ANNOUNCEMENT FOR TWO (2) RESEARCH GRANTS IN THE SCOPE OF THE PROJECT CERTIFYMEAP

APPLICATION opens from 13th  till 26th of  March/2025

Ref.ª CERTIFY-2: BI-BOLSA

Number of grants: 2

The Instituto de Sistemas e Robótica (ISR) – Universidade de Coimbra opens call for 2 (TWO) research grants (BI) for PhD holders. In the scope of the Scientific Research Project n.º CERTIFYMEAP2024.07457.IACDC, supported by the measure “RE-C05-i08.M04 – “Apoiar o lançamento de um programa de projetos de I&D orientado para o desenvolvimento e implementação de sistemas avançados de cibersegurança, inteligência artificial e ciência de dados na administração pública, bem como de um programa de capacitação científica”, within the financing contract between the Estrutura de Missão Recuperar Portugal (EMRP) and the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia I.P. (FCT), as intermediate beneficiary.

Scientific Area: Electrical and Computers Engineering, Informatics Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Physics Engineering and Mathematics.

Application profile: PhD’s in Electrical and Computers Engineering, Informatics Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, Physics Engineering, Mathematics or similar. The chosen applicant will integrate a multi-disciplinary team with the objective of developing an Information System able to increase the security of Professional Training Certificates in the Portuguese Public Administration, resorting to Artificial Intelligence tools. The candidates must have skills in programming in C/C++ and/or Python and on Deep Learning applications (even if in the academic environment only) (e.g. PyTorch, TensorFlow). Knowledge in computer vision is preferable. 

NOTE: Candidates with foreign academic diplomas are obliged to present records of the equivalence/recognition of such diplomas and the conversion of the respective final notes to the Portuguese classification scale (whenever a final classification is attributed with the foreign diploma), issued by the Directorate-General for Higher Education or by a Portuguese public higher education establishment (regulated by Decree-Law no. 341/2007, of 12 October) or, in alternative, present the document of equivalence/recognition of such foreign qualifications to the corresponding Portuguese qualifications, issued by a Portuguese public higher education establishment (regulated by Decree-Law no. 283/83, of 21 June).

Project: This grant is supported by the Project n.º CERTIFYMEAP2024.07457.IACDC, supported by the measure “RE-C05-i08.M04 – “Apoiar o lançamento de um programa de projetos de I&D orientado para o desenvolvimento e implementação de sistemas avançados de cibersegurança, inteligência artificial e ciência de dados na administração pública, bem como de um programa de capacitação científica”, within the financing contract between the Estrutura de Missão Recuperar Portugal (EMRP) and the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia I.P. (FCT), as intermediate beneficiary.

Work plan: The selected candidates will work in two research lines. The first research line is dedicated to the design and implementation of a coding system able to create a two-dimensional code for the integration of information regarding the emission of the Professional Training Certificates in an easy and fast emission process, designing for the purpose a proprietary code with several levels of access (regarding public and private information). The second research line is dedicated to the design the information system and its integration with the two-dimensional codes by assuring security and privacy of the encoded information resorting to cryptographic methodologies.

The work plan for Research Line 1 then comprises the following tasks:

1. Literature review
2. Study of the algorithms created in the Lab for smart encoding and decoding
3. Design of the global Information System and the higher-level entity (in conjunction with Research Line 2)
4. Design of a new coding system assuring the predefined requisites (in conjunction with Research Line 2)
5. Implementation of encoding and decoding methods
6. Exhaustive tests to improve the methods accuracy and decoding rate depending on several variables
7. Integration of the algorithms in the framework developed in the Research Line 2
8. Documentation and Report writing

The work plan for Research Line 2 then comprises the following tasks:

1. Literature review
2. Study of the algorithms created in the Lab for smart encoding and decoding
3. Design of the global Information System and the higher-level entity (in conjunction with Research Line 1)
4. Design of a new coding system assuring the predefined requisites (in conjunction with Research Line 1)
5. Implementation of methods to guarantee the security and privacy of the codes
6. Exhaustive tests to improve security and privacy of the codes
7. Integration of the algorithms developed in the Research Line 1 in the framework
8. Documentation and Report writing

Regime: The attribution of the grants does not generate or entitle a relation of a legal-labour nature, it is undertaken in an exclusive dedication regime and the fellow is granted with the Fellow Statute of the Instituto de Sistemas e Robótica – Universidade de Coimbra, according to Research Grant Statute or the Regulation of Research Grants of the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., both in its actual wording.

Location: The Works will take place at the Instituto de Sistemas e Robótica – Universidade de Coimbra.

Duration: The Grant have a duration of 9 months, possibly renewable until the end of the project, depending on the merit evaluation. The beginning of the Grant is expected for April of 2025.

Scientific orientation: Professor Doutor Nuno Miguel Mendonça da Silva Gonçalves.

Finantial conditions: The amount of the Grant is 1.851,00€ corresponding to the monthly compensation stipulated in the FCT table (https://www.fct.pt/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Tabela_valores_SMM_2025.p…), plus social security (Seguro Social Voluntário, first level contributions), if the candidate opt for it, and personal accidents insurance. The payment will be made by check or bank transfer. This amount will not be increased during the entire period of the grant duration.

Selection method: Curricular evaluation (50%), and interview (50%) to the best applications at the Curricular Evaluation phase. 

Selection and attribution criteria: 

In the curricular evaluation (50%) will be considered the following criteria: global merit of the curriculum vitae (30%) and adequation of the candidate to the project (70%). 

In the interview (50%) for the best 2 candidates of the Curricular Evaluation it will be evaluated the motivation degree and the commitment for the task to develop.

The candidates with a final evaluation of 3.5, or lower, in the scale of 5 values will be excluded. The jury reserve the right to don’t attribute the Grant in the case of no candidate has the required profile.

Jury: President: Professor Doutor Nuno Miguel Mendonça da Silva Gonçalves; Vogals: Doutor João Sena Marcos and Doutor Guilherme Schardong.

Publication of the results: The evaluation results will be announced within 90 days after the end of the applications submission deadline, by notifying the applicants via email. After the announcement of the results, candidates are considered automatically notified to, if they wish to do so, comment on the results on a preliminary hearing period within 10 days after that date. After this, the selected candidates will have to declare in writing their acceptance. Unless a justification worthy of consideration is presented, if the declaration is not submitted within the referred period, it is considered that the candidate waivers the grant. In case of resignation or withdrawal of the selected candidate, the next candidate with the highest evaluation score will be notified immediately.

Application submission: The applications shall be sent by email to nunogon@deec.uc.pt, guilherme.schardong@isr.uc.pt and joao.marcos@isr.uc.pt specifying in the subject: CERTIFY-2. The application must include the following documentation: CV, habilitation certificate including the final scores obtained in the undergraduate subjects and a motivation letter.

Submission of applications: The application process is open from 13th till 26th of  March/2025.