Postdoctoral position on a Sustainable Internet - Hiring in process/Finished, not possible to apply

The Department of Information Technology has a leading position in research and education in a wide spectrum of areas, from construction of computer systems, via programming of computers, storage and handling of data, to information retrieval and methods for applying computers in a variety of contexts. The Department currently has about 280 employees, including 120 teachers and 110 PhD students. More than 4,000 students take one or more courses at the department each year. More info: https://www.it.uu.se

The postdoc position is within the Division of Visual Information and Interaction.  The Division of Visual Information and Interaction hosts research activities ranging from social robotics, image processing, and human computer interaction (HCI). The postdoc’s topic pertains directly to sustainable HCI. The person appointed for this postdoc position will work closely with Prof. Hazas, across two funded projects.

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Projects and duties
The Internet and online services and devices account for about 9% of global electricity demand, and take a similar proportion of electricity in many developed economies. The growth in energy powering the online services and data that society relies upon shows no sign of slowing, with about 20% annual growth in network traffic. Conservative models predict that online services and devices will rise to 19% of global electricity over the next decade.

The Solar Internet project is funded by the Swedish Energy Agency and explores the design of Internet services from the perspective of constraints-based interaction design. Driven by the assumption that electricity and the Internet are always on and always available, growth is designed into each new system. This project prototypes the Solar Internet, a vision of the Internet powered by solar energy, as a platform to provoke more energy-aware Internet use. During winter, for every square meter of solar cells, a Swedish home could consume 50MB of data per day, or 1 minute of video. This provides a direct way to communicate the resource costs of internet use, for instance, visualizing Internet services in terms of hours-of-sunlight costs. The  project is a response to escalation in energy cost and environmental impact of web services; but also seeks to explore how we can design for modes of consumption which do not assume a continuous stream of energy or content. The Solar Internet operates as a feasible but imaginative context within which to explore constraints-based interaction design.  Possible tasks include: implementing interventions (e.g. bandwidth throttling, low-resource websites) which would mimic online service constraints in the Solar Internet; conduct an in-the-wild study with the interventions with ten homes; lead a journal paper on the energy and social consequences of Solar Internet mediated communication.

“Developing the Internet Microscope” is a project funded by the Internet Society Foundation.  The project will build a measurement toolkit which lets us sample a household (by postal mail) for the online services used, and the inhabitant activities, for a short period of time (e.g. 24 hours).  Creating a robust measurement toolkit will allow us, in follow-on work, to sample thousands of volunteer Swedish households.  At this empirical scale, we can see how online services are used, estimate their national energy demand, and link these to their importance and meaning in everyday life.  This will allow companies and government to create policies for a sustainable Internet that supports everyday life in the most important and meaningful ways.  Possible tasks include: prototype and verify a network data logger; create software tools for dataset anonymisation and aggregation/attribution of logged data into particular services (e.g. video streaming, social networking); validate time-use diary software (smartphone app); conduct a pilot study sampling 20 Swedish households.

Duties
The position is focused on research in the two projects described above, and includes a limited amount of teaching and departmental duties, but not more than 20%.

Requirements
PhD degree in computer networking or sustainable HCI or a foreign degree equivalent to a PhD degree in computer networking or sustainable HCI. The degree needs to be obtained by the time of the decision of employment. Those who have obtained a PhD degree three years prior to the application deadline are primarily considered for the employment. The starting point of the three-year frame period is the application deadline. Due to special circumstances, the degree may have been obtained earlier. The three-year period can be extended due to circumstances such as sick leave, parental leave, duties in labour unions, etc. Proficiency in English (spoken and written) is required.

Additional qualifications
Experience of working with human participants in their homes.
Research experience closely related to the area of environmental sustainability or energy demand.
Experience with embedded system development, and software analysis of large datasets.

About the employment
The employment is a temporary position of 2 years according to central collective agreement. Scope of employment 100 %. Starting date May 2022 or as agreed. Placement: Uppsala.

For further information about the position, please contact: Mike Hazas, mike.hazas@it.uu.se.

Please submit your application by 14 April 2022, UFV-PA 2022/857.

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