Thesis offers

MAI

IGNASI COS AGUILERA

UB

The Faculty of Mathematics & Computer Science at the University of Barcelona invites applications for a technician position, with the possibility of extending to a PhD in Cognitive & Computational Neuroscience, to participate in a project aimed at the theoretical formalization of the neural dynamics of decision-making.

We seek a strongly motivated candidate to design and perform experiments, behavioural and neural data analyses, and computational models of decision-making and motor control processes. Candidates are expected to be familiar with data analyses and computational modelling, and be willing to learn how biologically realistic large-scale and recurrent neural network models simulate behavioural-level phenomena.

The Department of Mathematics & Computer Science and the Institute of Neuroscience at the University of Barcelona offer a stimulating scientific environment, state of the art laboratory space and exceptional computational facilities (http://mat.ub.edu). Barcelona is a vibrant cultural city, which offers a rich academic environment, with five major universities. Barcelona also hosts an active and dynamic community of systems and computational neuroscience (https://barccsyn.org/). The University of Barcelona offers a competitive salary and a range of employee benefits.

 

She/he needs to show an exceptional track record in the field, including decision-making, neuro-physiological studies and computational approaches to the study of neural networks and the modelling of behaviour.
- We will prioritize candidates with a solid research track record and excellent writing and communication skills in English.
- The ability and interest of the candidate to work in a multidisciplinary team (mathematicians, biologists, engineers) is mandatory.

APPLICATION: A full CV in pdf format and two reference letters should be sent to the following address:

Deadline: 26th March.

MAI

ALFREDO VELLIDO ALCACENA y ENRIQUE ROMERO MERINO

CS

A more detailed description of the project can be found in

https://www.cs.upc.edu/~eromero/Downloads/Retina-TFM-Project-01.pdf

The project is proposed in collaboration with Javier Zarranz Ventura
(Institut Clínic d'Oftalmologia, ICOF, Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, and
Institut d'Investigacions Biomèdiques August Pi I Sunyer, IDIBAPS),
which would provide a large annotated database to develop the project. For further information, please contact Alfredo Vellido (avellido@cs.
upc.edu) or Enrique Romero (eromero@cs.upc.edu).

MAI

SERGI ABADAL CAVALLÉ

AC

Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) is a non-invasive neuroimaging technique that measures changes in oxygenated (HbO2) and deoxygenated hemoglobin (HbR) in the cerebral cortex. Due to its portability and low cost, fNIRS has been used in Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) applications, characterizing hemodynamic responses to varying stimuli, and investigating auditory and visual-spatial attention during Complex Scene Analysis (CSA). In this project, we want to design and implement an fNIRS study with a goal of studying the impact of neural and BCI outcomes to improving the training of LAI models' attention mechanism (e.g., Transformer attention) during reading comprehension tasks (e.g., the participants will be judging the quality of generated text). We want to demonstrate experimentally that augmenting a model with fNIRS data carries neural activity features complementing the information captured by the model and demonstrate that it improves the models' performance. To this end, we will have to collect data from participants and test how different Transformer models benefit from different types of fNIRS attention masks.

The candidate will:

• Carry out controlled studies and collect data from a number of participants.
• Try different approaches to incorporating fNIRS signal in the training process of DL/LLM models and compare against baselines/experiments (these should be replicated).
• Carry out ablation studies, personalisation techniques, error analyses, etc.
• Contribute to authoring a scientific article

Coding skills in Python
Familiarity with fNIRS technologies, e.g., Cortivision, Artinis (desirable, not obligatory)
Experience with controlled experimentation methods for data acquisition (desirable, not obligatory)
Experience in ML/DL techniques
Experience in Signal Processing techniques

MAI

JOSE ANTONIO LAZARO VILLA

TSC

This approach is essential for studying advanced network solutions, including scenarios where machine learning and AI techniques are applied for radio resource management, optimization of data rates, and network reliability.

This Final Degree Thesis will be co-supervised by UPC Co-advisor: Cristhian J. Rodrigues Dos Santos (now in Mobility at NII-Tokyo)

A financing for the student is available depending on the level of the student, to be agreed with the company, NOKIA, collaborating on the project.

To develop a virtual 5G core and RAN architecture that accurately replicates the structure and operational conditions of a real research network, providing a flexible and robust platform for network experimentation, optimization tests, and evaluation of emerging 5G/6G technologies in a safe, non-disruptive environment.

Thematic Areas that you will learn:
- 5G and Beyond Network Architecture

-Digital Twins in Telecommunications

- Virtualized Core and RAN Deployment

- Radio Resource Management (RRM)

- Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Telecommunications

- Network Simulation and Emulation for Research and Development

MAI

ANAIS GARRELL ZULUETA

ESAII

MAI

ALBERTO CABELLOS APARICIO

AC

This project offers the candidate a unique opportunity to apply artificial intelligence techniques to real-world challenges in lung cancer research and treatment. As part of this thesis, the candidate will work with datasets, including patient records, genetic data, molecular alterations, treatment outcomes, and exposome data. These datasets will serve as the foundation for developing AI models that address critical challenges in lung cancer treatment, such as predicting patient outcomes and identifying optimal treatment strategies.

