Summer School on Edge Computing and Blockchain

Sep 2021 - Summer School

Summer School on Edge Computing and Blockchain

Heraklion

Overview

Τhe event will last 6 days and will include the following:

Summer school on “Edge computing and Blockchain”
Workshop on “Security, Privacy and Trust for Wearable Devices”
Entrepreneurship event 101

Dates: 5th September - 10th September 2021

Lead Institution: FORTH

Location: Heraklion

Zoom Link: https://zoom.us/j/94063872557?pwd=bEFJUWp3eGFZTFVJcHlQZWJzZndVZz09

If you are planning to attend the event either in physical presence or remotely, please register at:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/summer-school-entrepreneurial-event-and-workshop-tickets-163840582593

For information regarding the accommodation click here.
For travel information click here.

Agenda

Time	Sunday 9/5	Monday 9/6	Tuesday 9/7	Wednesday 9/8	Thursday 9/9	Friday 9/10
8:00-9:00	Arrival	Breakfast	[8:15-8:45] Mini Breakfast Session: Entrepreneurship 101	Breakfast	[8:15-8:45] Mini Breakfast Session: Entrepreneurship 101	Breakfast
9:00-10:00		Chair: Sarunas Girdzijauskas Keynote 1: 'An introduction to blockchain and cryptocurrencies' by Bart Preneel	Chair: Evangelos Markatos Keynote 2: 'I lost my blockchain private key, now what?' by Costas Chalkias	Chair: George Pallis Keynote 3: 'Edge Intelligence – Engineering the New Fabric of IoT, Edge, and Cloud' by Schahram Dustdar	Chair: Marios Dikaiakos Keynote 4: 'State of Permissionless and Permissioned Blockchains: Myths and Reality' by C. Mohan	Chair: Evangelos Markatos Keynote 5: 'Rethinking Information Technology Services as Incentive Driven Collaborative Systems' by Aggelos Kiayias
10:00-10:30		Break	Break	Break	Break	Break
10:30 - 12:30		Chair: Athena Vakali 'Demystifying Fog Computing: Large-Scale and Repeatable Experimentation via Emulation' by Demetris Trihinas	Chair: George Pallis 'Demystifying Blockchains: An Algorithmic Approach' by Spyros Voulgaris	Chair: George Pallis 'Demystifying Blockchains: An Algorithmic Approach' by Spyros Voulgaris	I&E Session 4: 'The entrepreneurial journey' session by Tobias Vahlne	Chair: Sarunas Girdzijauskas 10.30/11.30: WST5 - 'Automated cybersecurity for Internet-connected Things' by Shahid Raza
10:30 - 12:30						Chair: Sarunas Girdzijauskas 11.30/12.30: WST6 - 'Sense & Sensibility in Sports: Personal & Interdependent Wearables that Work' by Arthur van der Wees
12:30-14:00		Lunch	Lunch	Lunch	12:00 13:00 Lunch	Lunch
14:00 - 15:00		14.00/14.05: Ahmed Ahmed	Chair: George Pallis 'Demystifying Fog Computing: Large-Scale and Repeatable Experimentation via Emulation' by Demetris Trihinas	΄3D Analytics for Human Motion Data' by Maarten Gijssel	Chair: Elena Ferrari 13.00/14.00: WST1 - 'Security of 4G and 5G cellular networks' by Elisa Bertino	Free Time
		14.05/14.10: 'Machine Learning on Decentralized Networks' by Lodovico Giaretta
		14.10/14.15: Andrei Kazlouski
		14.15/14.20: 'Map embeddings in a deep neural network for out-of-distribution detection' by Vangjush Komini
		14.20/14.25: 'Securing IoT Devices Against Malware' by Ahmed Lekssays
		14.25/14.30: Thomas Marchioro
		14.30/14.35: Susanna Pozzoli
		14.35/14.40: 'Confidence Calibrated Human Activity Recognition' by Debaditya Roy			Chair: Elena Ferrari 14.00/15.00: WST2 - 'Safeguarding against Information Exposure From Consumer IoT Devices' by Hamed Haddadi
		14.40/14.45: 'Risk Management for Android Apps' by Ha Xuan Son
		14.45/14.50: Sofia Yfantidou
		14.50/14.55: Michalis Kasioulis
15:00 - 15:30		Break	Break	Break	Break	Break
15:30 - 17:00		I&E Session 1: 'Define your Concept' session by Tobias Vahlne	15.30/16.30: Fellow Poster Session	I&E Session 3: 'Understand your customer' session by Tobias Vahlne	Chair: Barbara Carminati 15.30/16.30: WST3 - 'Characterizing abhorrent misinformative and mistargeted content on YouTube' by Michael Sirivianos	Free Time
15:30 - 17:00			16.30/17.30: I&E Session 2: 'How to pitch your idea' session by Tobias Vahlne		Chair: Barbara Carminati 16.30/17.30: WST4 - 'Side and Covert Channels: the Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde of Modern Technologies' by Mauro Conti	Free Time
17:00 - 18:00		Hands-on	Hands-on	Hands-on
19:00-19:45	Welcome and Intro to IE
20:00 - 22:00	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner	Dinner

