Asst/ Assoc Professor in Control and Orchestration of Complex Optical Networks

Will you be our next Assistant/Associate Professor who can contribute to the control and orchestration of complex optical networks? Are you fascinated by exponential growth of bandwidth demand and wonder how it can be sustained?

Position Associate Professor, Assistant Professor

Irène Curie Fellowship No

Department(s) Electrical Engineering

Institutes and others Eindhoven Hendrik Casimir Institute

FTE 1,0

Date off 18/06/2024

Reference number V36.7431

Job description

ECO Group
The Electro-Optical Communication systems (ECO) group in the faculty of Electrical Engineering has been leading the scientific and applied research into the use of light for communication systems for the past 40 years, in the Netherlands, Europe and the world. With a strong partnership with industry and academia around the globe, the ECO group offers new members an opportunity to become the next leaders in optical communications research. The core competence of the ECO staff members is making the link between different technologies and different requirements being raised by the industry. We apply the knowledge gained by collaborators and other scientists in the TU/e and more recently in the Eindhoven Hendrik Casimir Institute to develop the required solution for many of the most burning problems in communication. For that sake, the group includes expertise spanning the fundamentals of photonic integrated circuits (PICs) design and manufacturing to the higher layers of communication networks.

The ECO group is housed in the FLUX building on the TU/e Campus overlooking a state-of-the-art cleanroom and supported by more than 300m2 of labs for conducting experimental work. With 11 tenured scientists and as many as 70 PhD and Postdocs the ECO group is a vibrant and exciting research group perfectly suited to embed talented and ambitious scientists. In this video you can get a short glimpse at the kind of research activities carried out in our group through short interviews with past students.

Innovative Optical Networks
The ECO group has been a world leader in research for application of photonics in communication systems for more than 25 years. For the past 5-10 years there has been a huge increase in the intake of optical technologies in many segments of the data center, access and metro/core networks. Optical networks growth in large data centers is due to exponential growth in demand for bandwidth-hungry applications in the cloud and recently this growth has been further exponentially amplified by the emerging of highly computationally intensive AI applications. This trend will continue as consumers and machine-to-machine communication are using more and more data, exploiting the high capacity Fixed and Mobile telecom networks. Looking a few years ahead we foresee that some of current technologies are hitting the limits of their maximum capacity and thus innovative optical networks are crucial to be able to manage this traffic growth, reduce the energy consumption and the costs. The tremendous increase of traffic and connected devices, data centers, and network edge nodes is expected to push optical telecom and datacom networks capacity beyond its current limit. Future optical telecom and datacom networks will be highly complex as all layers of the networks, from the physical layer to the control and data processing and computing should be considered for optimal resource optimization, quality of services and energy consumption. Novel applications in emerging Internet of Things (IoT), 5G, and future 6G networks and applications such as autonomous driving, automated manufacturing, smart cities, industry 4.0 and more as well as the many emerging AI-enabled applications such as Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) have demanding requirements in terms of low and deterministic latency, high capacity and high computational power that oblige to move the computing from the cloud to the edge close to the users. Therefore, the massive 5G / 6G cell deployments and edge computing nodes as well as novel applications with different requirements in terms of connectivity, latency and reliability is forcing operators to deploy a large amount of networks elements and IT resources. Connectivity and coordination of such massive network elements and IT resources deployed in photonic networks becomes crucial to optimize and adapt those massive resources and match the heterogenous applications with different requirements as well as minimize their energy consumption. These complex networks will demand for novel low latency, scalable, and intelligent control systems from the local/access to the metro/core optical networks and data centers.

Job Description
Emerging future optical and computing networks will be required to integrate the increasing demand for bandwidth with the need to provide low latency access to advanced computation modalities. The network can be based on any variant of connected devices and computing nodes from traditional optical and wireless nodes to 6G-mobile computing nodes, edge computing nodes, and quantum nodes.

We foresee a need to build specific knowledge in optical network control and orchestration and more specifically to support the growing disparity between the different modes of communication and computing. The position can grow to support smart optical datacom and telecom networks including emerging free-space optics (FSO) and 6G optical wireless networks. A holistic approach is needed, covering local/access network to metro/core network and data centers, the transmission link optimization at the physical layer, and the computing decentralized systems by exploiting state of the art machine learning approaches to ultimately implement highly efficient and low energy consumption zero-touch autonomous networks. On the datacom and computing side we see trends towards networks of disaggregated and edge computing nodes required for new applications such as digital twin, mobile edge computing node for 6G, high performance computing, machine learning training networks, etc.

The research is a key part of the photonic system-oriented research activities in the Eindhoven Hendrik Casimir Institute (ECHI), contributing to solve the computing and communication challenges to enable a sustainable information society.

Job requirements

• PhD in Electrical/Photonic Engineering or Applied Physics, or a comparable domain.
• Ability to conduct high quality academic research, demonstrated for instance by a relevant PhD thesis and/or publication(s).
• Ability to teach, shown by experience or assistance in teaching and positive evaluations of these teaching efforts.
• Ability to initiate and sustain collaboration (often multidisciplinary) with national and international researchers.
• Interest and ability to valorise academic knowledge for/with industrial/commercial partners.
• Good communication and leadership skills.
• Excellent (written and verbal) proficiency in English.

Conditions of employment

A meaningful job in a dynamic and ambitious university, in an interdisciplinary setting and within an international network. You will work on a beautiful, green campus within walking distance of the central train station. In addition, we offer you:

• The opportunity to focus your career on education, research or impact. You can develop your personal ambitions and objections within the strategic objectives of the university.
• Female candidates are eligible for the Irène Curie Fellowship
• Salary in accordance with the Collective Labour Agreement for Dutch Universities.
• A year-end bonus of 8.3% and annual vacation pay of 8%.
• A dedicated mentoring program to help you get to know the university and the Dutch (research) environment.
• High-quality training programs for academic leadership and teaching.
• An excellent technical infrastructure, on-campus children's day care and sports facilities.
• Partially paid parental leave and an allowance for commuting, working from home and internet costs.
• A Staff Immigration Team is available for international candidates, as are a tax compensation scheme (the 30% facility) and partner career support.

Information and application

About us

Eindhoven University of Technology is an internationally top-ranking university in the Netherlands that combines scientific curiosity with a hands-on attitude. Our spirit of collaboration translates into an open culture and a top-five position in collaborating with advanced industries. Fundamental knowledge enables us to design solutions for the highly complex problems of today and tomorrow.

Curious to hear more about what it is like as a professor at TU/e? Please view the video.

Information
Do you recognize yourself in this profile and would you like to know more?
Please contact dr. O. Raz , Chair of the ECO group at o.raz@tue.nl or +31 40 247 3521.

Visit our website for more information about the application process or the conditions of employment. You can also contact Hella Ploegmakers, Recruiter, h.a.m.ploegmakers@tue.nl
or +31 6 43559624.

Are you inspired and would like to know more about working at TU/e? Please visit our career page.

Application

We invite you to submit a complete application. The application should include a:

• Cover letter in which you describe your motivation and qualifications for the position.
• Curriculum vitae, including a list of your publications and the contact information of three references.
• List of five self-selected ‘best publications’.
• Description of your scientific interests and plans (1-2 pages).
• Statement of your teaching goals and experience (1-2 pages).

We look forward to receiving your application and will screen it as soon as possible. The vacancy will remain open until the position is filled.