Ofertes de projectes

Machine Learning (ML) has taken the world by storm and has become a fundamental pillar of engineering. As a result, the last decade has witnessed an explosive growth in the use of deep neural networks (DNNs) in pursuit of exploiting the advantages of ML in virtually every aspect of our lives: computer vision, natural language processing, medicine or economics are just a few examples. However, NOT all DNNs fit to all problems: convolutional NNs are good for computer vision, recurrent NNs are good for temporal analysis, and so on. In this context, the main focus of N3Cat and BNN-UPC is to explore the possibilities of the new and less explored variant called Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), whose aim is to learn and model graph-structured data. This has huge implications in fields such as quantum chemistry, computer networks, or social networks among others. OBJECTIVES =========== N3Cat and BNN-UPC are looking for students wanting to work in the area of Graph Neural Networks studying their uses, processing architectures, and algorithms. To this end, the candidate will work on ONE of the following areas: - Investigating the state of the art on this area, surveying the different works done in terms of applications, processing frameworks, algorithms, benchmarks, datasets. This can be taken from a hardware or software perspective. - Helping to build a testbed formed by a cluster of GPUs that will be running pyTorch or Tensorflow. We will instrument the testbed to measure the computation workload and communication flows between GPUs. - Analyzing the communication workload of running a GNN either in the testbed or by means of architectural simulations. - Developing means of accelerating GNN processing in software (e.g., improving scheduling of the message passing) or hardware (e.g. designing a domain-specific architecture).

La principal problemática en Realidad Virtual es la imposibilidad de estudiar entornos de alta densidad de población, debido a la falta de realismo que existe entre la visualización y las sensaciones táctiles (empujones, presión). Es por ello que nos proponemos estudiar el uso del Joystick háptico para dirigir el movimiento de un avatar en un entorno con una gran densidad de agentes. Pretendemos evaluar si el uso de estos dispositivos permite aumentar el realismo y la inmersión, para avanzar en este tipo de estudios con escenarios que presenten una gran densidad de objetos dinámicos.

Companies and scientists working in areas such as finance or genomics are generating enormously large datasets (in the order of petabytes) commonly referred as Big Data. How to efficiently and effectively process such large amounts of data is an open research problem. Since communication is involved in Big Data processing at many levels, at the NaNoNetworking Center in Catalunya (N3Cat) we are currently investigating the potential role of wireless communications in the Big Data scenario. The main focus of the project is to evaluate the impact of applying wireless communications and networking methods to processors and data centers oriented to the management of Big Data. OBJECTIVES =========== N3Cat is looking for students wanting to work in the area of wireless communications for Big Data. To this end, the candidate will work on one of the following areas: - Traffic analysis of Big Data frameworks and applications, as well as in smaller manycore systems. - Channel characterization in Big Data environments: indoor, within the racks of a data center, within the package of CPU, within a chip. - Design of wireless communication protocols for computing systems from the processor level to the data center level.

Robotic Process Automation is receiving significant attention, due to the promise of improving the performance of the main processes of an organization by incorporating robots that partially perform repetitive tasks. In this project, we will consider how Process Mining can help into finding opportunities to apply Robotic Process Automation for a real case study.

Web tracking technologies are extensively used to collect large amounts of personal information (PI), including the things we search, the sites we visit, the people we contact, or the products we buy. Although it is commonly believed that this data is mainly used for targeted advertising, some recent works revealed that it is exploited for many other purposes, such price discrimination, financial credibility, insurance coverage, government surveillance, background scanning or identity theft. The main objective of this project is to apply network traffic monitoring and analysis technologies to uncover the particular methods used to track Internet users and collect PI. This project will be useful for both Internet users and the research community, and will produce open source tools, real data sets, and publications revealing most privacy attempting practices. Some preliminary results of our work in this area were recently published in Proceedings of the IEEE (IF: 9.237) and featured in a Wall Street Journal article.

Gran parte del código abierto para big-data está escrito para la JVM y actualmente gran parte de este código lo forman algoritmos de minería de datos, y otras técnicas que pueden incluirse en la especialidad de Inteligencia Artificial. Además de Java, Python, otro lenguaje interpretado, es cada vez más utilizado en cualquier entorno de programación, en concreto también en inteligencia artificial y para algoritmos de machine learning. Hay adeptos da cada uno de los dos lenguajes, basándose en su curva de aprendizaje, su portabilidad, ... Es open source, portable y soporta tareas estándar de la minería de datos, como es el pre-procesado de datos, la clasificación, agrupación en clústeres, visualización, regresión y selección de características. El objetivo principal de este proyecto es: A partir de un conjunto de algoritmos que caracterizan el trabajo a realizar en minería de datos, tales como pre-procesado de datos, la clasificación, agrupación en clústeres, visualización, regresión y selección de características, compara el rendimiento de estos dos lenguajes y ver las ventajas o inconvenientes de utilizar uno u otro, según la plataforma hardware subyacente. En concreto, x86 y ARM.

MASTER THESIS (TFM) / RESEARCH CONTRACT: The main goal of the work will be to design and develop a prototype of a recommender system based on the use, exploitation and extension of the OntoCAPE ontology for a decision-making support tool in the design of alternative processes closing material loops in chemical supply chains.

The Barcelona Neural Networking Center (BNN-UPC) is offering two positions to develop the Master Thesis in the field of Graph Neural Networks (GNN) applied to computer networking. This TFM will be fully funded and will be carried in the context of a large industrial project with a major multinational technology company.

The main goal of this project is to develop a network monitoring system that can be used by network operators to detect bitcoin miners (or miners from other blockchain technologies) in their network. The system will rely only on network measurements obtained by standard network measurement tools and estimate interesting characteristics of detected miners, such as power consumption. How to apply: Please send an email to with your CV and academic file (pdf can be generated from the Raco).

This master's thesis aims to analyze the feasibility of a remote VR system based on the use of mobile devices with cardboard glasses and low-cost interaction devices. It will start from a system based on HTC-VIVES programmed with Unity. Different portability alternatives to the new platform will be analyzed both in terms of the rendering of the models (locally or on a server) and the limitations of the interaction and connection between students and teacher. A prototype will be developed with basic interaction techniques and its usability will be analyzed.

UPC is offering a new position to develop the TFG/TFM in the field of Machine Learning and Cybersecurity. This TFM will be fully funded (internship) and carried out in collaboration with the Global Security Operations Center of Nestlé and UPC.

The identification of the applications behind the network traffic (i.e. traffic classification) is crucial for ISPs and network operators to better manage and control their networks. However, the increasing use of encryption and web-based applications makes this identification very challenging. This problem is exacerbated with the widespread deployment of content distribution networks (e.g. Akamai) and cloud-based services (e.g. Amazon AWS). The goal of this project is to develop a traffic monitoring tool to accurately identify web services from HTTPS traffic, including Google, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter among others. The tool will combine the information from IP addresses and DNS, with novel classification methods inspired on the Google PageRank algorithm to identify encrypted traffic, even if served from Akamai, AWS or Google infrastructures. This project will be carried out in collaboration with the tech-based company Talaia Networks (https://www.talaia.io), which develops cloud-based network monitoring solutions.