PhD Candidate - Failure analysis and safety assessment of complex industrial systems

European Commission; Italia; In loco; EUR 25.000 - 35.000; Tempo pieno

Descrizione del lavoro

A leading research institution in Italy is offering a PhD position focused on enhancing failure analysis and safety assessment of complex industrial systems. Candidates will work on formal methods and fault detection techniques, utilizing advanced system-software engineering tools. This role offers a unique opportunity to contribute to state-of-the-art research projects funded by European and Italian Space Agencies.

Competenze

• Knowledge in formal methods and fault analysis.
• Experience with system-software engineering tools.
• Ability to apply machine learning techniques.
• Familiarity with industrial systems design.

Mansioni

• Advance the state-of-the-art in failure analysis of complex systems.
• Develop techniques for fault detection and recovery.
• Implement methodologies using COMPASS and TASTE tools.

Descrizione del lavoro

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Organisation/Company Fondazione Bruno Kessler Research Field Other Researcher Profile Other Profession Positions PhD Positions Country Italy Application Deadline 22 Aug 2025 - 23:59 (Europe/Rome) Type of Contract Temporary Job Status Full-time Is the job funded through the EU Research Framework Programme? Not funded by a EU programme Is the Job related to staff position within a Research Infrastructure? No

Offer Description

Industrial systems are reaching an unprecedented degree of complexity. The design process has to guarantee not only the functional correctness of the implemented system, but also its dependability and resilience with respect to run-time faults. Hence, the design process must characterize the likelihood of faults, mitigate possible failures, and assess the effectiveness of the adopted mitigation measures.

Formal methods have been increasingly used over the last decades to deal with the shortcomings of designing complex systems, in different domains. Formal methods are based on the adoption of a formal, mathematical model of the system, shared between all actors involved in the system design, and on a tool-supported methodology to aid all the steps of the design, from the definition of the architecture down to the final implementation in HW and SW. Formal methods include technologies such as model checking, an automatic technique to symbolically and exhaustively analyze all possible executions of the system in the formal model, in order to detect design flaws as early as possible. Model checking techniques have been recently extended to assess the safety and dependability characteristics of the design, and for system certification.

The objective of this study is to advance the state-of-the-art in failure analysis and safety assessment of complex industrial systems. In particular, it will investigate extensions of existing fault propagation models and failure analysis techniques to deal with aspects such as the timing of fault propagation, the impact on system degradation, the characterization of transient and sporadic faults, and the analysis of the effectiveness of fault mitigation measures in presence of complex fault patterns. Moreover, this study will address the formal design of fault detection, isolation, and recovery (FDIR) sub-systems, techniques for diagnosis and root-cause analysis using formal methods, anomaly detection and FDIR based on machine learning techniques.

The developed techniques will be implemented and evaluated using tools for system-software engineering such as the COMPASS and the TASTE tools. This study is aligned with the topics investigated in various industrial projects carried out at FBK, such as the COMPASTA and AIFDIR projects, funded by the European and Italian Space Agencies.