From: *Florian Echtler* 
Date: Thu, Feb 12, 2026 at 5:36 AM
Subject: PhD student (fully funded) in Usable Decentralization at AAU
To: 


Dear colleagues,

I'm hiring a fully-funded PhD student to work on the topic of "usable
decentralization", i.e. on making distributed and federated cloud
services accessible to the everyday user. The PhD position is located in
the Human-Centered Computing group at Aalborg University in Denmark.
Official job advertisement below:

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PhD Position in Usable Decentralization at Aalborg University

    We invite applications for a fully-funded 3-year PhD position on the
topic of usable decentralization, i.e. on making distributed and
federated cloud services accessible to the everyday user. Given the
strong prevalence of centralized cloud services, e.g. from Google,
Microsoft, or Apple, our digital resilience and sovereignty is built on
questionable foundations. By enabling non-technical users to setup and
use decentralized clouds on so-called “nanoservers”, we aim to
strengthen our digital independence.

   The stipend is open for appointment from April 1st, 2026, or soon
hereafter. The duration of the position is three years. The PhD stipend
is available within the general study program "Computer Science".


Your work tasks

   The main tasks for this PhD project consist of requirements analysis
through online surveys and interviews, prototype development for
accessible setup and operation of nanoservers (both on web and mobile
platforms), and longitudinal evaluation of the prototypes through live
deployments in users’ homes and offices.


Your competencies

Required:

     • Frontend development (ideally both on web and mobile)

     • Conducting and analyzing user studies, such as online surveys and
in-person experiments

   Desirable:

     • Backend development (Python, Ruby, …)

     • Linux system administration (deployment, networking)

     • Experience with decentralized/self-hosted services, e.g. Mastodon,
Nextcloud, Matrix, …

     • Experience with peer-to-peer networks (Tor, BitTorrent, WebRTC, …)


Who we are

The position will be located in the Human-Centered Computing section at
Aalborg University, which conducts empirical and solution-oriented
research on interactive computing technologies across individuals,
organisations, and society. The PhD will be supervised by Dr. Florian
Echtler, whose research centers around the intersection of ubiquitous
computing, peer-to-peer networking, and security/privacy.


For further details, see:

https://www.vacancies.aau.dk/phd-positions/show-vacancy/vacancyId/895183

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Feel free to forward to any potential applicants!

Thank you and best regards, Florian
-- 
SENT FROM MY DEC VT-50 TERMINAL