20

P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands

Tel. 31-40-2474174 or ...4094， 31-6-53642507 (cellular)， 31-40-2474048 (secretary)

FAX 31-40-2474306， E-mail [email protected]



Jaap den Toonder教授项目基于“国家留学基金管理委员会（CSC）与埃因霍温理工大学（TU/e）联合奖学金项目”，该校

Jaap den Toonder教授（见链接）有意招收我校学生成为他课题组的博士生（4年），主要研究方向为利用机械特性识别循环肿瘤细胞，采用微流控芯片技术研究循环肿瘤细胞的机械特性进而达到识别的目的。欢迎拥有化学、生物、生物医学工程、物理、数学背景的同学前来申请。Jaap den

Toonder教授是荷兰埃因霍温理工大学兼职教授，荷兰飞利浦研发中心 Chief Technologist，国际著名杂志 Lab Chip（IF：6.34）编委会成员。联系地址: email: [email protected]




http://www.mate.tue.nl/mate/showemp.php/3220


Tuning of pulsed power driven electron impact processing Ingredients of research:

a. Focus on Electron impact processingb. Development of optimizations, including Pulsed power system; Reactor system; Discharge distribution;

Liquid system; Collection systemc. Study of underlying mechanisms, including Electrical matching, Chemical kinetic model, Streamer

distribution, Electron energy distribution, Wall interactions, Fluid dynamicsd. Verifications, including Typical processes such as NOx removal and VOC removal, Chemical

measurements by GCMS, UV and IR, Comparison with various modeling

Contacts: Dr.ir. Bert van Heesch, Corona Discharges and Pulsed Power Systems

Department of Electrical Engineering, P.O. Box 513, CR 1.11, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The NetherlandsT +31 40 247 4493/3993, F+31 40 245 07 35, email : [email protected]



Title： Embedded Array Chemical Transistor TechnologyAn important ingredient in our philosophy is the replacement of the usual thermal activation of chemical processes by smarter, dynamical activation methods. Traditionally, there are four variables used to control chemical processes: temperature, pressure, concentration and residence time. With this program we aim to add a fifth degree of freedom: controlling the catalytic surface condition by smart activation. The direct local and dynamic influencing of the conditions at the catalytic sites, introduces a new and precise way of controlling reaction paths and their rates. This opens reaction pathways with involvement of reactive species in concentrations and configurations different than in the conventional steady-state approach of catalytic processes. Conventional reaction complexes that need or create excess heat in order to run can be replaced by alternatives that operate highly energy efficient by precise activation of molecular states. The presently considered smart activation approaches is non-thermal activation (NTA) by an embedded electrode array that produces energetic electrons and E-fields at the catalytic surface. With NTA accelerated electrons from field emission or surface plasma, excite species locally and precisely and enable adsorption/reactions to take place on the catalyst. Since the new activation technique has the potential to greatly enhance chemisorption, the range of catalyst materials does not have to be restricted anymore to the traditional well adsorbing metals. Instead, the choice of catalytic material can be much widened and focused on e.g. optimum reaction and desorption properties. Earlier work on plasma-assisted catalysis encountered a few major difficulties:

Absence of precisely tuned activation Ineffective creation of radicals Weak contact between most of the plasma and the catalytic surface

The present approach entirely circumvents these problems and is therefore incomparable with this older work.

The research line is also distinct from so-called non-thermal plasma chemistry because it acts exclusively at the catalyst surface and it uses pre-defined energy and E-field. It is also far from microwave chemistry, which is steady state and proven to only add heat. The innovation of the proposed research is precise tuning of the (non-thermal) activation of processes. By applying precisely the necessary energy in the right location the reaction pathways are controlled accurately, fast and efficiently in comparison to conventional (steady state) chemistry. This means processes with the following properties can be created:

adsorption reaction desorption diffusion

Gas phase

Boundary layer

Catalyst

EaDE

Excited state

Gas-phase reaction

Reactant

Embedded electrode array

Surface plasma

Principle of an unconventional catalytic

reactor

Activation Control

diffusion


Energy efficient due to precise activation High yields at low bulk temperature/pressure Multiple catalysts/reaction complexes can be combined in one reactor Product distributions unattainable at steady state Size reduction

The reactor processes to be tested can be e.g. polymerization, pollutant removal, or fuel conversion

Contacts: Dr.ir. Bert van Heesch, Corona Discharges and Pulsed Power Systems

Department of Electrical Engineering, P.O. Box 513, CR 1.11, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The NetherlandsT +31 40 247 4493/3993, F+31 40 245 07 35, email : [email protected]



Title: “Modern applications of advanced radar sensor systems”


Already in its early days, radar system has been a source of inspiration for communication theory and has led to, for instance, the notion of matched filter. However, we nevertheless noticed a lack of models and algorithms for recent new application areas such as traffic monitoring, collision avoidance, green buildings and monitoring of vital signs and health care.

