Thomas Meyer

I'm a post-doctoral researcher in the Computer Science Department at the University of Basel, and a member of the Computer Networks Research Group.

My research focuses on autonomic communications. In particular, I'm interested in applying distributed particle simulations to computer networking problems. One approach is to use an artificial chemistry where packets are treated as virtual molecules, being able to react with each other. Such an approach allows to naturally express networking protocols as distributed chemical reaction networks spanning multiple nodes. By adopting kinetic laws from chemistry, we are able to describe and analyze the dynamics of protocols in chemical terms, and to come up with simple convergence proofs.

During my PhD, I also studied how protocol software is able to heal itself in such a chemical setting. Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF), the "Self-healing Protocols" research project was dedicated to the development of protocols that are resilient and self-healing. Our chemical protocols are able to detect and diagnose their own faulty behavior and repair themselves to regain full functionality. Instead of designing an external monitor and healer application, we built the self-healing functionality around self-replicating code - a method that realizes the detection and repair of defective code in a self-organizing, intrinsic way.

I'm using the Fraglets language and artificial chemistry as an experimentation platform. Fraglets allows to express networking protocols in a "chemical" way. Current research focuses on the application of this approach to different networking problems as well as to the extension to other (physical) particle metaphors.

Mini CV:

2011-today: Software Architect (Patton-Inalp Networks AG, Switzerland)
2011-2012 : Part-time Lecturer and Post-doctoral Researcher (Computer Science Department, University of Basel, Switzerland)
2007-2010 : PhD Student (Computer Science Department, University of Basel, Switzerland)
2003-2007 : Software Architect (Patton-Inalp Networks AG, Switzerland)
2000-2003 : Software Engineer (Patton-Inalp Networks AG, Switzerland)
1995-2000 : Dipl. El.-Ing. ETH in Electrical Engineering (ETH Zurich, Switzerland)
     

Publications 2013:

Massimo Monti, Thomas Meyer, Christian Tschudin, and Marco Luise:
"Stability and Sensitivity Analysis of Traffic-Shaping Algorithms inspired by Chemical Engineering"
IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communication (JSAC), Special Issue on Network Science, Volume 31, Issue 6, 2013.

Massimo Monti, Manolis Sifalakis, Thomas Meyer, Christian Tschudin, and Marco Luise:
"A Chemical-Inspired Approach to Design Distributed Rate Controllers for Packet Networks"
6th IFIP/IEEE Workshop on Distributed Autonomous Network Management Systems (DANMS 2013), May 2013, Ghent, Belgium. (to appear)

Publications 2012:

Thomas Meyer and Christian Tschudin:
"A Theory of Packet Flows Based on Law-of-Mass-Action Scheduling"
31st IEEE International Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems (SRDS 2012), October 2012, Irvine, California.
[Pre-print PDF]

Massimo Monti, Thomas Meyer, Christian Tschudin, and Marco Luise:
"Signal Processing Applied to Chemically Inspired Communication Protocols"
2012 IEEE International Conference On Communications (ICC 2012), June 2012, Ottawa, Canada.
[PDF]

Thomas Meyer, Christian Tschudin: "Robust Network Services with Distributed Code Rewriting"
In: Lio, P.; Verma, D.C. (Eds.), Biologically Inspired Networking and Sensing: Algorithms and Architectures, IGI Global, ISBN 978-1-61350-092-7, 2012.
[BibTex]

Publications 2011:

Massimo Monti, Thomas Meyer, Marco Luise, Christian Tschudin:
"Analyzing the Dynamics of Chemical Networking Protocols with a Signal Processing Approach"
Technical Report, CS-2011-002, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Basel, 2011.
[PDF]   [BibTex]

Igor Talzi, Massimo Monti, Thomas Meyer, Christian Tschudin: "Force-Based Navigation in Wireless Sensornets"
In: Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Mobility in Wireless Sensor Networks (MobiSensor'2011), Barcelona, Spain, June 2011.

