Master's Studentship: Command and Control Systems at Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR)

About the job: 

• The CSIR has a vacancy for a Masters Studentship: Command and Control Systems in the Command-and-Control Integrated Systems Impact Area, within the Defence and Security Cluster.
• The incumbent will be conducting research primarily in the area of securing infrastructure and enterprise security against physical threats and will also focus on innovation as the threat landscape evolves.

Research areas: 

• Command and Control Capabilities, including
• Systems Engineering
• Critical Infrastructure protection
• Situation Awareness
• Future work
• Enterprise Architecture
• AI 
• And other CCS-related topics

Key responsibilities:

• Prepare a research proposal to be approved by both the CSIR and the university;
• Prepare a written literature overview of the current state-of-the-art relevant to the research topic;
• Perform original research to solve the open research problem(s) that the student identified in his/her proposal;
• Produce sufficient quantity and quality of peer-reviewed publications based on the Master¿s research topic;
• Compile the Master's dissertation and defend the work successfully; and
• Contribute to extra project activities that may be outside the scope of the master research as per the needs of the research group. The amount of such work shall be limited to 20% of the total time.

Qualifications, skills and experience:

• An Honours degree in electronic/computer engineering or a related field.
• Register for a Masters qualification within the South African university (to be agreed upon with the CSIR co-supervisor).
• Knowledge of the systems engineering methodologies, standards and tools.
• Experience in Model-based systems engineering, using tools such as CORE or Genesys, and security technologies will be advantageous
• Knowledge in risk assessment 
• Good understanding of the scientific method: design of experiments, running experiments, critical analysis of results, and dissemination of knowledge.
• Good communication skills (verbal and written) and ability to interact efficiently with diverse teams of people.