Prof. Albert Y. Zomaya

Affiliation: Centre for Distributed & High Performance Computing

School of Computer Science

University of Sydney, Australia

Biography: Albert Y. ZOMAYA is Chair Professor of High-Performance Computing & Networking in the School of Computer Science and Director of the Centre for Distributed and High-Performance Computing at the University of Sydney. To date, he has published > 600 scientific papers and articles and is (co-)author/editor of >30 books. A sought-after speaker, he has delivered >250 keynote addresses, invited seminars, and media briefings. His research interests span several areas in parallel and distributed computing and complex systems. He is currently the Editor in Chief of the ACM Computing Surveys and served in the past as Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Computers (2010-2014) and the Founding Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Computing (2016-2020).

Professor Zomaya is a decorated scholar with numerous accolades including Fellowship of the IEEE, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Institution of Engineering and Technology (UK). Also, he is an Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of New South Wales and an Elected Foreign Member of Academia Europaea. He is the recipient of the1997 Edgeworth David Medal from the Royal Society of New South Wales for outstanding contributions to Australian Science, the IEEE Technical Committee on Parallel Processing Outstanding Service Award (2011), IEEE Technical Committee on Scalable Computing Medal for Excellence in Scalable Computing (2011), IEEE Computer Society Technical Achievement Award (2014), ACM MSWIM Reginald A. Fessenden Award (2017), and the New South Wales Premier’s Prize of Excellence in Engineering and Information and Communications Technology (2019).

Title: Managing Edge Ecosystems: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract: Recent technological trends such as Industry 4.0 introduced new challenges that push the limit of current computer and networking architectures. It demands the connection of thousands, if not millions, of sensors and mobile devices coupled with optimized operations to automate various operations inside factories. This led to the new era of Internet of Things (IoTs) where lightweight (possibly mobile) devices are envisaged to send vital information to cloud data centres (mobile and fixed infrastructure) for further processing and decision making.

Current cloud computing systems, however, are not able to efficiently digest and process collected information from IoT devices with strict response requests for two main reasons: (1) the round trip delay between IoT devices to the processing engines of cloud could exceed an application’s threshold, and (2) network links to cloud resources could be clogged when IoT devices flush data in an uncoordinated fashion. Fog and Edge Computing are two solutions to address both of the previous problems. Though designed to alleviate the same problem, they have fundamental differences that make adopting one more applicable than the other.

This talk will overview the practical concerns of exploiting Edge Computing to realize today’s IoT implementations through tackling the most important obstacles that hinder their adoption. First, production of applicable network (fixed and mobile) latency models to capture all elements of IoT platforms. Second, building a holistic Edge ecosystem to orchestrate various inter-related layers of IoT platforms, including connectivity, big-data analytics, and workload optimization. Third, proposing viable solutions that can actually be implemented in IoT-based applications, such as, vehicular networks, preventative maintenance, health, energy, to name a few.