Trinity is Ireland's leading university and is ranked 87th in the world (QS World University Rankings 2025).
Founded in 1592, the University is steeped in history with a reputation for excellence in education, research, and innovation, which has been inspiring generations of thinkers for over 400 years.
Novel optical access and metro networks are essential to support fast growing capacity requirement, driven by future applications and services for 6G and beyond.
Networks are also evolving to support a large variety of signals across larger access and metro network areas.
For these novel scenarios, flexibility becomes an essential feature, driven by the development of flexible components and open networks.Development of Digital Twins, capable of building dynamic models from information gathered form live networks become essential to manage network requests, while maintaining high availability and optimal resource utilization.
Three PhD studentships are available for work in the area of Digital Twins for optical networks, making use of intelligent AI-driven control planes.
The work will involve: i) (i) development of network probing algorithms for OSNR/GSNR measurement automation; (ii) development of adaptive ML and critical component analysis, and (iii) development of Automation of ML model and data selection.The applicants should have knowledge of machine learning and optical networks and willing to engage in testbed-oriented research.
The work will be carried out in the new OpenIreland research infrastructure, a large-scale testbed for experimentation in open optical, wireless and cloud technologies.
The position will be based in the CONNECT research centre at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland and will be funded under the Science Foundation Ireland Investigators award project.
The researcher will have the opportunity to build their research portfolio within a range of projects within CONNECT.
The researcher will also be part of the School of Computer Science and Statistics in TCD.The position will be under the direction of Prof. Marco Ruffini and Prof. Dan Kilper Please see full job description and application procedure below.
Application Procedure