DC10 — Privacy and Safety for Carbon-Aware Site-Level Workload Management
Host: Dell Technologies, Ireland — CTO Research group (OCTO), Cork. The PhD degree is awarded by Imperial College London.
Work package: WP2/WP3 (Carbon-Aware Intelligence and Control)
Duration and start: 36 months, full-time; start between February and September 2027 (latest start September 2027).
The project
A datacenter that hosts many tenants must keep them strictly separated, but that separation costs energy — and nobody knows how much. Because the cost is unknown, security is left out of carbon-aware planning. In this project you measure it and bring it in.
You will measure the energy and performance cost of state-of-the-art isolation mechanisms, turn that into machine-readable security policies, and build a site-level scheduler that balances tenant service levels, security, and energy use together.
What you will work on:
- Measure the energy and performance overhead of state-of-the-art tenant-isolation mechanisms.
- Develop machine-readable security policies that describe the trade-off between isolation level and energy cost.
- Create a site-level scheduler that co-optimizes tenant service levels, security, and energy use.
What you will deliver:
- A catalog of energy and performance overheads for common isolation technologies.
- An open-source library that generates and enforces energy-aware security policies.
- A site-level scheduling prototype that balances security, performance, and carbon in a simulated multi-tenant datacenter.
Secondments
You will spend two research visits with partners in the network:
- Imperial College London (London, United Kingdom) — 3 months from around March 2028 (academic), with Fei Teng: measure the energy overhead of tenant-isolation mechanisms.
- Technische Universität Berlin (TU Berlin) (Berlin, Germany) — 3 months from around March 2029 (academic), with Axel Küpper: combine the energy-aware security policies with the agentic trust platform.
The host
Dell Technologies’ CTO Research group (OCTO) in Cork works on secure systems, hardware acceleration, cryptography, and data-centric computing.
You will be employed by Dell Technologies and enrolled for your PhD at Imperial College London (London, United Kingdom).
Supervision
Main supervisor: Aidan O’Mahony (ORCID) — Senior Principal Research Scientist, Dell Technologies CTO Research (Cork). He works on secure systems, cryptography, and FPGAs.
Co-supervisors:
Profile we are looking for
- Systems security, virtualization, and isolation
- Performance measurement
- Scheduling or optimization is a plus
- MSc (completed or near completion) in computer science, computer engineering, or a related field
- Curiosity, initiative, and good spoken and written English
You must also meet the MSCA eligibility rules — no PhD yet, the mobility rule, and open to all nationalities.
How to apply
Official vacancy at the host institution: link coming soon.
Until then, apply through the central AEGIS application portal: AEGIS application portal (reference position DC10), and read what to include in your application.
Questions about this position? Contact the coordinator, Prof. Paul Pop, aegis@compute.dtu.dk.