Loughborough University is a top-ten rated university in England for research intensity (REF2014) and an outstanding 66% of the work of Loughborough’s academic staff who were eligible to be submitted to the REF was judged as ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’, compared to a national average figure of 43%. In choosing Loughborough for your research, you’ll work alongside academics who are leaders in their field. You will benefit from comprehensive support and guidance from our Doctoral College, including tailored careers advice, to help you succeed in your research and future career. Software Defined Networks have transformed the current networking environment by offering scalability, programmability and flexibility in the network architecture. However, even though SDNs make it easier to mitigate specific attacks, such as DoS, they open up the space for new types of attack. Currently, OpenFlow, is the most popular SDN implementation and is used in some production environments. The successful applicant will perform high-quality research, at Wolfson School’s "Signal Processing and Networks" research group, in topics related to computer networks and network security. Therefore, a strong background in computer network communications is essential (e.g. the OSI stack). A core element of this project will be advanced network attacks, threat detection and mitigation techniques implemented in distributed SDN networks using the OpenFlow protocol (or equivalent). Of particular research interest to this project for achieving these goals are the following tools: pattern recognition for advanced network attacks, machine learning and statistical algorithms for anomaly-based intrusion detection, distributed algorithms and game theory. Development and research on some of these tools will be the “heart” of the research project. In addition the project will follow a practical/demonstrable approach, rather than restrict in theoretical approaches, and therefore, network traffic measurements and network architecture vulnerability exploration are going to be elements of the project.