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			    RESEARCH POSITION:
	    COMMUNICATION IN SAFETY CASES: A SEMANTIC APPROACH
				  at the
				     
		Human Communication Research Centre (HCRC)
	     an ESRC funded Interdisciplinary Research Centre
		      at the University of Edinburgh

Applications are invited for a position on the team working on a three-year
research project to look at the development of safety critical systems, and
in particular the Safety Case.  The project is funded under the SERC/DTI
Safety Critical Systems initiative, and will involve research workers in
the Laboratory for the Foundations of Computer Science (LFCS) the
Department of Artificial Intelligence (DAI) and the Department of
Sociology.  It will be examining the semantics of the various
representations that are used.  In particular it will analyse the effect
that varying the expressive power of a formalism has on the trade-off
between on the one hand the size and precision of the representation and on
the other hand the tractability of manipulating them and their
comprehensibility.

Work at the DAI will concentrate on the validation of the
system, and in particular the requirements capture process, with emphasis
on issues of implicit assumptions and compliance with relevant standards.
Work at LFCS will be concentrating on the verification of the system,
studying the semantics of the various formalisms used to describe system
behaviour.

The work at HCRC will examine, from a cognitive science perspective, the
issues surrounding the choice and use of representations for communicating
information within the development process.  Other research within HCRC
is focussing on developing principles for assigning information to
modes of presentation---e.g. linguistic and graphical presentation---and on
the cognitive properties of graphics.  The project will seek to apply this
work to the analysis of current practice for safety case development.
Two specific work packages have been identified:
   1) Analysis of the different representations that are mandated, or are
      current practice in related disciplines.  This analysis will focus on
      such issues as their expressive power and the background knowledge
      needed to interpret them correctly. 

   2) Study of the interfaces to software tools used during the development
      process.  This will include an analysis of the interfaces to existing
      tools, but will also involve participating in the design and
      construction of software in other parts of the project.

This project will be running alongside a number of related projects within
HCRC, and the appointee will be expected to work within, and contribute to
the work of, the research team.  Applicants should have a broad range of
skills, and while not essential, knowledge or experience in the following
areas will be an advantage:

    - Programming, preferably with experience in a range of languages
  
    - UNIX (and Sun machines in particular) and X

    - Interface design, where knowledge of guidelines and standards will be
      useful, as will practical experience
  
    - Interviewing/knowledge elicitation, where an ability to uncover,
      assimilate and characterise the knowledge of experienced system
      developers will be essential

    - Logic, and language semantics in particular

    - Evaluation of interfaces, ideally from both a theoretical point of
      view and on a practical basis, including the design and conduct
      of experiment

    - Formal methods for program development

    - The construction of Safety Critical Systems, and in particular, the
      relevant national and international standards.

Depending on the age and qualifications of the appointee, the appointment
will be made at the appropriate point on either the Research
Assistant 1A or Research Assistant 2 scale, with a salary in the range
\pounds 12,638 - \pounds 24,726.  The project is currently scheduled to
start on July 1st; an ability to start by, or soon after, this date would
be highly advantageous.

There is a large collaborative community active in research in related
issues in Edinburgh. This provides the appointee with excellent
opportunities for research career development.

Further particulars of the post are available from Fiona-Anne Malcolm
(031-650-4445) at HCRC, University of Edinburgh, 2, Buccleuch Place,
Edinburgh EH8 9LW.  Applications, including curriculum
vitae, names of at least three referees and samples of current
relevant work, should also be sent to Fiona-Anne.

Once they have read the further particulars, candidates are encouraged to
seek any further information they require from either Professor Keith
Stenning (keith@cogsci.ed.ac.uk, or 031-650-4444) or Dr. Robert Inder
(R.Inder@ed.ac.uk, or 031-650-4449). 

The closing date for applications is April 4th; applications received soon
after this date MAY be considered if intention to apply is notified in
before this date. 





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Robert Inder        HCRC, 2, Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh  EH8 9LW Scotland