The Kempe Foundation has granted two years of funding for eight postdoctoral researchers in autonomous systems at Umeå University in Sweden. The project leaders include Erik Elmroth, Leonid Freidovich, Thomas Hellström, Helena Lindgren, Juan Carlos Nieves, Kai-Florian Richter, Martin Servin and Johan Tordsson. Recruitment of the researchers begins immediately, and is expected to be finished by the summer of 2017. The project leaders for the eight postdoctoral researchers are gathered. Courtesy of Umeå University. Autonomous systems consist of software and infrastructure that provide increased functionality, sustainability and efficiency for society with such devices as self-driving cars, industry robots and socially intelligent computer systems that can help people in their everyday life. "We are facing a dramatic transformation of industry and society, a transformation expected to be as dramatic as the industrialization in the early 1900s," said Erik Elmroth, professor of computing science at Umeå University and the leader of the autonomous system effort. Autonomous systems are expected to be central to smart buildings, smart cities, digital cognitive agents and production processes within broad fields. In these cases, the autonomous systems support the human ability to manage complexity by analysis and decision-making, often based on vast amounts of data and under hard time requirements. Another important area for autonomous systems is the management of the enormous IT infrastructure, including self-managing data centers and networks, where autonomous systems make the decisions on how, when and where capacity should be allocated. "This investment in autonomous systems is important to place the region and Umeå University in the forefront for the development of this area," Elmroth said. The Kempe Foundation offers postdoctoral scholarships to support researchers conducting working on topics closely related to the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis’ research agenda.