See text on English page.The department of Industrial Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science, seeks applicants to fill a Ph.D. student position in Computer Science. The project is a part of a larger, Nordic research project called “eScience tools for investigating Climate Change in Northern High Latitudes” (eSTICC) funded by NordForsk – an organisation under the Nordic Council of Ministers that provides funding for Nordic research cooperation.

The goal of the overall research project is a more accurate description of the high-latitude feedback processes in the climate system by improving the eScience tools of the climate research community. The Ph.D. student will develop from a Computer Science perspective scientific workflow schemes and tools to integrate the different data and software that are used by the climate researchers. The idea is to exploit existing workflow solutions, for example from the Grid computing or Multiphysics community, and customise them to enable interoperability of the used climate research eScience tools.

The eSTICC project runs from 2014 to 2018 and the Ph.D. student is funded for 3 years and 7 months. The project will be foundation for the Ph.D. thesis and Helmut Neukirchen and Ebba Þóra Hvannberg, professors in Computer Science at the University of Iceland will supervise. The Ph.D. student will work closely with the other project partners in Northern Europe and visit them.

Applicants should have an MSc degree in Computer Science, Software Engineering, Computational Engineering or a closely related field. Knowledge or interest in high-performance computing or eScience is an advantage. Applicants need to be able to work independently and be active in shaping the project as it progresses in co-operation with the supervisors and the international research team. Good communication skills, an ability to work in a team and willingness to travel are required. The selected candidate will need to send a formal application for a Ph.D. studentship at the University of Iceland in due time.

The application shall include a description of the applicant's interests in the project and how they can specifically, contribute to the project. The application should be no longer than three pages. The following shall be appended with the application: i) Curriculum Vitae, ii) degree certificates, iii) a copy of Master dissertation or another extensive research essay, iv) names of two referees and their contact addresses.

Applications should be sent to: starfsumsoknir@hi.is marked HI1409135. Applications that are not sent electronically should be sent in duplicate to Human Resource Division, University of Iceland, Main Building, Sæmundargötu 2, 101 Reykjavík. All applications will be answered and applicants will be informed about the appointment when a decision has been made.

Further Information about the eSTICC project can be found on the project's webpage http://esticc.nilu.no. For further information, please contact either Dr. Helmut Neukirchen (helmut@hi.is) or Dr. Ebba Þóra Hvannberg (ebba@hi.is).

Appointments to the University of Iceland do take into account the Equal Rights Project of the University of Iceland.

Salary is determined by the doctoral scholarship according with the wage contract by the minister of finance and appropriate trade union.

About 990 students study Computer Science or Engineering at the Faculty of Industrial Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and Computer Science. From these, more than 90 are graduate students, both Master's and Ph.D. students. Academic staff at the faculty is about 25. About 450 students are studying Computer Science and the number of academic Computer Science staff is 10. More information can be found on the website of the University of Iceland http://english.hi.is/.

Around 300 highly qualified employees at the School of Engineering and Natural Sciences conduct cutting-edge research and teach in programs that offer diverse and ambitious courses in the field of Engineering and Natural Sciences. The work environment is international and the ratio of international students and employees is constantly increasing.

The School’s research institutes are highly sought after affiliates by international universities and serve a significant role in the scientific community. These are: The Engineering Research Institute, The Institute of Life and Environmental Sciences and The Institute for Sustainability Studies. The Science Institute which divides into The Institute of Physical Sciences and The Institute of Earth Sciences.

The University of Iceland is the largest teaching, research, and science institute in Iceland. The University provides a wide range of education in various fields of studies and services institutions, private businesses and the government. According to Times Higher Education the University of Iceland is among the top 300 universities in the world.

We are a Nordic Center of Excellence (NCoE), now: The research project eScience Tools for Investigating Climate Change at High Northern Latitudes (eSTICC) has started work. eSTICC has gathered 13 top research groups from the Nordic countries working in the fields of climate research and eScience. The University of Iceland’s team is led by Helmut Neukirchen and focuses on High-performance computing aspects of the project (in particular workflows) and contributes also to training and education within the project. The project is funded by NordForsk as a Nordic Center of Excellence (NCoE). The University of Iceland receives a funding of approximately 26.5 million ISK. The project runs from 1/2014 to 12/2018 and will include funding for a PhD student from start of September 2014 to mid April 2018.

As I will be in 50% parental leave, I will teach in spring 2014 only Operating Systems. Software Quality Management which is typically taught every second spring is therefore moved to autum 2014. In addition, the plan is to teach Software Maintenance as usual in autumn 2014. Distributed Systems which was cancelled due to my research semester in autumn 2013 will not be taught in 2014, but most likely again in autumn 2015.

I will take a research semester in the autumn semester 2013. As a result, the course TÖL102F Distributed Systems will not take place in autumn 2013 as scheduled, but is rather cancelled/postponed.
After the research semester in the autumn semester 2013, I intend to take a 50% parental leave in the spring semester 2014.
During these times, you may not find me in my office, but I will be reachable via e-mail.