Edge Computing and Blockchain

Keynote 1 - Bart Preneel

Speaker	Affiliation	Talk	email	Mode
Bart Preneel	COSIC, KU Leuven, and Imec	An introduction to blockchain and cryptocurrencies

Abstract
This lecture will offer a perspective on the building blocks and concepts of blockchain technologies. We will explain the background of distributed consensus, timestamping and secure logging. Next, we will discuss the fast rise of cryptocurrencies based on proof of work, with Bitcoin as most prominent example. In about a decade, a white paper of nine pages has resulted in massive capital investments, a global ecosystem with a market capitalization of several hundreds of billions of dollars and the redefinition of the term crypto (which now means cryptocurrencies). Next, we explain how several variants attempt to improve the complex tradeoffs between public verifiability, robustness, privacy and performance. We conclude with an analysis of blockchain-based business models and a discussion of open problems.

Abstract

This lecture will offer a perspective on the building blocks and concepts of blockchain technologies. We will explain the background of distributed consensus, timestamping and secure logging. Next, we will discuss the fast rise of cryptocurrencies based on proof of work, with Bitcoin as most prominent example. In about a decade, a white paper of nine pages has resulted in massive capital investments, a global ecosystem with a market capitalization of several hundreds of billions of dollars and the redefinition of the term crypto (which now means cryptocurrencies). Next, we explain how several variants attempt to improve the complex tradeoffs between public verifiability, robustness, privacy and performance. We conclude with an analysis of blockchain-based business models and a discussion of open problems.

Bio
Bart Preneel is a full professor at the KU Leuven, where he heads the imec-COSIC research group, that has 100 members. He has authored numerous scientific publications and is inventor of five patents. His research interests are cryptography, cybersecurity and privacy. He is president of LSEC and has been president of the IACR (International Association for Cryptologic Research). He has been invited speaker at more than 120 conferences in more than 40 countries. He has received the RSA award for Excellence in the Field of Mathematics (2014), the Kristian Beckman Award from IFIP TC11 (2015) and the ESORICS Research Excellence Award (2017). He is a fellow of the IACR and a member of the Academia Europaea and ENISA’s Advisory Group. He frequently consults for the technology and financial sectors and is involved with several start-ups in the area of cybersecurity.

Bio

Bart Preneel is a full professor at the KU Leuven, where he heads the imec-COSIC research group, that has 100 members. He has authored numerous scientific publications and is inventor of five patents. His research interests are cryptography, cybersecurity and privacy. He is president of LSEC and has been president of the IACR (International Association for Cryptologic Research). He has been invited speaker at more than 120 conferences in more than 40 countries. He has received the RSA award for Excellence in the Field of Mathematics (2014), the Kristian Beckman Award from IFIP TC11 (2015) and the ESORICS Research Excellence Award (2017). He is a fellow of the IACR and a member of the Academia Europaea and ENISA’s Advisory Group. He frequently consults for the technology and financial sectors and is involved with several start-ups in the area of cybersecurity.

