A funded M.Sc. by Research position is available within the Department of Communications and Computer Engineering in the Faculty of ICT, in collaboration with CERN, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research.
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN is presently the world’s biggest and highest energy particle accelerator. It collides beams of protons or heavy ions to study the fundamental elements of matter and our Universe. CERN is currently preparing for the next-generation accelerator to take over from LHC, the High-Luminosity LHC (HL-LHC), which is due to start operating in 2025.
In these machines, the beams are accelerated by means of metallic chambers containing electromagnetic fields, known as radiofrequency (RF) cavities. The surface of the RF cavities needs to be free from defects, such as cracks and other anomalies which may compromise its performance. CERN’s Engineering department has already developed a vision-based scanning solution, which can acquire images of the inside of the HL-LHC RF cavities.
The selected candidate will be working in conjunction with the Engineering department at CERN to develop anomaly detection algorithms to detect such defects automatically from the acquired imagery. The use of image processing and machine learning techniques will be explored within this M.Sc. The ideal candidate would have a background in signal processing, as well as knowledge of programming languages such as Python or MATLAB.
Interested candidates should get in touch via email with Dr Gianluca Valentino by 13 March 2020.
For more information, visit the CERN website or the University of Malta’s Particle Detector and Accelerator Research Group home page.