Trustworthy Voting Systems

We invite applications for a Research Fellow in computer security to work on the EPSRC-funded project "Trustworthy Voting Systems", which is a collaborative project between the Universities of Birmingham, Surrey, and Luxembourg.

The closing date is expected to be 20 April 2009.

Aim

The aim of the project is to develop and implement robust voter-verifiable electronic voting systems that are usable in real large-scale elections. We will also conduct user trials, and we will develop and extend techniques for analysis and verification of voting systems.

The Research Fellow at Birmingham will mostly work on the analysis and verification part of the project.

Collaborators

The project will be run at the Universities of Birmingham, Surrey, and Luxembourg.  We will also work with the UK Ministry of Justice, which is charged with modernising UK elections, as well as two commercial election systems providers, namely Election Reform Services and Opt2Vote. We are also partnered with influential US organisations and individuals.

Candidate

The successful candidate is expected to have a PhD in Computer Science or a related area, or be close to finishing one. S/he must have outstanding logical and analytical skills and a strong track record of research achievements evidenced by publications in leading journals and conferences. Candidates with new PhDs will be considered where their achievements of potential may be assessed by their PhD theses. Good communication (both oral and written) skills, people skills, the ability to work independently as well as a team member and the ability to take the initiative and be proactive are essential. Expertise in protocols, cryptography and information security, and/or verification, logic, model checking or theorem proving, and the use and development of specification languages and formal analysis of security systems is desirable.  Candidates should also have practical experience of computation.

The post

The post is expected to be available from 1 June 2009 for 36 months. We expect that applicants can start a bit later if they want. The salary is expected to be RA grade 7 (expected to be in the region of £30,000 to £35,000 per annum).

The objectives of the overall project are:

1. Develop and extend the design of robust voter-verifiable electronic voting systems.
2. Implement a system and conduct a user-trial.
3. Develop and extend techniques for analysis and verification of voting systems.

The overall project is divided into three streams, each corresponding to one of the objectives.

The Research Fellow at Birmingham will be mostly involved with the third objective, about analysis and verification. This includes analysing threat models, formalisation of voting systems and their intended properties, and development of verification algorithms and methods.

Full details of the proposed research are available in the proposal and the workplan.

Full details of how to apply are available from our Human Resources website. Go to http://www.hr.bham.ac.uk/jobs/ and click "current vacancies" or "search vacancies", and enter the job reference number 43395. Alternatively, use this URL. 

Please be sure to enclose a covering letter or research statement that explains how your skills match the requirements of the position. The evaluation will be based on your previous record (CV) and this statement.

The closing date for applications is 20 April 2009. Informal enquiries may be made to Dr Mark Ryan (M.D.Ryan at cs.bham.ac.uk).