Coimbra Receives UNICAMP Researchers
The University of Coimbra (UC) is currently receiving four researchers from the University of Campinas (IC-UNICAMP). Alexandre Braga and Leydi Erazo are in their first secondments in the project and will be seconded for, respectively, 1 and 2 months.
Prof. Edmundo Madeira and Carlos Senna are visiting the UC in the context of other transcontinental projects: EUBra-BIGSEA and SORTS.
Edmundo is a Professor at the IC and coordinator of the Computer Networks Laboratory. Carlos is a Post-Doc researcher of the same laboratory. Alexandre is a PhD student at the Lab. of Security and Cryptography Applied (LASCA) of IC, advised by Prof. Ricardo Dahab. Finally, Leydi is a MSc student advised by Prof. Eliane Martins.
The presence of these researchers is providing the opportunity for “cross-projects” presentations, discussion and cooperation. Several presentations have been organized, to present and discuss the works of the involved researchers and also the advances of the mentioned projects, as follows:
- Edmundo Madeira, “Estimation of the Available Bandwidth in Inter-Cloud Links for Task Scheduling in Hybrid Clouds”
- Alexandre Braga, “Mining Cryptography Misuse in Online Forums”
- Carlos Senna, “Distributed Management of Applications in Fog Environments”
- Nuno Laranjeiro, “Interoperable Services: Research at the University of Coimbra”
- Karima Velasquez, “Mechanisms for Latency Reduction in Fog Environments”
- David Abreu, “Improving the Resilience in the Internet of Things”
During this week, Leydi will also present her work, entitled “Use Cases to State Machine Models for Software Product-Line Testing”, in the regular meetings of the local research group.
During their DEVASSES secondments, both Alexandre and Leydi will also carry on research work together the UC team. Alexandre is currently developing a benchmarking technique that will allow evaluating and comparing static analysis tools that can detect issues in applications that use cryptography. Leydi is currently applying a use-case modelling approach that allows the automatic extraction of a state machine models for a products derived of a software product line.
ToK Workshop VI and F2F Meeting in Maceió
The DEVASSES ToK Workshop VI was held at the Federal University of Alagoas (UFAL) in August 8-9. As usual, it was also time for DEVASSES researchers to meet Face-to-Face in order to discuss the management matters of the project and to synchronize on the evolution of the project Work Packages.
In synchrony with the workshop, UFAL is receiving several researchers in secondment: Marco Vieira, Nuno Antunes, Nuno Laranjeiro and Naghmeh Ivaki from the UC; and Andrea Bondavalli and Andrea Ceccarelli from the UNIFI.
Although not in secondment, it also received UNICAMP researchers: Eliane Martins, Cecília Rubira, Ariadne Carvalho and Anderson Rossanez.
The Transfer of Knowledge Workshop featured a full slate of presentations headlined by the invited talk by Prof. Rohit Gueyi (UFCG), entitled “Making program refactoring safer” and which focused on the work on the evaluation of software refactoring techniques that is being developed by their research group.
The workshop attracted quite a lot of interest from the local research community, attracting participants from the several UFAL campi and also from the Federal Institute of Alagoas (IFAL). In fact, the presentations had an average attendance superior to 30 people, reaching in some presentations more than 45 attendants.
The workshop included 10 presentations from the project researchers to present the recent advances on the ongoing collaborations, including topics that ranged from fault injection to anomaly detection and model-based testing techniques.
There was the opportunity for UFAL professors to showcase works and projects which are not directly related to DEVASSES. In particular, focusing the EDGE Inovation Center, in which UFAL provides development and training services to a wide range of Brazilian and international companies. Other works presented included the development of an automated and self-sustained irrigation system for the inner parts of the Alagoas state, and also “Multi-Feature Kinship Recognition Based on Facial Images”.
Intertwined with the workshop were the periods of discussions related to management and evolution of work packages, and there was also time for team building activities, as we can see in the bottom photo.
UC Researchers Return to UNICAMP
The University of Campinas (IC-UNICAMP) receives in July three returning researchers from the University of Coimbra (UC) to perform 1-month secondments: Prof. Marco Vieira, Prof. Nuno Laranjeiro and Naghmeh Ivaki.
Marco is an Associate Professor at the UC, and he is the coordinator of the DEVASSES project. Nuno is an Assistant Professor at the UC, and his research interests include experimental dependability evaluation of services, including robustness and interoperability assessment. Naghmeh is a PhD student at the UC. Her PhD work focuses on dependable distributed systems and her research interests also include security and big data.
During the secondment, Marco is lecturing an 18-hour course on “Techniques and Tools to Prevent and Detect Software Security Vulnerabilities”, to a class of 30 local students. The course covers several topics, including the development of secure code, the detection of software vulnerabilities and intrusion detection systems.
A series of presentations was organized during this period, where Nuno presented a talk on “Interoperable Services Research at the University of Coimbra" and Naghmeh presented a talk on “Design Patterns for reliable distributed communications”.
RADIANCE @ DSN 2016
The second edition of the International Workshop on Recent Advances in the DependabIlity AssessmeNt of Complex systEms (RADIANCE) occurred in June 28, together with DSN 2016.
It was a successful event, attracting an average attendance of about 20 researchers while happening simultaneously with with other 3 workshops and 3 tutorials.
The workshop started with a keynote by Prof. Domenico Cotroneo on “Challenges in Engineering Dependable Self-Adaptive System”. Domenico is Professor at the Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology (DIETI) of Federico II U. of Naples. He works in computer system design and assessment, specially in empirical system security and reliability, and software fault injection.
A second keynote was reserved for the after lunch session, featuring "A Journey towards Rigorous Cybersecurity Experiments" by Prof. Michel Cukier. Michel is the Director for Advanced Cybersecurity Experience for Students (ACES) and the Associate Director for Education for the Maryland Cybersecurity Center (MC2). His research covers dependability and security issues. His latest research focuses on the empirical quantification of cybersecurity.
The program also included the presentation of a total of 8 papers divided in 3 technical sessions: 1) Preliminary Works on Dependability and Security, featuring ongoing work; 2) Cloud and SOA Services; and 3) Analysis and Model-based techniques. 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.
