News

• Resilience Talk by Prof. Aydin Sezgin
• Second Resilient Worlds research school
• Call for Proposals for Second Phase
• Announcement for the second Research School
• Resilience Talk by Prof. Jacek Rak
• Status update workshop
• Resilience Talk by Prof. Nicolas Navet
• Resilience Talk by Prof. Boris Bellalta
• Second status update meeting in July
• Resilience Talk by Prof. Michał Pióro
• Resilience Talk by Prof. Gianni Antichi
• Annual status update meeting
• Annual status update meeting will be online
• First Resilient Worlds research school
• Announcement for the first Research School
• Kick-off workshop
• Acceptance notification
• DFG Review Panel
• Call for Proposals
• Web site created
• SPP 2378 granted

Resilience Talk by Prof. Aydin Sezgin

We had the pleasure of hosting Prof. Aydin Sezgin, who shared their latest research findings on reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) for enhancing network resilience in 6G networks. Prof. Sezgin presented how dynamically adjustable RIS can help overcome network blockages by redirecting signals, offering a promising approach to ensure connectivity in challenging environments. He particularly focused on the benefits of RIS for adaptation after and recovery from signal disruptions in a timely manner.

We would like to extend our sincere thanks to Prof. Sezgin for his insightful presentation and the engaging discussion that followed, which provided fresh perspectives on RIS applications for resilient networks.

Second Resilient Worlds research school

Exciting news! We held our second research school in Seminaris CampusHotel, Berlin! For two days, 16 early career researchers from several universities gave research talks, and attended workshops and hackathons to build resilience in both for their academic career and research.

First day, we kicked off with 10-minute presentations by each participant, covering both recent research and personal challenges in the academic path. Here, we haven't only focused on building resilient systems but also a healthy and joyful academic life, which is extra challenging in PhD journey with all ups and downs. Our early career researchers shared their recent hurdles and challenges in their PhD or postdoc experience in an open environment where we, as early-career researchers, can exchange experiences, provide insights, and discover shared solutions. After the presentations, we’re thrilled to have Dr. Rosie Doyle, co-author of The PhD Handbook, join us for a workshop on resilience in academia. Drawing on her vast experience working with researchers, Dr. Doyle addressed common challenges we face. This workshop is designed to help us find concrete strategies for the challenges shared earlier in the day, empowering us to tackle these obstacles moving forward.

The second day was all about practical learning and collaboration through parallel hackathons on "building resilient networks. We dived into two technical areas: (i) data plane programmability using P4 and (ii) network simulations in OMNeT++. To set everyone up for success, our researchers Fabian Ihle and Dr. Doğanalp Ergenç gave extensive tutorials on these tools and guided us through the problems we solved in the hackathons. We then worked together to design fault-tolerant networks, leveraging the new skills we’ve learned.

Of course, no research school would be complete without a team dinner! At the end of the first day, we gathered for a meal, offering a relaxed space to connect with peers and celebrate our shared learning experiences.

Hope to see everyone working towards bulding future resilient worlds at our next event very soon!

Call for Proposals for Second Phase

The Call for Proposals has been published on October 2, 2024 (official DFG announcement).

Announcement for the second Research School

Check out the poster here!

Exciting updates about our upcoming Research School! We’re thrilled to announce that the Seminaris CampusHotel Berlin will host us on October 21-22, 2024. This year, our theme will be Building Resilient Worlds—in Career and Research.

On the first day, our early career researchers will talk about their current research and most pressing challenges in their academic journey. Then, Dr. Rosie Doyle, a co-author of The PhD Handbook and an experienced coach in Fistral Training and Consultancy, will address those challenges and teach us some practical tools to build resilience in the face of the inevitable stresses of academic life. By exploring the neurobiology of stress, self-management techniques, and the power of social support, we will learn how to enhance our mental and physical well-being and sustain long-term success in our careers.

On the second day, we will have two parallel hackathon sessions to build resilient worlds! The first one will be about network programmability with the popular P4 language. our researcher Fabian Ihle will give us a short tutorial on data plane programmability and assist us to implement a fault-tolerant wired network. In the second hackathon, we will learn to use a well-known network simulator, OMNeT++. Dr. Doğanalp Ergenç will help us to develop a reliable wireless network leveraging multi-link connectivity using this tool.

Stay tuned for more detailed updates on the program and specific session timings. Looking forward to seeing you in Berlin!

Resilience Talk by Prof. Jacek Rak

We were honored to host a comprehensive talk by Prof. Jacek Rak on network resilience under large-scale failure scenarios such as natural disasters and weather-induced disruptions. Prof. Rak provided valuable insights, illustrating these challenges with real-world examples. Additionally, he presented a case study addressing targeted attacks and cascading failures in SDN-based networks.

