NRG People

Azer Bestavros

Azer joined CS @ BU in 1991 after completing his PhD at Harvard University. He pursues research at the nexus of networking and distributed systems, focusing on issues of efficiency, scalability, safety, and security, as they apply to applications ranging from content distribution networks and peer-to-peer systems to cyber-physical and real-time embedded systems. His currently active projects focus on mechanism design for resource management in cloud computing markets; on efficient algorithms for content placement in information, navigation, and social networks; and on languages and tools for the design of certifiably safe and secure systems and software-defined networks.

John Byers

John joined the BU Department of Computer Science in 1999 after completing his Ph.D. at UC Berkeley. His research interests are broadly focused on algorithmic and economic aspects of e-commerce, networking, and large-scale data management, striking a balance between theoretical foundations and rigorous data-driven experimentation. In his spare time (and while on sabbatical in AY 2013-2014), he serves as Chief Scientist at Cogo Labs.

Mark Crovella

Mark works in areas spanning systems, networking, large scale data analysis, data mining, and statistics.   His work generally seeks to apply data analysis to solve networking and systems problems such as network discovery and characterization, server design, efficient network measurement, and inference of hidden network properties.

Ibrahim Matta

Ibrahim completed his PhD in computer science at the University of Maryland at College Park in 1995. He works on the design of network protocols and architectures based on a range of computer science principles (e.g., inter-process communication, decomposition, recursion), mathematical techniques (e.g., probabilistic analysis, queuing theory, optimization,  control theory),  and performance evaluation tools (e.g., simulation, emulation). Application domains include the Internet, wireless, mobile and sensor networks, disruption-tolerant networks, cloud and distributed systems.

Flavio Esposito

Flavio Esposito is a Ph.D. candidate under the supervision of Prof. Ibrahim Matta. Flavio received his Master in Telecommunication Engineering from the University of Florence, Italy in 2005. Before joining the Ph.D. program, Flavio worked at the Centre for Wireless Communication, Oulu, Finland, and at Alcatel-Lucent, Florence, Italy. His main research interests include network protocols and architectures, with focus on network service management and software-defined networking.

Gonca Gursun

Gonca is a PhD student in the Department of Computer Science at Boston University. Her interests are in networking, statistical inference, and data mining. Her current research focuses on statistical inference techniques for network traffic analysis, with applications to network management.

Richard Skowyra

Richard Skowyra is a graduate student at Boston University. His research focuses on the formal design and verification of distributed systems, particularly with respect to automatic model verification and computer-assisted design. Other research interests include cloud computing, network and software security, model-checking, and integrated formal methods. He is advised by Azer Bestavros, and works closely with Assaf Kfoury and members of the BU iBench Initiative.

Yuefeng Wang

Yuefeng Wang is a PhD student advised by Prof. Matta. His research focuses on clean-slate network architecture and economic aspects of computer networking. He received his bachelor’s degree from Shandong University (Shandong, China) in 2008 and master’s degree from University of Windsor (Ontario, Canada) in 2010.