ALGOCLOUD 2018: Invited speaker
4th International Symposium on Algorithmic Aspects of Cloud Computing
Roger Wattenhofer · ETH Zurich
Algorithms for and against the Cloud
Algorithms interact in two main ways with the cloud. There exist algorithms which are tailored for the cloud, for which the cloud is the perfect environment. Moreover, the cloud may also benefit from optimization algorithms, algorithms that make the cloud more efficient. The AlgoCloud program features papers which roughly fit one of the two, and I will give a few examples in the first part of my talk. Apart from these algorithms for the cloud, I will also talk about algorithms against the cloud. Recently, blockchains are hyped to be a cloud competitor, sometimes even a cloud killer. In the second part of my talk we will discuss whether there is some truth to whether blockchains are going to threaten the successful cloud paradigm.
Roger Wattenhofer is a full professor at the Information Technology and Electrical Engineering Department, ETH Zurich, Switzerland. He received his doctorate in Computer Science from ETH Zurich. He also worked some years at Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington, at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.
Roger Wattenhofer’s research interests are a variety of algorithmic and systems aspects in computer science and information technology, e.g., distributed systems, positioning systems, wireless networks, mobile systems, social networks, deep neural networks. He publishes in different communities: distributed computing (e.g., PODC, SPAA, DISC), networking and systems (e.g., SIGCOMM, MobiCom, SenSys, OSDI), and algorithmic theory (e.g., STOC, FOCS, SODA, ICALP). His work received multiple awards, e.g. the Prize for Innovation in Distributed Computing for his work in Distributed Approximation. He published the book “Distributed Ledger Technology: The Science of the Blockchain“, which has been translated to Chinese, Korean and Vietnamese.