Keynote 2 - Kostas Chalkias

Speaker	Affiliation	Talk	email	Mode
Kostas Chalkias	Senior Staff Cryptographer at Facebook	Title: I lost my blockchain private key, now what?		Remote

Abstract
One of the main criticisms over the usability of blockchain wallets is that of generating and protecting your private keys. A side-effect of poor key-management is losing access to the signing key, without necessarily this being compromised. That can happen for various reasons, the most common being accidentally deleting a key or forgetting a passphrase that make secret keys unrecoverable. Numerous real-world cases of losing fortunes have been reported, including a $350,000,000 worth of Bitcoins story where a one disposed of the hard disk while clearing out his house in 2013. We will present several different ways to protect against accidental key loss and describe the state-of-the-art KELP protocol: the first reactive solution to this problem that surprisingly works even in the absence of a backup mechanism to recover a lost private key.

Abstract

One of the main criticisms over the usability of blockchain wallets is that of generating and protecting your private keys. A side-effect of poor key-management is losing access to the signing key, without necessarily this being compromised. That can happen for various reasons, the most common being accidentally deleting a key or forgetting a passphrase that make secret keys unrecoverable. Numerous real-world cases of losing fortunes have been reported, including a $350,000,000 worth of Bitcoins story where a one disposed of the hard disk while clearing out his house in 2013. We will present several different ways to protect against accidental key loss and describe the state-of-the-art KELP protocol: the first reactive solution to this problem that surprisingly works even in the absence of a backup mechanism to recover a lost private key.

Bio
Kostas holds a PhD in identity-based encryption and is a Senior Staff Cryptographer at Facebook with expertise in applied and theoretical cryptography. He is the main contributor to both Diem blockchain and Facebook's Novi Wallet cryptography apis and lead maintainer of the proof-of-reserves community standard for cryptocurrency exchanges. He also drives Facebook's blockchain research on cryptographic and privacy preserving algorithms including zero knowledge proofs, signature aggregation, efficient accumulators, post-quantum signatures and atomic swaps. He was previously the lead cryptographer at R3 London, one of the biggest fintech consortia, with significant contributions to both "Corda" blockchain and the SGX-based "Conclave" confidential compute engine. Prior to that, he was the CTO of two startups, where he built a platform for fair and secure national exams and quizzes using time-lapse cryptography. Kostas has also filed numerous cryptography patents, while he has implemented and found critical bugs in several international standards and blockchain protocols, including the EdDSA signature scheme, financial solvency protocols, graphical passwords, base64 encoding and lottery smart contracts.

Bio

Kostas holds a PhD in identity-based encryption and is a Senior Staff Cryptographer at Facebook with expertise in applied and theoretical cryptography. He is the main contributor to both Diem blockchain and Facebook's Novi Wallet cryptography apis and lead maintainer of the proof-of-reserves community standard for cryptocurrency exchanges. He also drives Facebook's blockchain research on cryptographic and privacy preserving algorithms including zero knowledge proofs, signature aggregation, efficient accumulators, post-quantum signatures and atomic swaps. He was previously the lead cryptographer at R3 London, one of the biggest fintech consortia, with significant contributions to both "Corda" blockchain and the SGX-based "Conclave" confidential compute engine. Prior to that, he was the CTO of two startups, where he built a platform for fair and secure national exams and quizzes using time-lapse cryptography. Kostas has also filed numerous cryptography patents, while he has implemented and found critical bugs in several international standards and blockchain protocols, including the EdDSA signature scheme, financial solvency protocols, graphical passwords, base64 encoding and lottery smart contracts.

Keynote 3 - Schahram Dustdar

Speaker	Affiliation	Talk	email	Mode
Schahram Dustdar	Head of the Research Division of Distributed Systems at the TU Wien, Austria	Edge Intelligence – Engineering the New Fabric of IoT, Edge, and Cloud

Abstract
As humans, things, software and AI continue to become the entangled fabric of distributed systems, systems engineers and researchers are facing novel challenges. In this talk, we analyze the role of IoT, Edge, Cloud, and Human-based Computing as well as AI in the co-evolution of distributed systems for the new decade. We identify challenges and discuss a roadmap that these new distributed systems have to address. We take a closer look at how a cyber-physical fabric will be complemented by AI operationalization to enable seamless end-to-end distributed systems.