In this PhD project, we start with performance analysis of such systems, considering the propagation (including richer multipath, clutter and scattering than in traditional maritime or aviation settings), RF performance when mass market IC processes are used, algorithms, and application-specific performance indicators (e.g. mean time before an advanced traffic warning is issued). In a second phase we aim at developing/improving algorithms, and facilitating the roll-out, installation and deployment of networked radar sensors systems. In particular, we want to explore whether a fine grid of radar sensors for green cities can be planned in a 3D planning tool. At TU/e such a tool exists and is currently being used in the context of the Intelligent Lighting Institute (ILI), and needs to be enhanced for modeling sensor performance.

Qualifications Signal processing, preferably some experience / courses in wireless communication, propagation, RF electronics,



TitleRobots for training social and collaborative skills to children with autism

Aim

Developing behavioral scenarios for robots that aim to increase the efficiency and quality in training social and collaborative skills to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).The project will investigate technical, pedagogical, and behavioral issues that will ensure a sustainable process of creating specific training scenarios in which robots will be involved.


Background

The new generation of personal robots should be capable of autonomously operating in environments that are inhabited by humans and have to be involved in natural communication with people including expression of human-like body language. The robots with human-like appearance, featuring natural motions, and capable of mimicking human body language have the potential to be used as socially assistive and therapeutic tools. Especially, these robots can be used for social training of children with autism, since it has been shown that most of the autism spectrum disorder (ASD) patients can learn close to typical social behavior. In addition, robot priming has shown to have better training results by people with autism than priming by humans [1].

Schools and therapeutic institutions as well as private homes can deploy robots for training, care, and rehabilitation and there is no doubt that this will bring about a change with great social and economic impact. Schools and therapeutic institutions are small organizations that require highly specialized training expertise. Qualified trainers are expensive and scarce. In many cases extensive training, matching with the developmental stage of the patients, can generate important improvement of their condition. There are initial indications that robots are beneficial in training social and collaborative skills [2,3,4] and can therefore potentially replace health practitioners in many tasks. However, a study that investigates the long-term benefits of using robots for social development, as well as the required ways of interaction (the

interaction scenarios) between the robot and the child to generate the desired therapeutic results, has not been performed yet. One of the important conclusions of research to date is the need for individualizing such robot systems to the needs of each person, which brings additional challenge to the robotics research and to the sets of principles for building training scenarios.


The research questions we aim to answer are “Can we increase the efficiency and quality in training social skills of children with ASD by developing personalized training scenarios for therapeutic robots? What are the long term effects of using robots for social training of autistic children?

The project will investigate technical, pedagogical, and behavioral issues that will ensure a sustainable process of creating specific training scenarios in which robots will be involved. Simultaneously it will involve the creation of behavioral training related software for a universal robot platform. The training scenarios and programs have to be developed in close collaboration and from the perspective of both pedagogical/therapeutic and technical sciences. Easy adaptation of the scenarios to the individual case should be possible.

Social skills of humans are formed during early development and involve shared intentions or goals, shared task representations, shared attention. Autistic children differ in their development, especially in tasks that require shared representation, understanding others’ intentions and actions, such as imitation, turn taking, and collaborative (joint) action. The first focus of this project is on learning how human-like social tasks can be performed by a robot. We investigate this research question through experiments that involve a robot and groups of typically developing and autistic children.

We assume that a caregiver or a teacher are able to pre-program the robot behaviors in an end-user friendly way. In order to realize this we propose a programming by demonstration setup. The so programmed behaviors have to be used in interaction between the robot and a patient. Our research focus will be on a model that ensures easy adaptation of the overall robot skills to the individual patients and circumstances, implementation of these skills in the robot, and demonstration of the skills in interaction with human subjects.

The second part of the project consists of an extensive study that will investigate long-term effects of the repeated interactions with an artificial agent on behavioral markers of social cognition. The study will be done in collaboration of the Berkenschutse, a school for special education, and Expertise Centrum

Kempenhaege, with whom TU/e has a strategic collaboration agreement.

