Testing, Diagnosis and Failure Prediction in the Age of Computricity:

The Faculty of Informatics is pleased to announce a seminar given by Miroslaw Malek

DATE: Wednesday, October 26th, 2011
PLACE: USI Università della Svizzera italiana, room 355,  Main building (Via G. Buffi 13)
TIME: 10.30

ABSTRACT:
We introduce three "tyrants," namely, complexity, time, and uncertainty and conclude that because of them dependability is and will continue to be a permanent challenge. We argue that with current complexity levels and necessity of dealing with time, in addition to classical synthesis and analysis methods, we need to turn to empirical data-driven approaches which require monitoring, online measurement, online analysis, diagnosis, failure prediction and decision making to support recovery and nonstop computing and communication.

I will take you on personal journey reflecting on my research, starting with testing and diagnosis and followed by my current work on proactive fault management by demonstrating how runtime monitoring, variable selection and model re-evaluation lead to effective failure prediction.

Finally, I show how our approaches can be useful in addressing challenges in the quest for computricity (defined as a compute power and storage ubiquitously accessible to individuals and organizations anywhere, anytime).

BIO:
Miroslaw Malek received the Ph.D. degree in Computer Science in 1975, from the Technical University of Wroclaw, Poland.
He is professor and holder of the Chair in Computer Architecture and Communication at Humboldt University in Berlin since 1994. In 1977, he was a visiting scholar at the Department of Systems Design at the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada, then Assistant, Associate, and Full Professor at the University of Texas at Austin where he was also a holder of the Bettie Margaret Smith and the Southwestern Bell Professorships in Engineering. Malek's research interests focus on high-performance responsive computing, including parallel architectures, real-time systems, networks and fault tolerance. He has participated in two pioneering parallel computer projects, contributed to the theory and practice of parallel network design, developed the comparison-based method for system diagnosis, co developed comprehensive WSI and networks testing techniques, proposed the consensus-based framework for responsive (fault-tolerant, real-time) computer systems design and has made numerous other contributions, reflected in over 100 publications and a book with G. J. Lipovski entitled; Parallel Computing: Theory and Comparisons.

He has organized, chaired, and been a program committee member of numerous IEEE and ACM international conferences and workshops. Among others, he was program and general chairman of the Real-Time Systems Symposium in 1984 and 1985 respectively, and in 1994 general chairman of the 24th Fault-Tolerant Computing Symposium. He serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, Real-Time Systems Journal and Journal of Interconnection Networks.

Malek was a Visiting Scientist at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, at IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY and a Visiting Professor at Stanford University. He served as Liaison Scientist at the Office of Naval Research in London and then held the IBM Chair at Keio University in Japan during the period of June 1990 until August 1992.

Malek has been teaching a number of courses on computer architecture, dependability and technical entrepreneurship with emphasis on e-business and Internet technologies. He is a consultant to startup companies and multinational corporations advising on both technical and strategic directions and activities.

HOST: Prof. Mauro Pezzè