Abstract

As humans, things, software and AI continue to become the entangled fabric of distributed systems, systems engineers and researchers are facing novel challenges. In this talk, we analyze the role of IoT, Edge, Cloud, and Human-based Computing as well as AI in the co-evolution of distributed systems for the new decade. We identify challenges and discuss a roadmap that these new distributed systems have to address. We take a closer look at how a cyber-physical fabric will be complemented by AI operationalization to enable seamless end-to-end distributed systems.

Bio
Schahram Dustdar is Full Professor of Computer Science heading the Research Division of Distributed Systems at the TU Wien, Austria. He holds several honorary positions: University of California (USC) Los Angeles; Monash University in Melbourne, Shanghai University, Macquarie University in Sydney, University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain. From Dec 2016 until Jan 2017 he was a Visiting Professor at the University of Sevilla, Spain and from January until June 2017 he was a Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley, USA. From 1999 – 2007. He worked as the co-founder and chief scientist of Caramba Labs Software AG in Vienna (acquired by Engineering NetWorld AG), a venture capital co-funded software company focused on software for collaborative processes in teams. Caramba Labs was nominated for several (international and national) awards: World Technology Award in the category of Software (2001); Top-Startup companies in Austria (CapGemini Ernst & Young) (2002); MERCUR Innovation award of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce (2002). He is co-founder and chief-scientist of sinoaus.net, based in Nanajing, an R&D organization focused on IoT and Edge Intelligence. He is founding co-Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Internet of Things (ACM TIoT) as well as Editor-in-Chief of Computing (Springer). He is an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing, ACM Computing Surveys, ACM Transactions on the Web, and ACM Transactions on Internet Technology, as well as on the editorial board of IEEE Internet Computing and IEEE Computer. Dustdar is recipient of multiple awards: IEEE TCSVC Outstanding Leadership Award (2018), IEEE TCSC Award for Excellence in Scalable Computing (2019), ACM Distinguished Scientist (2009), ACM Distinguished Speaker (2021), IBM Faculty Award (2012). He is an elected member of the Academia Europaea: The Academy of Europe, where he is chairman of the Informatics Section, as well as an IEEE Fellow (2016) and an Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association (AAIA) Fellow (2021).

Bio

Schahram Dustdar is Full Professor of Computer Science heading the Research Division of Distributed Systems at the TU Wien, Austria. He holds several honorary positions: University of California (USC) Los Angeles; Monash University in Melbourne, Shanghai University, Macquarie University in Sydney, University Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain. From Dec 2016 until Jan 2017 he was a Visiting Professor at the University of Sevilla, Spain and from January until June 2017 he was a Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley, USA. From 1999 – 2007. He worked as the co-founder and chief scientist of Caramba Labs Software AG in Vienna (acquired by Engineering NetWorld AG), a venture capital co-funded software company focused on software for collaborative processes in teams. Caramba Labs was nominated for several (international and national) awards: World Technology Award in the category of Software (2001); Top-Startup companies in Austria (CapGemini Ernst & Young) (2002); MERCUR Innovation award of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce (2002). He is co-founder and chief-scientist of sinoaus.net, based in Nanajing, an R&D organization focused on IoT and Edge Intelligence. He is founding co-Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Internet of Things (ACM TIoT) as well as Editor-in-Chief of Computing (Springer). He is an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing, ACM Computing Surveys, ACM Transactions on the Web, and ACM Transactions on Internet Technology, as well as on the editorial board of IEEE Internet Computing and IEEE Computer. Dustdar is recipient of multiple awards: IEEE TCSVC Outstanding Leadership Award (2018), IEEE TCSC Award for Excellence in Scalable Computing (2019), ACM Distinguished Scientist (2009), ACM Distinguished Speaker (2021), IBM Faculty Award (2012). He is an elected member of the Academia Europaea: The Academy of Europe, where he is chairman of the Informatics Section, as well as an IEEE Fellow (2016) and an Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association (AAIA) Fellow (2021).