He also shared the news from his recent works that are significant to everyone working on network resilience: the COST Action RECODIS and the latest edition of the 14th International Workshop on Resilient Networks Design and Modeling.

We thank Jacek once more for this insightful talk! We are also looking forward to the release of the new edition of his book, “Resilient Routing in Communication Networks”. Stay tuned for the upcoming Resilience Talk in November!

Status update workshop

With participants from all 12 research projects in the SPP 2378 on Resilient Worlds, we met in Berlin for a status update workshop. All projects made great progress and we discussed open challenges and research directions on resilience in communication networks.

Resilience Talk by Prof. Nicolas Navet

We had an incredibly insightful talk by Prof. Nicolas Navet on IEEE 802.1 Time-sensitive Networking (TSN), which takes a prominent part in next-generation safety-critical and deterministic systems. He gave us an extensive overview of several TSN QoS mechanisms, sharing many interesting details and insights from both academia and industry.

We thank Nicolas once more for this exciting talk! We will take a short summer break on Resilience Talks for the next two months - stay tuned for the upcoming Resilience Talk in autumn!

Resilience Talk by Prof. Boris Bellalta

This month, we had a fascinating talk by Prof. Boris Bellalta from UPC. He gave us a great overview of the recent Wi-Fi standard, Wi-Fi 7, presenting very interesting results from his recent works. He further introduced the new potential features of the upcoming Wi-Fi 8 that will prioritize reliability in wireless communication, which is also a great interest for several projects in Resilient Worlds!

We thank Boris once more for this great talk. Stay tuned for the upcoming Resilience Talk!

Second status update meeting in July

We organize the second two-day status update meeting on July 4-5 in the main campus of TU Berlin. This time, in addition to sharing the latest research results and project progress in the scope of Resilient Worlds, we will also plan potential extensions and further collaborations for the second phase of the program, which will take another three years starting in 2026.

Resilience Talk by Prof. Michał Pióro

This month, we had a great honor to host Prof. Michał Pióro from Warsaw University of Technology. He is a very well-known figure in network design and optimization area, especially by his seminal book on network optimization, Routing, Flow, and Capacity Design in Communication and Computer Networks and the famous topology dataset library, SNDlib. Prof. Michał Pióro gave a fascinating talk on combining linear optimization and game theory to design attack-tolerant control planes for SDN-like networks. He proposed a mixed strategy for a zero-sum matrix game that optimizes the payoff for both attacker and defender in a system - and eventually finds the best defensive strategies to place controllers that maximize the defensive advantage in the face of attacks.

We thank Michał once more for this great talk! Stay tuned for the upcoming Resilience Talk!

Resilience Talk by Prof. Gianni Antichi

There is a lot to talk about Resilience! We have initiated Resilience Talks - in the first week of every month, we will invite an expert from academia or industry to give an online research talk on network resilience. Our first speaker was Prof. Gianni Antichi from Polytechnics of Milano. He dived into the benefits of data plane programmability to collect and process network telemetry, which is foundational to developing further resilience mechanisms against failures and attacks. We also had a very fruitful discussion afterward regarding the future of programmable networking and its respective design issues.

We thank Gianni once more for this great talk! Stay tuned for the upcoming Resilience Talk!

Annual status update meeting

We have successfully done the first Resilient Worlds annual status meeting over Zoom. The PIs of 12 projects under the priority program gave 15-minute status updates about their progress, achievements, and future plans. We also discussed several organizational issues.

In the afternoon, 18 early career researchers gave 5-minute lightning talks to present their research problems, challenges, and potential solutions. They eventually had feedback from all other participants - also revealing potential future collaborations on the presented research directions.

Although we had to organize this meeting online due to recent inconveniences in public transport in Germany, it was pretty productive in terms of discussions. Hope to meet in person for the next events!

Annual status update meeting will be online

We initially planned to organize our yearly status update meeting in the COMNETS Lab at the University of Bremen on January 25-26. However, due to the unforeseen strike in Deutsche Bahn, most of our program members had to cancel or postpone their train bookings just a few days before the meeting. We decided to hold the meeting online over Zoom this time for everyone’s convenience on January 26.

Although we were looking for meeting in person to discuss our future steps, we at least had the opportunity to use our time more flexibly to extend the discussion sessions on the recent works of our early career researchers. Hope to have a dinner together in the next event!

First Resilient Worlds research school

As recently announced, we held our first Resilience Worlds research school in w3.hub, Berlin! For two days, 18 early career researchers from several universities teamed up to share their research goals and to explore common research directions. Then, they collaborated to propose new research projects for next-generation resilient networks.

