RADIANCE @ DSN 2017
The second edition of the International Workshop on Recent Advances in the DependabIlity AssessmeNt of Complex systEms (RADIANCE) occurred in June 26, together with DSN 2017. It was an event that featured very interesting presentations and discussion, attracting an average attendance of about 20 researchers.
The program started with a keynote by Dr. Ganesh J. Pai on "Drones, Dependability Assessment, and Safety Assurance". Dr. Ganesh is a research scientist with SGT, Inc., and a contractor member of the research staff of the Intelligent Systems Division at NASA Ames Research Center. A second keynote after lunch featured "Indirect Cyber Attacks: Case for Targeted Alteration of Environmental Control to Compromise Large Computing Infrastructure" by Prof. Zbigniew T. Kalbarczyk. Prof. Kalbarczyk is Research Professor at Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Coordinated Science Laboratory of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The workshop was once again supported by the DEVASSES project both in terms of organization and in terms of paper submissions, with two works presented at the workshop: "Towards an Ontology-Based definition of Data Anonymization Policy for Cloud Computing and Big Data" presented by Tânia Basso from UNICAMP, see the right picture) and "MARITACA: from textual use case descriptions to behavior models".
Comparing with the previous editions of RADIANCE, the program reflects the increasing contributions on topics related to security and privacy. Overall, the full program included the presentation of a total of 7 papers divided in 2 technical sessions: 1) Security and Privacy; 2) Resilient Systems Design and Evaluation. The presentations showed novel techniques and fostered an interesting discussion which promoted the transfer of knowledge among the participants.
The full program of the workshop can be found here and the papers will soon be available at the IEEEXplore.
Cross-project workshop at UFAL
The Federal Univerity of Alagoas (UFAL) receives in these days the visit of four researchers from the University of Coimbra (UC): Prof. Marilia Curado and Prof. Edmundo Monteiro, which are in their first secondments at UFAL and the returning Prof. Marco Vieira and Prof. Nuno Antunes.
Marilia is an Assistant Professor at the UC, where she currently leads the Laboratory of Communications and Telematics (LCT). Edmundo is a Full Professor at the UC and is also a member of the LCT.
At the same time, UFAL is also receiving researchers of the project CARECO, which is a Brazilian project funded by PROCAD/CAPES, namely three PhD students from PUC-Rio: Diego Cedrim, which works with code smells and the quality of refactored code, Leonardo da Silva Sousa, which works with code smells and design problems, Roberto Oliveira, which works with collaborative identification of code smells.
A multi-disciplinary cross-project workshop was organized, consisting of a full day of presentations and rich discussions about past and present research activities and potential future collaborations. A diverse set of topics was discussed, including Internet of Things, software engineering and security.
The workshop also included contributions from other researchers, as is the case of Leonardo Oliveira, which works on mutation testing and is a PhD student from UFPE, and Prof. Andre Aquino (smart cities) and Prof. Fábio Coutinho (persistence in cloud environments) (IC-UFAL), and Mario Hozano and Alexandre Barbosa (automatic evaluation of code) (UFAL-Arapiraca). The workshop attracted an average audience above 30 participants.
Brazilian Researchers Seconded in Coimbra
Wellington Moura, from UNICAMP, just arrived in February to Coimbra to spend a 2-month secondment, while Prof. Eliane Martins is concluding a 2 months secondment with the UC. Earlier in Feburary, Mario Hozano returned to UFAL, after concluding his secondment in Coimbra.
Wellington is a MSc student at the Institute of Computing (IC-UNICAMP), under the supervision of Prof. Eliane and Prof. Nuno Laranjeiro (UC). Wellington’s MSc topic is focused on the robustness assessment in containers environments. The secondment period will be key for the development of the MSc works and it is planned the design and development of a robustness testing tool for the Docker interface. The overlap with Eliane’s secondment was key for the definition of the secondment activities.
Eliane returns to UC, after last year’s January secondment. This secondment was an opportunity to continue with past collaborations, namely the ongoing projects with participation of UNICAMP and UC (EUBra-BIGSEA and SORTS). Eliane presented the work she has been developing with her students in Using Behaviour Models for Robustness Testing.
Mario is a PhD student at UFAL, under supervision of Prof. Baldoino Fonseca, and his research focuses on techniques able to deal with the subjective definition of code smells by different developing teams. Mario arrived in December for a secondment in which he worked with Nuno Antunes (UC) on the experimental component of his work, focusing on the evaluation his techniques and comparison with machine learning techniques. The time in Coimbra was also important to discuss the topic with the local researchers. In November, he presented the talk “Smells are sensitive to developers! On the efficiency of (un)guided customized detection” to the local researchers and students (bottom photo).
WDES workshop at LADC 2016
The 7th edition of the Latin-American Symposium on Dependable Computing (LADC 2016) was held in Cali, Colombia during October 19-21, organized by the University of Cauca (UNICAUCA) and hosted the University of San Buenaventura. The DEVASSES researchers are regular contributors of the conference and once again provided a strong participation, including participation in the organization of the conference, workshops and submission of papers.
The Workshop on Dependability in Evolving Systems (WDES 2016), took place in October 20 also in the beautiful campus of the Universidad de San Buonaventura. The workshop was organized by the DEVASSES researchers Leonardo Montecchi, Baldoino Neto, Cecilia Rubira and also Ivan Mura from Los Andes University, Colombia. The project represents a way to promote the discussion on the challenges of ensuring dependability in evolving systems.
The workshop program featured 6 paper organized in three sessions: satellite systems, security and privacy, and power systems. The program was opened by a keynote on “Evolving Systems of Systems: the AMADEOS approach” by Prof. Andrea Bondavalli, which discussed the challenges regarding dependability and evolution that were addressed in the AMADEOS project, and the devised solutions.
