Postdoctoral position in Masdar Institute in Abu Dhabi

The Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at Masdar Institute is looking for a post-doctoral researcher to work as part of a joint research project between Masdar Institute and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The project’s title is “Strategic Network Diffusion” and it is led by Dr. Cesar Hidalgo (project investigator at MIT) and Dr. Aamena Alshamsi (project investigator at Masdar Institute).
The project mainly addresses the problem of strategic diffusion in complex networks. Strategic diffusion is a problem that decision makers face when they attempt to influence others, or in the case of a government attempting to stimulate the adoption of a policy or technology, like photovoltaic cells. One attempt to accelerate diffusion is to strategically seed the diffusion at a set of influential nodes, in order to trigger a large cascade of diffusion. However, this does not guarantee that the diffusion will not halt or take so long to reach the whole network. Therefore, the project aims at finding optimal paths that minimize the total time of diffusion in a network by strategically selecting which node to target next, in order to minimize the total time of diffusion. The project uses different approaches to solve the problem abstractly such as exhaustive search and heuristics. Besides theoretical models, the project studies strategic diffusion empirically in some contexts such as economic diversification.
Candidates should have a PhD degree with a proven record of strong publications in peer reviewed journal and need to have completed projects that demonstrate ability to work in topics related to complex networks, graph theory, algorithms and (preferably data science).
Package
The position will offer a very competitive salary package with an annual tax-exempt salary and will be for an initial duration of 19 months starting from April 2017, extendable (up to 2 or 3 years) depending on funding and performance.
Application Information
Applications should be made via email to Dr. Alshamsi ( aaalshamsi-AT-masdar.ac.ae ) specifying the project title and include the following information:
Applicant name and contact information
Curriculum vitae
Statements of research
An application letter describing the applicant’s current position and how his/her experience matches the position requirements