Networked Systems

The Computer Networks Group researches and develops distributed infrastructure for secure communication and computation at all levels of the networking stack. Our past activities include work on sensor networks, autonomic operations of networks, bio- and chemically-inspired networking, as well as mobile code. Currently our main focus is on survivable computing.

Small villages maintain "commons" like grazing land to which all farmers send their cows, benefitting from shared management (shepherd) and sustainable operations (rotating the grazing patches). In modern computing environment, it seems that we have to reinterpret this concept for defending our computational needs (cows grazing) where some landlords (cloud providers and smartphone manufacturers) see themselves in a position to selectively deny access to the offered resources (deplatforming). Our research on "survivable computing" explores means to guarantee successul and secure computation under extremely dystopic conditions where the computation power of individuals are quite limited (up to being non-existent) and all the computations take place in a controlled environment by a possibly hostile authority. Our research here combines various aspects of distributed computing, cryptography, software engineering, and obfuscation techniques. For a detailed information, check the page "Research".

Decentralized system desing — Day-by-day, decentralized systems keep increasing their importance in our lives with a variety of applications. This is due to the ongoing trend of independence from authorities and avoiding single point of failures. For example, instead of designing one big, secure and reliable server, in our research we explore the benefit of small and virtual "security bubbles" which are secure within themselves by using advanced tools and minimal dependency on the honesty of each individual, from where we use such bubbles to create aggregated distributed systems. For more information, we refer to the page "Research".

Student projects — We offer student projects both at undergraduate and master levels. Please see the page "Student Projects" for more detailed information.

In the upcoming Fall 2024 semester, Prof. Tschudin is offering the courses Computer Architecture, Foundations of Distributed Systems, Seminar: 101 Things I Learned in Computer Science, and Seminar: Radio Packet Networks. Also, Dr. Lavoie and Ali Ajorian are offering Seminar: Interpretation and Compilation of Programming Languages. All of the courses will have a practical side, which is specifically designed to improve students experience for the career roads they will take. For more information, see the page "Courses".

Open Positions

Currently, we do not have any open positions. Please get in touch with the respective group member via email to apply for a student project or a masters degree.

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