This was an intense but joyful journey, from brainstorming new research ideas to presenting, discussing, and eventually structuring better-planned research proposals. Luckily, we had several experts to help us during the journey! First, Dr. Egemen Cetinkaya gave a great talk to decode several fundamental resilience aspects and principles - from fault tolerance to diversity or survivability to security. This provided us an invaluable understanding for setting our resilience goals correctly and designing potential mechanisms to reach them.

Aslihan Bener herself gave a great example of an engaging talk in place while she taught us how to make compelling presentations! From storytelling to breath and gesture exercises, we all found a chance to practice effective presentation techniques while pitching our new research ideas. Lastly, Dr. Carine Marxer talked about six different aspects of planning and managing research projects to support us in finalizing our proposals. It was a great reminder to (re)plan our objectives towards particular research goals, considering potential risks and other stakeholders.

Finally, we listened, learned, focused, and discussed a lot - and most importantly, we took the first step to get to know each other and collaborate. At the end of the day, it was something great to be celebrated with a few drinks!

Hope to see everyone working towards future resilient worlds at our next event very soon!

Announcement for the first Research School

Check out the poster here!

Our first research school will be held this month in Berlin!

At 27-28th November for two days, we will meet in w3.hub to think, learn, and discuss together to explore new research ideas for future resilient networks. Alongside several group activities, we will have three guest speakers to share their expertise and experience that can be greatly helpful for the academic journey of our early career researchers.

Dr. Egemen Çetinkaya will give us a presentation about ResiliNets, which is one of the most comprehensive projects offering a general framework on the aspects, components, requirements, and mechanisms of network resilience.

Aslihan Bener will tell the secrets of making compelling and engaging talks as a skill to be used in both academic and non-academic settings.

Finally, Dr. Carine Galli Marxer will share her experience in project management in academia and tell us about her book, Project Management for Success in Research, which introduces a perfectly structured framework to plan and manage research projects.

You can also find the detailed program here!

Speakers

Dr. Egemen Çetinkaya

Resilient Networking: Disciplines, Modeling, Principles

Egemen is a Principal Member of Technical Staff representing Verizon at standards organizations such as, 3GPP, ATIS, and O-RAN. Previously, he was an Assistant Professor of Computer Engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology. He earned his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Kansas.

Aslıhan Bener

Present with Influence: How to make compelling presentations

Aslıhan, a seasoned Senior Product Manager at Trainline, specializes in refining customer flow and enhancing the search experience. With over seven years of industry expertise, Aslihan has held pivotal roles at Meta and TikTok, showcasing proficiency in design thinking and presentation skills.

Beyond her product management role, Aslıhan is a Certified Soft Skills Trainer with a decade-long background in coaching. She is recognized for their exceptional ability to empower individuals with effective communication strategies and impactful presentation techniques. She promises attendees practical and actionable guidance to elevate their presentation skills and communication effectiveness in various professional environments.

Dr. Carine Galli Marxer

How to successfully manage your projects!

Dr. Carine Galli Marxer is a physicist, project manager, trainer and coach empowering people in achieving their professional and private goals.

In 2020 she published the book "Project Management for Success in Research".

Interdisciplinarity, innovation and collaboration best describe the (research) projects she has worked on. From the field of biomaterials and biosensors (PhD, Switzerland), she established a new analysis method to study biological samples (Postdoc, Stanford USA). Back in Switzerland, she managed a European research project about surface functionalization and spintronics.

Joining the public sector, she first participated in the development of the Swiss Knowledge and Technology Transfer initiative. She then started and established the Clinical Audits in Radiation Protection, a Swiss national strategic project.

Since 2011, she has worked with senior and junior researchers at various universities and institutions worldwide.

More under www.cubisma.ch

Kick-off workshop

With participants from all 12 research projects in the new SPP 2378 on Resilient Worlds, we met in Berlin for a kick-off workshop. As anticipated, we have a great team of PIs and young researchers who will surely significantly contribute to the basic understanding of resilience in communication networks.

Acceptance notification

DFG has just sent the acceptance notifications for the accepted proposed in the SPP Resilient Worlds. Together with the coordination project, 12 research proposals have been selected for funding.

DFG Review Panel

On May 30 and June 13, DFG hold the review panel discussing proposals submitted to the SPP Resilient Worlds. Together with the coordination project, 12 research proposals have been selected for funding.

Call for Proposals

The Call for Proposals has been published on June 24, 2021 (official DFG announcement).

Web site created

We just released the initial draft web site for the Resilient Worlds program.

SPP 2378 granted

The Senate of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) established the Priority Programme “Resilience in Connected Worlds – Mastering Failures, Over-load, Attacks, and the Unexpected (Resilient Worlds)” (SPP 2378).