Speaker: Gil Zussman

Title: Power Grid State Estimation Following a Joint Cyber and Physical Attack

Bio: Gil Zussman received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Technion in 2004. Between 2004 and 2007 he was a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT. Since 2007 he has been with Columbia University where he is now an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Between 2014 and 2016 he was a Visiting Scientist in the School of Computer Science in Tel Aviv University. His research interests are in the area of networking, and in particular in the areas of wireless, mobile, and resilient networks. He has been an associate editor of IEEE/ACM Trans. on Networking, IEEE Trans. on Control of Network Systems, IEEE Trans. on Wireless Communications, and Ad Hoc Networks, the Technical Program Committee (TPC) co-chair of ACM MobiHoc’15 and IFIP Performance 2011, and a member of a number of TPCs (including the INFOCOM, MobiCom, SIGMETRICS, and MobiHoc committees). Gil received the Knesset (Israeli Parliament) award for distinguished students, the Marie Curie Outgoing International Fellowship, the Fulbright Fellowship, the DTRA Young Investigator Award, the NSF CAREER Award, and the Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship. He was the PI of a team that won the 1st place in the 2009 Vodafone Americas Foundation Wireless Innovation Project competition. He is a co-recipient of seven best paper awards, including the ACM SIGMETRICS / IFIP Performance’06 Best Paper Award, the 2011 IEEE Communications Society Award for Advances in Communication, and the ACM CoNEXT’16 Best Paper Award.

Speaker: R. Srikant

Title: Network Algorithms and Delay Performance in Data Centers

Abstract: Data center networks interconnect massive server farms used to process big data for a variety of applications. In such networks, resource allocation algorithms are used to distribute computing and network resources, to competing data-processing tasks. The main objective of the algorithms is to ensure very small latencies for delay-critical applications. These algorithms operate at different time scales: at the slow time-scale of jobs, at the intermediate time-scale of flows (communication messages between parallel jobs) and at the fast time-scale of packets. In the first part of the talk, we will present an overview of the architecture of data center networks and the various resource allocation problems that arise in such networks. In the second part of the talk, we will discuss the impact of fair-resource algorithms on the heavy-traffic delay performance of flows in data centers.

Bio: R. Srikant is the Fredric G. and Elizabeth H. Nearing Endowed Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Coordinated Science Lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests include communication networks, cloud computing, and machine learning. He is the recipient of the 2015 IEEE INFOCOM Achievement Award and the 2019 IEEE Koji Kobayashi Computers and Communications Award. His best paper awards include the 2015 INFOCOM Best Paper Award and the 2017 Applied Probability Best Publication Award. He is a past Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, and is a Fellow of the IEEE.

Speaker: Leandros Tassiulas

Title: Optimizing the Network Edge for Flexible Service Provisioning

Abstract: The virtualization of network resources provides unique flexibility in service provisioning in most levels of the network stack. Softwarization of the network control and operation (SDN) is a key enabler of that development. Starting from the network core, SDN is a dominant trend in the evolution of network architectures with increased emphasis recently on the network edge. I will present some recent results in this area starting with a study on migration from legacy networking to SDN enabled network modules. The trade-off between the benefits of SDN upgrades and the cost of deployment is addressed and captured by an appropriate sub-modular function that allows to optimize the penetration pace of the technology. Validation on some real world network topologies and traffic matrices will be presented as well. Then we move our attention to the network periphery. A wireless multi-hop extension at the network edge is considered and the problem of enabling SDN is addressed via replication of SDN controllers. The delay constraints of the controlled data-path elements is appropriately modeled and the problem of locating the controllers is addressed via optimization and a proof-of concept implementation. An alternate approach is considered then for the wireless network where we assume coexistence of SDN enabled components with network islands operating under distributed adhoc routing protocols. The trade-off of the coexistence is studied and the impact of SDN penetration is evaluated. Some paradigms of collaborative network services are presented finally as they are enabled by the above architectural evolution.

Bio: Leandros Tassiulas is the John C. Malone Professor of Electrical Engineering at Yale University. His research interests are in the field of computer and communication networks with emphasis on fundamental mathematical models and algorithms of complex networks, architectures and protocols of wireless systems, sensor networks, novel internet architectures and experimental platforms for network research. His most notable contributions include the max-weight scheduling algorithm and the back-pressure network control policy, opportunistic scheduling in wireless, the maximum lifetime approach for wireless network energy management, and the consideration of joint access control and antenna transmission management in multiple antenna wireless systems. Dr. Tassiulas is a Fellow of IEEE (2007). His research has been recognized by several awards including the IEEE Koji Kobayashi computer and communications award (2016), the inaugural INFOCOM 2007 Achievement Award "for fundamental contributions to resource allocation in communication networks," several best paper awards including the INFOCOM 1994, 2017 and Mobihoc 2016, a National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Initiation Award (1992), an NSF CAREER Award (1995), an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (1997) and a Bodossaki Foundation award (1999). He holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland, College Park (1991). He has held faculty positions at Polytechnic University, New York, University of Maryland, College Park, University of Ioannina and University of Thessaly, Greece.