Keynote 4 - C. Mohan

Speaker	Affiliation	Talk	email	Mode
C. Mohan	Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University in China, Microsoft's Data Team Consultant, and Kerala Blockchain Academy (KBA) and Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency (TNeGA) Advisor.	State of Permissionless and Permissioned Blockchains: Myths and Reality

Abstract
Since the concept of blockchain was invented as the underlying core data structure of the permissionless/public Bitcoin cryptocurrency network, several cryptocurrencies, and associated concepts like tokens and ICOs emerged. After much speculation and hype, significant number of them have become problematic or worthless, even though some countries have embraced them! The public blockchain system Ethereum emerged by generalizing the use of blockchains to manage any kind of asset, be it physical or purely digital, with the introduction of the concept of Smart Contracts. Over the years, numerous myths have developed with respect tothe purported utility and the need for permissionless blockchains. The adoption and further adaptation of blockchains and smart contracts for use in the permissioned/private environments is what I consider to be useful and of practical consequence. Hence, only private blockchain systems will be the focus of my talk. IT companies like IBM, Intel, SAP, Huawei, Oracle, Baidu and AWS, and many key players in different vertical industry segments (e.g., Ant Financial) have recognized the applicability of blockchains in environments other than cryptocurrencies. There is a great deal of momentum behind Hyperledger Fabric throughout the world. Other private blockchain systems include Quorum, Hyperledger Sawtooth and R3 Corda. In this talk, I will describe some use-case scenarios, especially those in production deployment. I will also survey the landscape of private blockchain systems with respect to their architectures in general and their approaches to some specific technical areas. Along the way, I will bust many myths associated with permissionless blockchains. I will also compare traditional database technologies with blockchain systems’ features and identify desirable future research topics. This is a highly revised version of a keynote delivered at ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data in Amsterdam in July 2019. The associated keynote paper is at https://bit.ly/sigBcP

Abstract

Since the concept of blockchain was invented as the underlying core data structure of the permissionless/public Bitcoin cryptocurrency network, several cryptocurrencies, and associated concepts like tokens and ICOs emerged. After much speculation and hype, significant number of them have become problematic or worthless, even though some countries have embraced them! The public blockchain system Ethereum emerged by generalizing the use of blockchains to manage any kind of asset, be it physical or purely digital, with the introduction of the concept of Smart Contracts. Over the years, numerous myths have developed with respect tothe purported utility and the need for permissionless blockchains. The adoption and further adaptation of blockchains and smart contracts for use in the permissioned/private environments is what I consider to be useful and of practical consequence. Hence, only private blockchain systems will be the focus of my talk. IT companies like IBM, Intel, SAP, Huawei, Oracle, Baidu and AWS, and many key players in different vertical industry segments (e.g., Ant Financial) have recognized the applicability of blockchains in environments other than cryptocurrencies. There is a great deal of momentum behind Hyperledger Fabric throughout the world. Other private blockchain systems include Quorum, Hyperledger Sawtooth and R3 Corda. In this talk, I will describe some use-case scenarios, especially those in production deployment. I will also survey the landscape of private blockchain systems with respect to their architectures in general and their approaches to some specific technical areas. Along the way, I will bust many myths associated with permissionless blockchains. I will also compare traditional database technologies with blockchain systems’ features and identify desirable future research topics. This is a highly revised version of a keynote delivered at ACM SIGMOD International Conference on Management of Data in Amsterdam in July 2019. The associated keynote paper is at https://bit.ly/sigBcP

Bio
Dr. C. Mohan is currentlya Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University in China, a Consultant to Microsoft's Data Team, and an Advisor of the Kerala Blockchain Academy (KBA) and the Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency (TNeGA) in India. He retired in June2020 from being an IBM Fellow at the IBM Almaden Research Center in Silicon Valley. He was an IBM researcher for 38.5 years in the database, blockchain, AIand related areas, impacting numerous IBM and non-IBM products, the research and academic communities, and standards, especially with his invention of the well-known ARIES family of database locking and recovery algorithms, and the Presumed Abort distributed commit protocol. This IBM (1997-2020), ACM (2002) and IEEE (2002) Fellow has also served as the IBM India Chief Scientist (2006-2009). In addition to receiving the ACM SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award (1996), the VLDB 10 Year Best Paper Award (1999) and numerous IBM awards, Mohan was elected to the US and Indian National Academies of Engineering (2009) and named an IBM Master Inventor (1997). This Distinguished Alumnus of IIT Madras (1977) received his PhD at the University of Texas at Austin (1981). He is an inventor of 50 patents. During the last many years, he focused on Blockchain, AI, Big Data and HTAP technologies (https://bit.ly/sigBcP,https://bit.ly/CMgMDS). Since 2017, he has been an evangelist of permissioned blockchains and the myth buster of permissionless blockchains. During 1H2021, Mohan was the Shaw Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore where he taught a seminar course on distributed data and computing. In late 2019, he became an Honorary Advisor to TNeGA for its blockchain and other projects. In August 2020, he joined the Advisory Board of KBA of India. Since 2016, Mohan has been a Distinguished Visiting Professor of China’s prestigious Tsinghua University. Hehas served on the advisory board of IEEE Spectrum, and on numerous conference and journal boards. Mohan is a frequent speaker in North America, Europe and Asia. He has given talks in 43 countries. He is highly active on social media and has a huge network of followers. More information can be found in the Wikipedia page at https://bit.ly/CMwIkP and his resume at https://bit.ly/CMoNUS.

