Developing Predictive Analytics and Smart Metrics for Smart Contracts Vulnerability Detection

We are recruiting new Doctoral Researchers to our EPSRC funded Doctoral Training Partnership (DTP) PhD studentships starting 1 October 2024. Applications are invited for the project title Developing Predictive Analytics and Smart Metrics for Smart Contracts Vulnerability Detection

Successful applicants will receive an annual stipend (bursary) of £21,237, including inner London weighting, plus payment of their full-time home tuition fees for a period of 42 months (3.5 years).

You should be eligible for home (UK) tuition fees there are a very limited number (no more than three) of studentships available to overseas applicants, including EU nationals, who meet the academic entry criteria including English Language proficiency.

You will join the internationally recognised researchers in the Department of Computer Science research and PhD programmes | Brunel University London

The Project

The adoption of blockchain technology is taking place at a fast pace. Despite its popularity, the technology is riddled with vulnerabilities. Recent survey on one of the most popular blockchains – Ethereum, discovered that 8,833 out of the 19,366 existing Ethereum contracts are vulnerable.

This research proposal aims to develop a framework for predicting security vulnerabilities within blockchain systems. The project will focus on creating smart metrics for early detection. These metrics will analyze code patterns and transaction behaviors to identify anomalies that may indicate a security threat. The aim is to provide developers and security experts with tools to preemptively address vulnerabilities ensuring stronger integrity and trust in blockchain technologies. The project's outcomes could significantly reduce the incidence of costly bugs and reinforce blockchain as a secure foundation for digital transactions.

The success of this project will result in a multi-layered security approach, combining data analysis, machine learning, large language models and formal verification.

Please contact Dr Rumyana Neykova at rumyana.neykova@brunel.ac.uk for an informal discussion about the studentships.

Eligibility

Applicants will have or be expected to receive a first or upper-second class honours degree in an Engineering, Computer Science, Design, Mathematics, Physics or a similar discipline. A Postgraduate Masters degree is not required but may be an advantage.

Skills and Experience

Applicants will be required to demonstrate the following skills;

Proficiency in at least one programming language.
A solid background in computer science, especially in algorithms, data structures, and software engineering.
Good analytical and problem-solving skills, along with the ability to communicate results clearly.

Familiarity with blockchain basics and experience with smart contract programming languages like Solidity can be beneficial, it is not strictly required and is not a prerequisite for the position.

You should be highly motivated, able to work independently as well as in a team, collaborate with others and have good communication skills.

How to apply

There are two stages of the application:

1.Applicants must submit the pre-application form via the following link

https://brunel.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/epsrc-dtp-24-25-pre-application-form-brunel-university-lon

by 16.00 on Friday 5th April 2024.

2.If you are shortlisted for the interview, you will be asked to email the following documentation in a single PDF file to cedps-studentships@brunel.ac.uk within 72hrs.

Your up-to-date CV;
Your Undergraduate degree certificate(s) and transcript(s) essential;
Your Postgraduate Masters degree certificate(s) and transcript(s) if applicable;
Your valid English Language qualification of IELTS 6.5 overall (minimum 6.0 in each section) or equivalent, if applicable;
Contact details for TWO referees, one of which can be an academic member of staff in the College.

Applicants should therefore ensure that they have all of this information in case they are shortlisted.

Interviews will take place in April/May 2024.

Meet the Supervisor(s)

Rumyana Neykova - Dr Rumyana Neykova is a lecturer at Brunel University London. She has a PhD from Imperial College London where she was also a fellow and a research associate. Her PhD focuses on development and applications of a type theory (called session types) for runtime verification of concurrent and distributed systems. Her body of work builds on the foundations of concurrency theory and type systems to offer practical, yet rigorous, verification techniques for distributed systems. She utilises type systems, formal methods, model checkers, compiling techniques, and code generation to help prevent communication faults (such as deadlocks and communication mismatches), increase software reliability, improve performance, assist the software development process, and enhance software understanding.