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Prof Ulrich Zuelicke, Prof Jens Dietrich Applications accepted all year round Funded PhD Project (Students Worldwide)

Wellington New Zealand Computational Physics Data Science Econometrics Software Engineering Theoretical Physics

About the Project

What are the fundamental driving forces underpinning the development of new software components? Can fluctuating usage patterns be related to basic laws governing the dynamics of popularity and economy of software solutions? Are there periods of relative stability, as anticipated by the empirical Lehman’s laws of software evolution? Is it possible to predict the duration and usage level of such periods based on distinct features of a software component?

This project aims to answer these and more questions using empirical observation of trends in metadata sourced from software repositories and by modelling these using network-science methods. The interdisciplinary nature of this research is reflected in the supervision being equally shared between a computer scientist (A/Prof Jens Dietrich, people.wgtn.ac.nz/jens.dietrich) and a physicist (Prof Uli Zuelicke, people.wgtn.ac.nz/uli.zuelicke), as well as the possibility graduate with a PhD in either Computer Science or Physics.

Besides an Honour’s or Master’s degree in a relevant quantitative discipline (e.g., computer science, mathematics, physics, statistics), potential candidates would have an interest and some demonstrated ability in data analysis/statistics and basic programming.

Interested? Further questions? Contact us ([Email Address Removed] , [Email Address Removed]), and we will be happy to discuss more details.

Funding Notes

Funding for this scholarship is provided through the Te Pūnaha Matatini research centre (www.tepunahamatatini.ac.nz/), subproject Networks of knowledge sharing.