As the German magazine "duz -- Unabhängige Deutsche Universitätszeitung" asked me about some statement on "demographic change and universities" in the Icelandic context, I investigated the number of students vs. the number of faculty members (=sum of different levels of professors) in Iceland (and Germany for comparison). Only a fracture of my data will get published in "duz", so here is the full data (based on data from Statice and Destatis -- data for 2012 not yet available):

       Iceland                                          Germany
Year  #Students Change  #Faculty Students/Faculty      #Students Change
2005    16 074             623    25.8                 1 985 765
2006    16 835   +4.73%    682    24.7                 1 979 043  -0,3%
2007    16 851   +0.09%    708    23.8                 1 941 405  -1,9%
2008    17 165   +1.86%    761    22.6                 2 025 307  +4,3%
2009    18 291   +6.55%    833    22.0                 2 121 178  +4,7%
2010    19 159   +4.74%    807    23.7                 2 217 294  +4,5%
2011    19 334   +0.91%    790    24.5                 2 380 974  +7,4%

The explanation for the 2009 and 2010 increase of Icelandic students is the economic crisis in Iceland 2008 that did lead to a high number of students starting to attend university.
As you can see, the student/professor ratio got worse after the crisis in Iceland (due to students flooding the Universities and reduction in the number of faculty members due to decreased funding). For Germany, I did not calculate that ratio for all years, but just for 2011, together with more detailed further data for both Iceland and Germany (note that the number of students in Germany 2011 in the table below is different than in the table above: the above time series is from a different Destatis source than the numbers below):

2011                       Iceland     Germany
Enrolled students          19 334    2 501 990
Population                318 452   81 843 743
Students/Population            6%           3%

Prófessorar  316  Professoren           42 924
Dósentar     213  Dozenten & Assistenten 3 899
Lektorar     261					
Sum faculty members 790                 46 823

Faculty members/Population  0.248%      0.057%
Students/Faculty member      24.47       53.44

OECD collects data on governmental or public spending for tertiary eduction divided by GDP -- however, I could not find this data on the OECD statistics web page.
P.S.: I just stumbled over a visualisation of academic brain drain that uses this GDP ratio (from World Bank) as well as one input parameter of their polymetric visualisation.
P.P.S.: A related visualisation is on the number of researchers per inhabitants. However, the data there is from before the 2008 economic crisis.
P.P.P.S.: Here is finally the OECD data from Education at a Glance 2015 (DOI:10.1787/eag-2015-en).

While it is nothing new to have a PhD thesis in Computer Science defended (the first PhD thesis has been defended in our Computer Science programme some years ago), the first PhD thesis has just been defended our Software Engineering programme at the University of Iceland: User-Driven Development for Bespoke Software. Congratulations!

Trivia: one challenge for the administration was to find a Latin term for "Software Engineering" that was needed for the PhD certificate that contains a Latin description of the scientific field of the PhD.

Update from August 2012: Now it is definitive: HBV201F Software Testing is moved from Spring 2013 to Fall 2012 (and therefore called HBV103F). After that it is intended to teach it again every second spring, i.e. next time would be Spring 2015. (Spring 2014 is scheduled for Software Quality Management.)

The planning for my teaching in the academic year 2012/2013 and 2013/2014 is as follows:

Fall 2012

HBV101F Software Maintenance

The course will consist of two parts: The first part is classical lecture-driven to provide some foundations of Software Maintenance. In the second part, we will have a maintenance project where we will do some maintenance of an existing software project: this is mainly homework, but we will have weekly meetings to do some status reporting.

HBV201F Software Testing

(Update: will be taught in Fall 2012!)

Lecture with weekly homework, one of the assignments needs to be presented in front of class.
Will be based on the ISTQB Certified Tester foundation level syllabus. It is the intention to offer an ISTQB Certified Tester exam so that participants can acquire a certification.

Spring 2013

TÖL401G Operating Systems

Lecture with weekly homework that needs to be handed in.

Fall 2013

I will take a research sabbatical, therefor I will not teach at all. Typically, I would teach Distributed Systems in that semester.

Spring 2014

I will be in 50% parential leave in Spring 2014. From the two courses Software Quality Management and Operating Systems that are scheduled to be taught then, I will teach only one (most likely Software Quality Management) and the other (most likely Operating Systems) will be taught by someone else.

Note that courses (non-obligatory only, of course) may get cancelled if not enough participants register in advance: @MSc students take care to register for a course as soon as possible via UGLA!

The e-mail server is working again and no e-mail seem to have been lost.

The e-mail server at the University of Iceland is experiencing problems. Thus, I can currently not read e-mail. In urgent cases, please phone me (see contact information).The e-mail server at the University of Iceland is experiencing problems. Thus, I can currently not read e-mail. In urgent cases, please phone me (see contact information).

Please note that the course TÖL102F Dreifð kerfi/Distributed Systems is taught in autumn 2011. (By mistake, the kennsluskrá/course catalog listed it initially as not being taught -- this was incorrect and has been corrected now!) You are still able to register for this course. More details about this course can be found in the according course web page in kennsluskrá/course catalog.