We will follow 20 autistic children who will have regular interaction with the robot Nao from Aldebaran robotics. This robot is made operational within Wikitherapist project (ongoing) in which an end-user platform was developed that uses graphical programming as an easy development and integration tool for robot behaviors as a part of the TiViPE [8] visual programming environment. Within the proposed project personalized scenarios will be developed for the patients in this group. Participants will undergo weekly 30-minutes interaction with the robot, resulting in a total of 25 to 30 hours of exposure per year for 2 years. The interaction between the robot and each of the children will be based on behavioral scenarios that are specially developed together with the teachers from the school at Berkenshutse and the researchers from the Expertise Centrum Kempenhaege.

Tasks and planning

Months 1-6: Literature study; Getting acquainted with the existing robot infrastructure and discussing the behavioural scenarios with the school of Berkenschutse and the Expertise centrum Kempenhaege.Months 6-18: Obtaining social behavioural models and the specific social capabilities of each of the patients, and developing the set of personalized scenarios. Implementing the behavioral interaction scenarios on the humanoid robot. Months 13-24: Fine-tuning and testing the scenarios at the school the Berkenschutse. First results will be presented at international conferences.Months 24-36: Analysis of the experimental data and continuation of user experiments. Exploring the possibilities for using the training method with different user groups, which include children with autism with different IQ level as well as control groups. Publishing in high impact journals.Months 36-48: Final analysis of the overall results; write thesis.

Embedding

The described research connects well with other projects running in the group of Dr. Barakova at the TU/e, such as the Wikitherapist project which explores the possibilities robots to be used by therapists for training of people with autism and stroke [6,8]. The current project will use the infrastructure of the Wikitherapist and go one step further – to see whether the created therapies will have the expected impact as behavioural enhancement tools on a long term, and to what extent individualization of the training is possible. There is also a relation with the AMHA project which aims to estimate the mental state of astronauts through games and analysis of body language and facial expressions. Local industries as TiViPE [8] and Philips applied technologies are actively involved in the research.

Motivation (max. 200 words)The prevalence of autism has increased in many developed countries [7].Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in USA informs that autism now affects 1 in every 110 children. Until recently, the occurrence was estimated at 1 in 150 children. The Eindhoven region in The Netherlands, where technical industry sector is highly developed, has higher rates of autism than the rest of that country. These facts suggest that there is a serious need for state-of-the-art training and support. Therapies and education of people with autism are expensive and require highly specialized personnel. Additional difficulty comes from the fact that there is a huge range of expressions of the social disabilities of people with autism, which means that individual training is needed. In order to provide personalized training, we propose to use social robots, equipped with personalized social scenarios. Many schools, clinics, and therapeutic institutions as well as private homes will be able to deploy such robots for training, care, and rehabilitation and this will have a great impact. This impact will be first, on the life of autistic people, enhancing their social inclusion and allowing the society to benefit from their special, sometimes superior skills (e.g. in math’s and IT) [5]. Second, using robots in training autistic people will alleviate the level of demand for highly specialized personnel in schools and clinics. On a larger scale, using robots for training social skills can have major impact on society and on the education process in general.

References:

[1] A.C. Pierno, M. Mari, D. Lusher, and U. Castiello, “Robotic movement elicits visuomotor priming in children with autism.,” Neuropsychologia, vol. 46, 2008, pp. 448-54.

[2] E.I. Barakova, J. Gillesen, and L. Feijs, “Social training of autistic children with interactive intelligent agents,” Journal of Integrative Neuroscience, vol. 8, 2009, pp. 23-34.

[3] B. Robins, K. Dautenhahn, and P. Dickerson, “From Isolation to Communication: A Case Study Evaluation of Robot Assisted Play for Children with Autism with a Minimally Expressive Humanoid Robot,” Proc. ACHI 09, Cancun, Mexico, 2009.

[4] J.C.J. Brok and E.I. Barakova, “Engaging Autistic Children in Imitation and Turn-Taking Games with Multiagent System of Interactive Lighting Blocks,” LNCS 6243, pp. 115-126, 2010.

[5] American Psychiatric Association, Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (4th ed., ), Washington D.C. 2000.

[6] Emilia I. Barakova and Winai Chonnaparamutt, Timing sensory integration for robot simulation of autistic behavior. IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine , 16(3):51-58, 2009.

[7] http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5810a1.htm[8] T. Lourens and E. Barakova, “Robot Command Language used in Graphical Programming Environment to Boost Construction of Complex

Behaviors,” IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine (submitted), 2011.