The candidate will focus on the following core tasks:

Data Exploration and Preprocessing: The candidate will gain experience in handling complex medical datasets by cleaning, preparing, and structuring the data to ensure it is suitable for advanced AI analysis.

Building AI Models: Using machine learning and deep learning techniques, the candidate will develop models aimed at predicting lung cancer progression, evaluating treatment efficacy, and understanding the impact of various environmental and genetic factors.

Interpretability and Explainability: A significant emphasis will be placed on making AI models interpretable and transparent. The candidate will explore techniques to ensure that the models produced are not just accurate but also explainable, providing healthcare professionals with clear insights into the model's predictions and decisions.

Exploring Interaction Networks: The candidate will analyze interaction networks, studying relationships between patient genetics, environmental factors, and treatment responses to identify key drivers of lung cancer outcomes.

Throughout the project, the candidate will not only gain hands-on experience with cutting-edge AI tools and methodologies but also develop a deeper understanding of AI's role in healthcare. This project provides an impactful opportunity to contribute to a field where AI innovation can directly improve patient outcomes.

- Tensorflow/Pytorch

- Machine Learning

MAI

SERGI ABADAL CAVALLÉ

AC

Automatic gaze tracking methods have been used in the recent years for various purposes, including measuring ad attention or enabling for gesture-less user-device interactions. Most of these methods have been tested in the desktop setting, while the few reported attempts that addressed the mobile setting report low accuracy and require continuous calibration. Additionally, the aforementioned methods rely on expensive sensors, such as infrared eye trackers, that limit their scaling capacity. Other methods employ touch-based interactions (e.g., tracking zoom/pinch gestures and scroll activity) to produce an estimation of the user gaze which, at best, are weakly correlated with visual attention. However, 42% of the time spent on websites is by mobile users, while similar trends are reported for the percentage of page views per visit, which creates an opportunity for a novel attention measurement technology to take root; one which can offer accurate, reliable, and scalable measurements.

In the proposed project, we are interested in the mobile setting, and propose the use of depth information, on top of the usual RGB (Red, Green, Blue) pixel data acquired by mobile device cameras, to track and quantify visual attention. Depth information can either be estimated with post computer visual processing or acquired directly with high precision, using advanced LiDAR sensors that newer smartphone models are currently equipped with. Furthermore, we propose the use of "lightweight" Deep Learning (DL) techniques to achieve an accurate and robust gaze point estimation without the need of extensive calibration. Unlike prior art, we will consider the use of historical information to inform future predictions and will examine how such models can be tailored to each user by injecting personalized data. In addition, we propose a more lightweight Neural Network (NN) architecture, suitable for the processing power of mobile devices, that also leverages the use of video or photo frames with depth sensory data.

The candidate will:

• Develop an app for iPhone (in Swift) for collecting gaze information and image data (using the device's frontal camera and LiDAR sensors), while completing a simple task of tracking a red dot in a matrix.
• Incorporate in the app the functionality offered by SensingKit,  an open-source mobile sensing framework compatible with iOS specialised in capturing motion, orientation, location and proximity (using iBeacon¿ or Eddystone¿) data and transmitting them on a server over any Internet connection. [https://github.com/SensingKit/SensingKit-iOS]
• Carry out a crowdsourcing study and collect data from a number of participants.
• Train lightweight DL models to predict accurately gaze point estimation, using the collected data, and compare against prior baselines/experiments (these should be replicated).
• Carry out ablation studies, personalisation techniques, error analyses, etc.
• Contribute to authoring a scientific article

(Very good) Coding skills in Swift
Coding skills in Python
Development in iOS/iPadOS environments
Experience in ML and Computer Vision is highly desirable

MAI

SERGI ABADAL CAVALLÉ

AC

Eye movement features are considered to be direct signals reflecting human attention distribution with a low cost to obtain, inspiring researchers to augment language models with eye-tracking (ET) data. In this project, we want to investigate how to operationalise eye tracking (ET) features, such as first fixation duration (FFD) and total reading time (TRT), as the cognitive signals to augment LAI models' attention mechanism (e.g., Transformer attention) during training. We want to demonstrate experimentally that augmenting a model with ET data carries linguistic features complementing the information captured by the model and demonstrate that it improves the models' performance. To this end, we will have to collect data from participants and test how different Transformer models benefit from different types of ET attention masks.

The candidate will:

• Carry out controlled studies and collect data from a number of participants.
• Try different approaches to incorporating gaze features in the training process of DL/LLM models and compare against baselines/experiments (these should be replicated).
• Carry out ablation studies, personalisation techniques, error analyses, etc.
• Contribute to authoring a scientific article

- Coding skills in Python
- Familiarity with eye tracking technologies, e.g., Tobii Pro Fusion (desirable, not obligatory)
- Experience with controlled experimentation methods for data acquisition (desirable, not obligatory)
- Experience in ML/DL techniques
- Experience in Signal Processing techniques

MAI

SERGI ABADAL CAVALLÉ

AC

Recent advancements in nanotechnology have enabled the development of means for sensing and wireless communications with unprecedented miniaturization and capabilities, to the point that they can be introduced into the gastrointestinal tract inside a pill or into the bloodstream in the form of passively flowing nanomachines. 

