At Eindhoven University of Technology, shared between the Electrical Engineering and Mathematics and Computer Science Departments, there is a vacancy for a PhD student. The intended supervisors are George Exarchakos (EE) and Remco van der Hofstad (MCS). The project will focus on distributed ways to measure centrality in networks, for example using the Game of Thieves protocol. In this protocol, several walkers run through the network looking for commodities, and, upon finding them, the commodities are moved to the starting point of the walks. The most central nodes are the ones that receive the least commodities. The aim of the project is to describe this centrality measure, possibly using local weak convergence techniques, as well as to study what happens when central nodes are being removed. We are also interested in the dynamical properties of this centrality measure, in particular what happens when the graph changes over time while the walkers run around on the network. We aim to approach these problems in a mathematically rigorous way, and we expect the candidate to have some experience in formally proving results. Some experience with simulations is welcome, though not required.

For more details, see: https://jobs.tue.nl/en/vacancy/phd-networks-841606.html
Closing date: Tue 14 Apr 2020