January 4th, Wednesday 14:15, Room 303, Jacobs Building
The theory of distributed computing, which lies at the heart of understanding the power and limitations of distributed systems, underwent tremendous progress over the last few decades.
Despite this progress, there seems to be a widening gap between the traditional models on top of which the theory of distributed computing is built and the real-world problems we wish to investigate through these models.
In this talk we will examine the different aspects of this widening gap and present some of the efforts made in attempt to adjust the field of theoretical distributed computing to the rapidly changing needs of its practical applications.
In particular, we will discuss the necessity to relax the dependency on rigid graph-based models in distributed computing, focusing on recent advances in the study of wireless networks and on a new model for decentralized networks of "unorthodox" devices.
The talk will be self-contained.
Short bio:
Yuval Emek graduated summa cum laude from the Technion --- Israel Institute of Technology with a bachelor degree in computer science and completed his master studies and Ph.D. in computer science at the Weizmann Institute.
Following that, he spent one year as a post-doc at Tel Aviv University and another year in Microsoft.
He currently holds a post-doc position at ETH Zurich, Switzerland.
In his scientific work, Yuval studies various aspects of complex distributed systems with an emphasis on theoretical distributed computing and the interaction between self-interested individuals.