31 Title : Optimization and diakoptics for modeling integrated antenna array elements

Supervisors : prof.dr. A.G. Tijhuis and dr.ir. M.C. van Beurden

Department: Electrical Engineering (Electromagnetics)E-mail address: [email protected]

AimDeveloping a synthesis tool for the design of integrated antenna elements based on diakoptic electromagnetic field modeling. The elements will be part of an infinite or large finite antenna array for radar applications. The feed, the radiating part and an integrated filter will be optimized. This will be achieved by using a recently developed diakoptic approach based on decomposing the structure into cells of which the electromagnetic behavior can be characterized individually.

BackgroundIn the Netherlands, large antenna arrays are designed and realized for a wide range of applications. Thales Nederland is a leading industry for developing and manufacturing naval radar systems. Antenna arrays for space applications are realized at ESA-ESTEC, while ASTRON is leading European research into the next generation of antennas for astronomy. TNO Defense, Security and Safety is a research institute that carries out research into new antenna concepts for a wide range of applications. This situation creates a unique demand for research and education at a university level.

At the Electromagnetics group of the Eindhoven University of Technology, we focus on the analysis and optimization of the behavior of the electromagnetic fields. In several Ph.D. thesis projects, both the optimization of a single antenna element and the analysis of large, finite antenna arrays have been or are being investigated. The challenge in the present project is to combine both approaches, and optimize a large, finite antenna array. To this end, we will be able to use recent results and software developed in the projects mentioned above. A new requirement in the design is the need for built-in filtering capabilities to handle the increasing interference from the electromagnetic environment in which the antenna system must operate.



http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5810a1.htm

http://www.idemployee.id.tue.nl/e.i.barakova/Papers/PRINTED_IEEE_RAS.pdf

http://www.idemployee.id.tue.nl/e.i.barakova/Papers/PRINTED_IEEE_RAS.pdf

Starting point for the project will be a nearly completed Ph.D. research project that was carried out in the context of a national research program funded by the Ministery of Economic Affairs. Partners were Thales, ASTRON and the universities of Twente and Eindhoven. At TU/e, research was carried out into the optimization of an infinite antenna array, consisting of waveguide radiators. With the aid of the Microwave Equivalent Network (MEN) approach, originally proposed at ESA-ESTEC and further refined in a previous Ph.D. thesis project with TNO, the waveguide element can be separated into cells of which the behavior is characterized by different modeling strategies. Waveguide sections can be handled by modal expansions, apertures by boundary integral equations, the 3D inhomogeneous feed structure by finite elements, while the field in the external half space is described in terms of a Floquet expansion. By breaking up the antenna element in this manner, individual sections can be tuned by applying modern nonlinear optimization strategies. Both stochastic – genetic and particle-swarm – and deterministic line-search algorithms were tested. The main challenge appears to be identifying the proper geometric parameters and observables, and formulating the cost or objective function.

Continuing from the state of the art described above, the following steps need to be taken in this Ph.D. project:

Expanding the library of “building blocks” by at least a filtering element. Here, input from our partners will be used to make the selection.

Adding a sensitivity analysis to the modeling for the existing building blocks.

Choosing the optimization strategy. Here, we will be able to use expertise from the Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science. Our own experience indicates that the most efficient approach is obtained by first applying a stochastic algorithm to an approximate or reduced model, and then fine-tuning the design by combining line-search algorithms with full-wave modeling.

Accounting for the circumstance that the array is finite. The Floquet description was developed for an infinite array, and will have to be replaced by a finite-array approach. Possible candidates are the computed-basis-function and eigenfunction approaches developed in two previous Ph.D. projects with ASTRON and Thales/TNO, and our own LEGO approach, which was successfully demonstrated for modeling and optimizing EBG devices.

Re-optimizing the antenna elements according to their position in the finite array.

Tasks and planningMonths 1-6: Literature study. Become acquainted with the available results. Investigate possibilities for waveguide filters. Months 7-18: Develop filter building block, include sensitivities.Months 19-24: Fix optimization strategy.Months 25-30: Account for finite arrays.Months 25-36: Optimize finite array.Months 37-48: Final analysis of the overall results, write thesis, transfer knowledge.

EmbeddingThe candidate will be based in the Electromagnetics group of the faculty of Electrical Engineering, and will use the expertise from both the TU/e and industrial partners. At present, the universities of Eindhoven, Delft and Twente are in the process of defining a national antenna roadmap .The next set of Ph.D. projects

will be defined according to that roadmap. This means that a number of related projects will be running in parallel, so that information can be exchanged.

APPLICATION PROCEDURE CHINA SCHOLARSHIP COUNCIL

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