The Systems Software Group at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg offers a funded student scholarship. We are looking for highly motivated and talented students to join our research group during the summer, working at the intersection of Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) and distributed systems.

This student scholarship provides the recipient with the opportunity to conduct research in close collaboration with our team and actively contribute to ongoing research projects. The successful candidate will work on secure and resilient distributed systems, including exploring the use of TEEs such as Intel SGX, AMD SNP, or ARM CCA to speed up fault-tolerant replication algorithms or work on attestation for SmartNICs.

Your responsibilities

• Conduct research on the design and implementation of secure distributed systems using TEEs
• Prototype and evaluate systems in realistic adversarial settings
• Collaborate with PhD students and postdocs, and contribute to academic publications
• Participate in regular group meetings and project updates

Your profile

• Immatriculated student (e.g. B.Sc. / B.Eng.) in Computer Science, Computer Engineering, or a related field
• Solid background in at least one of: systems security, trusted computing, distributed systems, operating systems or computer engineering
• Programming skills in at least one of the following languages: C/C++, Rust, Java
• Interest in conducting system-level research
• Strong analytical thinking and motivation to pursue independent research
• Excellent communication skills in English

What we offer

• A student scholarship awarded for the summer period of up to 3 months
• A monthly scholarship rate of 1000 €
• Mentorship and integration into a lively and welcoming research team
• Access to cutting-edge infrastructure and resources
• Hands-on research experience

How to apply

Please send the following documents in a single PDF to i4scholarship@cs.fau.de:

• Short motivation letter (at most 1 page)
• CV
• Transcript of records
• If available: links to samples of prior research (e.g., thesis, paper, project)

We particularly encourage applications from under-represented groups in STEM and aim to foster an inclusive research environment.

Contact

If you have any questions, please contact i4scholarship@cs.fau.de:. Also ruediger.kapitza@fau.de.