The Hubert Curien Laboratory and Institut Henri Fayol (Saint-Etienne,
France) offer a fully-funded 3 year PhD position entitled "Multi-agent
coordination using distributed optimization based on
belief-propagation and dual decomposition - application to dynamic
prosumption".

* Description

The information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure is
evolving and becoming increasingly dynamic and distributed.  The
general problem of dynamic resource allocation becomes critical for
these infrastructures.  Being it in the context of sensor networks,
the internet of things or smart power grids, the expected impact on
our society is huge.

Multi-agent optimization techniques are a natural fit for such systems:

1. the optimization problem is distributed by nature,
2. the system is highly dynamic with many events emanating from both the infrastructure and human activities,
3. the scale of the system calls for strong privacy, which cannot be provided by a centralized system.

In the past years, multi-agent systems have been developed by using
message passing algorithms inspired by statistical machine learning
methods. Belief propagation is for instance designed for MAP (maximum
a posteriori) inference in probabilistic graphical models. Its
efficiency (in time and number of iterations) made it possible to
solve, in real time, problems like optimal energy allocation and
automatic service composition in sensor networks.

However, these approaches have some limitations --e.g. optimality and
convergence on cyclic networks. Despite recent advances, message
passing is still challenging and remains an open problem. Moreover,
since we consider problems with high dynamics and time-dependencies
(e.g. due to the flexible structure of the network, due to real-time
updates coming from sensors), extending such techniques seems
promising thanks to their runtime efficiency which can be exploited to
handle dynamics (though repeated solving processus) and
time-dependencies (by adding new time-related dimensions and
constraints).

This thesis subject aims at producing new methods and algorithms for
distributed optimization in dynamic networks with cycles.  It will
involve the following steps, non-exhaustively:

1. formalizing the problem of dynamic resource allocation and doing a theoretical analysis of the existing algorithms,
2. proposing new algorithms to handle the cyclic and dynamic nature of the networks,
3. implementing these algorithms in the form of generalization and extensions of existing algorithms,
4. evaluating empirically the algorithms by applying them to real data coming from the SEAS project, and deploying it into a smart-objects platform at EMSE.


* General Information

Duration: 3 years

Location: Saint-Etienne, France, with a possible collaboration with IIIA-CSIC in Barcelona (Spain)

Supervisors: Gauthier Picard (Henri Fayol Institute, EMSE, http://www.emse.fr/~picard/), Rémi Emonet (Hubert Curien Lab., UJM, http://home.heeere.com/)

Collaboration: Juan Antonio Rodriguez-Aguilar (IIIA-CSIC, www.iiia.csic.es/~jar/), Jesus Cerquides (IIIA-CSIC)

** Agenda

Application deadline: May 10th

Interviews: May 15th to 20th

Final decision: first half of June

Starting date: September/October 2015

** Skills related to the subject

The successful candidate will have and be willing to develop the following skills:

- machine learning (graphical models, belief propagation, message passing algorithms),
- multi-agent systems, distributed optimization,
- proficiency in programming (Java/Python, C for Arduino) and optimization software (CPLEX, Gurobi),
- autonomy and English proficiency.

** Location

Saint-Etienne is located about 3 hours from the mediterranean sea and
2 hours from Alps slopes. Lyon city is at 50 km. Saint Etienne has
about 180.000 inhabitants including more than 20.000 students.
Surrounded by hills where hiking and mountain biking are significant,
Saint Etienne is also member of the Unesco Creative Cities Network for
design.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Étienne

** Contact and application

The application should include a motivation letter (short but pertinent), a CV, degrees and grades, and relevant publications if any (or Master thesis).
Candidates are also encouraged to provide letter(s) of recommendation and contact information to reference persons.

Applications must be sent before May 10th 2015, candidates are encouraged to send application earlier.
Applications should sent to both of the following addresses: gauthier.picard---at---emse.fr AND remi.emonet---at---univ-st-etienne.fr