PhD – Software and Systems Security – Belgium

In the Computer Systems Lab, they aim to hire multiple PhD students on national and international research projects in the domain of software and systems security, in particular in techniques to find, mitigate, and fix bugs and vulnerabilities in code written in C/C++/Rust.

Topics of interest on which they plan to work are:

• finding bugs in C/C++/Rust code bases, not based on hard-coded rules, but from learning rules from the code base under test.
• automatically fixing bugs in C/C++/Rust code bases.
• improving existing static analyses for C/C++/Rust code bases by making them scalable to (very) large code bases.

Requirements

Candidates must have:

• a Master of Science in Computer Science, Computer Science Engineering, or equivalent.
• Experience in any of the following are highly relevant: software development in C/C++/Rust, knowledge of the principles underlying C/C++/Rust developer tools (e.g., debuggers, compilers, software analysis and rewriting tools and techniques), LLVM, and fuzzing.
• Experience with Linux-like environments and software development in the context of large (open-source) software projects is highly valuable.

Benefits

Funding covers 4 years of PhD research as a PhD student, with a possible 5th year extension, at any possible starting date. As a PhD student at Ghent University, you have an (equivalent) gross income of around 50k Euro/year that allows for comfortable independent living in Belgium and hence focus on research.

Organization/Company – Ghent University.

Research field – Computer science » Other

Research profile – First Stage Researcher (R1).

Country –Belgium.

Application Deadline – 14 Nov 2025 – 00:00 (UTC).

More information: Euraxess.