[ecoop-info] Call for PhD Students on the topics of MDE/Domain-specific Languages and Blockchains in Innovation and Entrepreneurship

[Filipe Correia]

=== Call for PhD Students ===
Topics: MDE/DSLs & Blockchain
University of Porto, Portugal
https://web.fe.up.pt/~ffcorreia/grant-brpx/
=============================

This grant is offered in the context of a groundbreaking funding initiative
started by the Ph.D. Program in Informatics Engineering (
https://dei.fe.up.pt/prodei) at the University of Porto in collaboration
with some of the leading IT companies in Portugal to support outstanding
candidates.

## The Topic ##

Open collaboration has shown to be a key factor to the survival and
competitiveness of many industries. However, matchmaking between the needs
of big corporations, the solutions that the startups can provide and the
knowledge and research in the universities is intricate, and the incentives
for the parties involved are misaligned. We think there is space for an
automated and decentralized approach to this problem. Distributed Ledger
Technologies (DLTs) and smart-contracts can provide interesting solutions
for building a merit-based platform, the incentives system, setting the
rules of the relationship between parties, providing governance throughout
the process, and making everything tamper-proof and transparent. Existing
research and practice around Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) and
Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) may help to overcome some of the existing
challenges that underlie this topic.

## The University of Porto ##

The U. Porto is located in one of the major urban areas of Portugal - the
city of Porto (https://youtu.be/YCOS97q_Yb4), which is often ranked as one
of the best cities to be a student (https://bit.ly/2EERuUB). The University
is one of the most notable universities in the country and in Europe (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Porto#Rankings).

The Ph.D. project will be carried out at the Department of Informatics
Engineering (https://dei.fe.up.pt/pt/home-page/) of the Faculty of
Engineering of the University of Porto, one of the most dynamic and fastest
growing departments of the U. Porto.

## Funding ##

This grant is funded by Bright Pixel (https://brpx.com/) and includes:
 - A monthly grant of 1100€ (above the Portuguese national grants, 980€)
 - Tuition fees for the duration of the 4 school years
 - Additional funding for traveling and equipment
 - 2 MSc grants/year, to be supervised by the Ph.D. student

## Applying to the Grant ##

The candidate should have a very strong background in informatics
engineering or computer science. Demonstrable interest in DLT, Innovation,
Domain-Specific Languages or Model-Driven Engineering will be valued.

Interested candidates should send a 1 page PDF document to
filipe.correia at fe.up.pt and hugo.sereno at fe.up.pt, containing:
 - A summarized CV
 - A one paragraph statement of why you should be selected for the grant

## More About the Initiative ##

Additional advantages of this initiative are:
 - A Ph.D. project tightly coupled with the industry and focused on
problems of great interest to the industry;
 - Access to training activities and workshops promoted by the funding
company (including training on additional technical areas and soft skills);
 - Privileged access to technical reports and technology;
 - Advise on business plans and IP (registration, patent applications,
etc.);
 - Privileged access to investors investor capital and startup programs;
 - Possibility to achieve higher impact based on the combination of two
worlds (academia + industry) and on the associated resources;