Trustworthy & Smart Software Engineering Lab. 日本語 >

Positions for Researchers

Currently, we are not making specific calls for our projects but there are possibilities that we can support your applications to public or internal opportunities. For example, JSPS is providing different funding schemes for stays and/or work in Japan. You may contact us if you are interested in working in our group (f-ishikawa <at> nii.ac.jp).

NII Internship

This is a scheme by NII only for its partner universities. The detailed information of the call for intern students can be found on the NII web site and in the partner universities. Application should be done via the partner universities.

The current call includes the following topics in our group:

Generative AI for Trustworthy Software Engineering
Investigates use of generative AI, together with logical/assured methods and heuristic/search-based methods, for enhancing engineering techniques for trustworth software systems. Examples of topics include the following but the concrete topic depends on the status at the time interns join:
  • Support of formal modeling and verification to ensure dependability of system design models. We often use the Event-B formalism but the work may not be limited to it.
  • Support of testing from natural language specifications or other upper-level documents/models.
  • Support of building, monitoring, and updating assurance cases.
It is welcome if interns have learned basics of software engineering techniques - this is not just coding experience. But this is not mandatory if interns are aware of the software engineering research area and eager to learn. We also often use metaheuristic optimization techniques, such as genetic algorithms, and its experience is welcome, not mandatory.
Testing and Trust Exploration for AI Systems
Investigates methods for testing and quality/trust evaluation on AI systems, as well as debugging/repairing/improving. Examples of topics include the following but the concrete topic depends on the status at the time interns join:
  • Test generation and failure analysis for autonomous driving systems, including state-of-the-art end-to-end systems as well as instruction-based (visual-language-action based) systems.
  • Repair or performance alignment techniques for neural networks for system-level safety and trustworthieness, based on fault localization and automated repair techniques from the software engineering techniques.
  • Analysis of requirements or risks as well as building, monitoring, and updating assurance.
Interns should note that our work is based on software engineering techniques and typically different from common activities in AI research, e.g., we do not focus on training, or just building specific applications. We also often use metaheuristic optimization techniques, such as genetic algorithms, and its experience is welcome, not mandatory.

This call is part of an internship program by NII (National Institute of Informatics, Japan). Calls are basically made twice a year by NII. First please check the general information by NII

Intern students are expected to learn further knowledge and skills through collaborative activities for promoting our research activities and/or exploring further research topic. Depending on the status of the intern students (e.g., already have active master/phd topics or not), actual work in the internship can be determined flexibly through discussion. The outputs are typically joint papers and/or implemented software, but depend on the topic and the duration of the internship.

Specifically, the following two directions exist to determine the work at the internship.