CSIRO, Australia's national science agency, and the CSC (Chinese Scholarship Council) are currently offering positions for Chinese PhD students (PhDs) and Senior Visiting Scientists (Scholars) to work in Australia.

Among many projects on offer, this project is focused on Data-driven Nano Material Informatics and Big Data Analytics.

High-throughput computation is generating large-scale dataset, out of which information and knowledge need to be mined. This challenge is met with big data analytics and machine learning (ML) techniques. Scientific data points are characterised with arrays of features, and that how each one contributes to the properties needs to be understood. Different level computations have various trade-off between accuracy vs. CPU/GPU timing, intelligent strategies need to be developed providing real-time recommendation of optimal choices.

More specifically, this project involves:

• HPC scientific programming (Python),
• Database operation (SQL/HBase) ,
• Data processing/ML analysis/visualisation (ann/svm/rf/K-mean/SOM/decision tree/GA),
• ML model containerization/deployment (Docker/Django) ,
• Documenting Informatics/drafting manuscripts, etc.

To be competitive you will have skills and experience machine Learning (un-/supervised models, learning curve diagnose, genetic algorithm, self-organising map), Python programming, SQL and Git. Familiarity with HBase, R programming and High Performance Computing Cluster (HPCC) Dockers is also desirable.

PhDs or Scholars will develop skills in the following areas:

• Informatics: Implement in-house ML python library and work on a real-world data driven scientific task for material informatics.
• Development: The research would contribute to the development of a hybrid HPC+Big Data platform for high-throughput quantum chemistry computation.
• Publications: The visitor would co-/author high impact publications based on the research outcomes.

This scholarships includes international airfares and living allowances for 12-24 months for PhDs and 3-12 months for Scholars; as well as “operational costs” such as access to computers, office, lab space etc.  Salaries are covered by the home institution.

The process for selection involves nominations from CSIRO and the home institution in China, but begins by contacting the project leader, Baichuan Sun ([email protected]) for more information.