This opens the door to the idea of intra-body communication networks, this is, a swarm of nanosensors inside the human body that use communications to coordinate their actions to sense and localize specific events (lack of oxygen, biomarkers, etc). This can lead to the development of applications such as continuous monitoring of diabetes, detection and localization of cancer micro-tumors, or early detection of blood clots. These possibilities are currently investigated by our team at the N3Cat (www.n3cat.upc.edu).

In this context, we are looking for excellent and self-motivated individuals who are eager to work on developing AI schemes (based on graph neural networks or multi-agent RL) for the detection and localization of events inside of the human body. Data will be gathered with an in-house simulator that integrates mobility models (BloodVoyagerS) and communication models (TeraSim).

Students wanting to apply are required to have a notable student record. Moreover, candidates are expected to be:
- Highly motivated and self-sufficient,
- Willing to learn, pay attention to detail,
- With a good level of English (both oral and written).

MAI

SERGI ABADAL CAVALLÉ

AC

Seeing that not all neural networks fit to all problems, and that relational data is present in a wide variety of aspects of our daily life, the main focus of this thesis in N3Cat (www.n3cat.upc.edu) and BNN-UPC (www.bnn.upc.edu) is to explore the possibilities of the Graph Neural Networks (GNNs), whose aim is to learn and model graph-structured relational data. We are looking for students willing to study the uses, architectures, and algorithms of GNNs. To this end, the candidate will work on ONE of the following areas:

• Uses: Applying GNNs in emerging application areas, including but not limited to (1) electroencephalogram (EEG) analysis for Alzheimer's disease detection, epilepsy classification, motor imagery; (2) acceleration of the compilation of quantum computing algorithms
• Architectures: Investigating ways to accelerate the processing of GNNs in multiple computing platforms (CPU, GPU, accelerators).
• Algorithms: Developing meta-learning data-driven models to estimate the accuracy of a GNN for a given graph, without training, through synthetic graph generation and correlation analysis.

Students wanting to apply are required to have a notable student record. Moreover, candidates are expected to be:
- Highly motivated and self-sufficient,
- Willing to learn, pay attention to detail,
- Aware of current trends on machine learning, neural networks,
- With a good level of English (both oral and written).

Excellent students may be eligible for a grant in this offer.

MAI

SERGI ABADAL CAVALLÉ

AC

Quantum computers promise exponential improvements over conventional ones due to the extraordinary properties of qubits. However, a quantum computer faces many challenges relative to the movement of qubits which is completely different from the movement of classical data. This thesis delves into these challenges and proposes solutions to create scalable quantum computing systems and the algorithms that run within them, following the current European projects at N3Cat (www.n3cat.upc.edu) on scalable quantum computing.

The interested candidate will work in a group of several PhD students and in collaboration with Universitat Politècnica de València, working in ONE of the following areas:

• Study the use of AI to model quantum computers or to assist in the development of architectural methods (qubit mapping, qubit partitioning, qubit routing).
• Study the potential scaling and adaptation of the existing quantum computing architectures to specific quantum machine learning algorithms (QAOA, VQE, others).

- Fonaments de computació quàntica.
- Atenció al detall.
- Bon expedient acadèmic

MAI

ENRIQUE ROMERO MERINO

CS

LABINQUIRY project aims to develop a didactic infrastructure to help secondary school and university teachers to implement inquiry-based learning processes called study and research paths (SRPs). The starting point of an SRP is an open question that students address in small groups with the help of the teacher, they have to search for data, information, new tools and knowledge, etc, study them and jointly elaborate a single answer of the whole class.

One difficulty posed by the SRPs in terms of management is the teacher's treatment of the weekly reports produced by the student groups with the partial results of the work done during the week. The teacher responsible for the SRP has to "process" these reports in limited time in order to prepare the next class session. In this processing, the teacher has to read the reports - about 10-12 per class -, compile the most important information and group them according to the type of questions raised by each team, the data collected, the interim results provided, and the sources of information used.

The research group responsible for the LABINQUIRY project is interested in achieving an automatic processing of the content of student reports. The aim of the TFM would be, from a set of 10-12 reports, to collect and organise the information contained in the reports to help the teacher organise the next task. Both the questions posed by the teacher in the SRP and the students' reports are natural language texts. The collection and organisation of the information can be done at different levels and from different points of view (some of which are already fixed but some of which are not), giving flexibility to the work to be done during the TFM. In principle, the techniques to be used would fall into the following areas: unsupervised learning (clustering) and natural language processing (word embeddings).

The expected timing is January-June 2024.

To carry out this project it is advisable to have a good mastery of Spanish and/or Catalan and the techniques mentioned above.