The Trusted Networks Lab is always seeking qualified and highly motivated researchers and students to join its projects. The research opportunities include:
- PhD scholarships: scholarship opportunities are available to exceptional domestic and international students in the areas of blockchain, IoT, networks, trust, and related areas. Interested candidates are encouraged to contact us with their CV, transcripts, and statement of purpose.
- Masters research: supervision and in some cases scholarship opportunities are available for qualified students interested in masters research projects with the Trusted Networks Lab
- Undergraduate research: capstone project supervision and internship opportunities with TNL or its partners are available to interested undergraduate or honors students
- Postdoctoral research fellowships: the TNL may occasionally advertise open postdoctoral research fellowship opportunities
PhD project opportunities
Decentralized and Domain-specific Publish-Process-Subscribe Data Sharing Platforms for Supply Chain Applications
A PhD scholarship on “Decentralized and Domain-specific Publish-Process-Subscribe Data Sharing Platforms for Supply Chain Applications” is available with the Trusted Networks Lab at QUT, supported by the iMove CRC. The PhD project will involve research relating to blockchain, verifiable computation, and privacy. The scholarship provides a $40K/year stipend for three years and is only open to candidates currently located in Australia and able to commence their PhD by July 2021. Interested candidates, please send us your CV.
Trust in Internet-of-Things with blockchain
Blockchain is an unchangeable, distributed database. which provides trust in data once it is stored on the database. However, in Internet-of-Things (IoT), the data is an observation of physical context and is susceptible to noise, drift, or malicious alterations. Sensors may be even decoupled from their intended context by an attacker, which may compromise the blockchain data and its value for guiding decision.
This project aims to develop an innovative approach for pervasive trust in IoT, underpinned by blockchain. The research in this project will develop methods and algorithms for identity and data trust in IoT with the support of blockchain technology.
Forecasting disease spread risk based on human movement patterns
This project aims to forecast the risk of infectious disease spread, such as COVID-19 and dengue, based on human movement patterns. We’ll use multiple data sources that describe people movement in order to understand individual and population level mobility patterns, and use empirical disease case data to model the effect of movement on the spread of disease.
Internet of Mobile Energy
The emergence of the two-way communication model and Distributed Energy Sources (DES) is transforming traditional power systems from largely centralised energy production to more decentralised and connected management systems. This is called the ‘smart grid’.
As the smart grid evolves, electric vehicles (EVs) are emerging as unconventional and highly-disruptive participants in the grid that can add significant benefit and flexibility. Notably, EV’s are equipped with a relatively high capacity battery that stores energy to power the vehicle.
EV batteries, coupled with the recent introduction of two-way charging/discharging stations, open up the possibility of EV’s to also serve as mobile energy transporters within an electrical grid and as energy suppliers to the grid when they have disposable energy. Such functionalities allow EV’s to contribute to helping service peak demand or voltage regulation within specific zones of the grid.
The trends toward greater forecasting in smart grids, distributed energy generation and greater adoption and charging/discharging flexibility of EV’s highlight a greater convergence between the energy and transport sectors. The vision is a future where information and energy flow between the grid and electric vehicles is seamless and beneficial both to the grid’s stability and the end user’s interests. We refer to this vision as the Internet of Mobile Energy (IoME).
Honours/Bachelors thesis scholarship opportunity
Tree-Chain: A Fast Lightweight Consensus Algorithm for IoT Applications
In recent years, blockchain adaptation in IoT has received tremendous attention due to its salient features including distributed management, security, anonymity, and auditability. However, conventional blockchains are significantly resource demanding and suffer from lack of throughput, delay in committing transactions, and low efficiency. We recently introduced a novel blockchain consensus algorithm known as Tree-chain, that bases the validator selection on an existing feature in all blockchains: hash function. Tree-chain achieves a fast throughput while ensuring the randomness and unpredictability of the validators and thus protecting the security of the architecture. Tree-chain moves away from eventual consistency as in conventional blockchains, to near-immediate consistency as the validator of each transaction is always known.
The main objective of this project is to implement a Proof of Concept (PoC) implementation of Tree-chain to benchmark the performance including resource consumption, throughput, and delay in committing transactions. We are seeking motivated students with strong programming skills that are familiar with basic networking and security concepts and preferably socket programming. We will build a Tree-chain from scratch using Java programming language and test using Raspberry Pi devices. By the end of the project we expect to have a working prototype of Tree-chain on Raspberry Pi devices along with an evaluation of the performance. A scholarship may be available for highly qualified candidates.
Interested candidates should contact us to explore further.