PhD Position: Business Process Optimization via Predictive Modelling

Institute of Computer Science, University of Tartu, Estonia

University of Tartu's Institute of Computer Science is calling for applications from aspiring computer science researchers to conduct doctoral research within the ERC project The Process Improvement Explorer: Automated Discovery of Business Process Improvement Opportunities (PIX). The overarching goal of this project is to develop algorithms to analyze business process execution data in order to discover process improvement opportunities.

Within this broad project, your PhD project's goal will be to design methods to automatically discover opportunities for improving the efficiency of a business process by predicting different sources of waste and recommending actions to minimize these wastes. The project will lead to a set of methods and a toolset for using predictive and prescriptive process monitoring methods to detect each of the seven sources of waste defined in the Lean Thinking approach.

You will be part of a cross-disciplinary team, including experts in business process management, process mining, machine learning, and optimization. In the past six years, the group has earned six best paper awards at international conferences (BPM'2013, BPM'2016, ER'2016, ICSSP'2017, RuleML+RR'2017, IPM'2020) as well as one best student paper award, one best dissertation award, and three best demo awards. Further information about the group can be found at https://sep.cs.ut.ee/

During your PhD, you will receive mentorship from at least the project leader and one postdoc researcher. You will also have the opportunity to participate in international summer schools and to undertake research visits at leading research teams (e.g. at Utrecht University, Technion, University of Melbourne, or WU Vienna).

To apply, you must have a Masters degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Business Informatics, or a related discipline. You will need basic knowledge of algorithmics and machine learning, and openness to conduct applied and cross-disciplinary research.

Applications will be received until 30 September 2020. The application instructions can be found in the "Application process" tab of the following page: https://www.ut.ee/en/phd-computer-science Before applying, you should ask for detailed instructions to prepare your PhD application by contacting prof Marlon Dumas at: marlon dot dumas [ät] ut dot ee