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PhD scholarship "Modal Logic, Foundations of Equilibrium Logic and Answer Set Programming", Toulouse (France), Deadline: 10 July 2011

PhD scholarship "Modal Logic, Foundations of Equilibrium Logic and Answer Set 
Programming"

Answer Set Programming (ASP) is a successful new paradigm for declarative 
programming and logic-based problem solving. Recent research has focused on 
language extensions of ASP (e.g. by epistemic and temporal concepts) and on the 
development of logical techniques for program analysis and modularity.

Non-classical logics such as equilibrium logic [Lifschitz et al. 2001] are now 
widely acknowledged to form an adequate logical foundation for ASP. Recently it 
has been proposed to recast equilibrium logic in the framework of modal logic 
[Farinas and Herzig 2011].

The aim of the thesis is to further strengthen the connections between ASP and 
modal logic. Some of the areas that could be developed during the thesis are:
- modal logics contributing to the foundations of ASP;
- extensions of equilibrium logic with modal operators of time, knowledge, 
belief, etc.;
- hybrid knowledge bases that combine reasoning with nonmonotonic rules and 
classical knowledge sources such as ontologies.

The thesis will be prepared in the European Lab "Advanced Studies in 
Information Representation and Processing" in co-tutorship between Institut de 
Recherche en Informatique de Toulouse (IRIT) and Universidad Politecnica de 
Madrid (UPM). It starts on October 1, 2011. The scholarship is provided by the 
French Ministery of Education (3 years, about 1600 per month).

References:
[Farinas and Herzig 2011] L. Farias del Cerro and A. Herzig, "The modal logic 
of equilibrium models", Proc. Frontiers of Combining Systems (FroCoS 2011), to 
appear.
[Lifschitz et al. 2001] V. Lifschitz and D. Pearce and A. Valverde, "Strongly 
equivalent logic programs", ACM Transactions on Computational Logic 2 (4), pp. 
526-541. 2001. (see http://www.equilibriumlogic.net)

Supervisors:
Andreas Herzig and Luis Farinas del Cerro (IRIT), David Pearce (UPM)

Required competences:
Applicants should have some knowledge of modal logic and/or ASP.

Applicants should send a CV (including grades) to herzig@irit.fr and 
farinas@irit.fr before July 10, 2011.