Thomas Meyer, Christian Tschudin:
"Flow Management in Packet Networks Through Interacting Queues and Law-of-Mass-Action Scheduling"
Technical Report, CS-2011-001, Department of Mathematics and Computer Science, University of Basel, 2011.
[PDF]   [BibTex]

Thomas Meyer: "On Chemical and Self-Healing Networking Protocols"
PhD Thesis, University of Basel, 2011.
[PDF/A]   [Corrigendum PDF/A]   [BibTex]
Complete latex sources (525 MB) [ZIP]
Defense Presentation: Slides [PDF], Slides + Notes [PDF], Backup Slides [PDF], Complete Presentation [Apple Keynote]

Publications 2010:

Thomas Meyer, Christian Tschudin: "Competition and Cooperation of Self-Healing Software"
Technical Report, CS-2010-004, CS Department, University of Basel, 2010.
[PDF]   [BibTex]

Thomas Meyer, Christian Tschudin: "Self-Organizing Code-Level Redundancy for Networking Protocols"
Technical Report, CS-2010-003, CS Department, University of Basel, 2010.
[PDF]   [BibTex]

Lidia Yamamoto, Thomas Meyer: "Biochemically-Inspired Emergent Computation"
Artificial Immune Systems, 9th International Conference, ICARIS 2010, Edinburgh, UK, July 26-29, 2010. In LNCS vol. 6209, Hart, E.; McEwan, C.; Timmis, J.; Hone, A. (Eds.), Springer, 2010, pp. 320-321.

Publications 2009:

Christian Tschudin, Thomas Meyer: "Programming by Equilibria"
15. Kolloquium Programmiersprachen und Grundlagen der Programmierung (KPS'09), Maria Taferl, Austria, October 12-14, 2009, Ergänzungsband, pp.37-46
[PDF]   [Slides Part 1 PDF]   [Slides Part 2 PDF]

Thomas Meyer, Christian Tschudin: "Chemical Networking Protocols"
Proceedings of the 8th ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks (HotNets-VIII), New York, NY, October 22-23, 2009.
[Pre-print PDF]   [Slides PDF]   [BibTex]
Extended Version Technical Report: [PDF]   [BibTex]

Thomas Meyer, Lidia Yamamoto, Wolfgang Banzhaf, Christian Tschudin: "Elongation Control in an Algorithmic Chemistry"
Proceedings of the 10th European Conference on Artificial Life (ECAL 2009), Budapest, Hungary, September 14-16, 2009, In LNCS vol. 5777, Kampis, G.; Karsai, I.; Szathmáry, E. (Eds.), Springer, 2011, pp. 267-274. (in press)
[Pre-print PDF]   [Poster PDF]

Publications 2008:

Thomas Meyer, Lidia Yamamoto, Christian Tschudin: "A Self-Healing Multipath Routing Protocol"
Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Bio-Inspired Models of Network, Information, and Computing Systems (BIONETICS 2008), November 2008.
[Pre-print PDF]   [Slides PDF]   [BibTex]

Thomas Meyer, Daniel Schreckling, Christian Tschudin, Lidia Yamamoto: "Robustness to Code and Data Deletion in Autocatalytic Quines"
Transactions on Computational Systems Biology X. In LNBI vol. 5410, Priami, C.; Dressler, F.; Akan, O.B.; Ngom, A. (Eds.), 2008, pp. 20-40.
[Pre-print PDF]   [DOI]   [BibTex]

Thomas Meyer, Lidia Yamamoto, Christian Tschudin: "An Artificial Chemistry for Networking"
Bio-Inspired Computing and Communication, First Workshop on Bio-Inspired Design of Networks (BIOWIRE 2007), Cambridge, UK, April 2-5, 2007. In LNCS vol. 5151, Revised Papers, Lio, P.; Yoneki, E.; Crowcroft, J.; Verma, D.C. (Eds.), Springer, 2008, pp. 45-57.
[Pre-print PDF]   [DOI]   [BibTex]

Publications 2007:

Lidia Yamamoto, Daniel Schreckling, Thomas Meyer: "Self-Replicating and Self-Modifying Programs in Fraglets"
Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Bio-Inspired Models of Network, Information, and Computing Systems (BIONETICS 2007), December 2007.
[Pre-print PDF]   [DOI]   [BibTex]