Bio

Dr. C. Mohan is currentlya Distinguished Visiting Professor at Tsinghua University in China, a Consultant to Microsoft's Data Team, and an Advisor of the Kerala Blockchain Academy (KBA) and the Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency (TNeGA) in India. He retired in June2020 from being an IBM Fellow at the IBM Almaden Research Center in Silicon Valley. He was an IBM researcher for 38.5 years in the database, blockchain, AIand related areas, impacting numerous IBM and non-IBM products, the research and academic communities, and standards, especially with his invention of the well-known ARIES family of database locking and recovery algorithms, and the Presumed Abort distributed commit protocol. This IBM (1997-2020), ACM (2002) and IEEE (2002) Fellow has also served as the IBM India Chief Scientist (2006-2009). In addition to receiving the ACM SIGMOD Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award (1996), the VLDB 10 Year Best Paper Award (1999) and numerous IBM awards, Mohan was elected to the US and Indian National Academies of Engineering (2009) and named an IBM Master Inventor (1997). This Distinguished Alumnus of IIT Madras (1977) received his PhD at the University of Texas at Austin (1981). He is an inventor of 50 patents. During the last many years, he focused on Blockchain, AI, Big Data and HTAP technologies (https://bit.ly/sigBcP,https://bit.ly/CMgMDS). Since 2017, he has been an evangelist of permissioned blockchains and the myth buster of permissionless blockchains. During 1H2021, Mohan was the Shaw Visiting Professor at the National University of Singapore where he taught a seminar course on distributed data and computing. In late 2019, he became an Honorary Advisor to TNeGA for its blockchain and other projects. In August 2020, he joined the Advisory Board of KBA of India. Since 2016, Mohan has been a Distinguished Visiting Professor of China’s prestigious Tsinghua University. Hehas served on the advisory board of IEEE Spectrum, and on numerous conference and journal boards. Mohan is a frequent speaker in North America, Europe and Asia. He has given talks in 43 countries. He is highly active on social media and has a huge network of followers. More information can be found in the Wikipedia page at https://bit.ly/CMwIkP and his resume at https://bit.ly/CMoNUS.

Keynote 5 - Aggelos Kiayias

Speaker	Affiliation	Talk	email	Mode
Aggelos Kiayias	Chair in Cyber Security and Privacy and director of the Blockchain Technology Laboratory at the University of Edinburgh	Rethinking Information Technology Services as Incentive Driven Collaborative Systems

Abstract
With the introduction of Bitcoin and blockchain technology, we also witnessed the first example of an information technology service deployed via open and incentive driven collaboration. Viewed in this light, the service emerges out of the self-interest of computer node operators that enroll themselves to support the system’s operation in exchange of rewards that are provided in the system’s digital currency. In this talk, I will flesh out this approach as a novel paradigm for deploying general purpose information technology services and discuss design challenges and use-cases beyond financial technology, such as anonymous communications and supply chain management.

Abstract

With the introduction of Bitcoin and blockchain technology, we also witnessed the first example of an information technology service deployed via open and incentive driven collaboration. Viewed in this light, the service emerges out of the self-interest of computer node operators that enroll themselves to support the system’s operation in exchange of rewards that are provided in the system’s digital currency. In this talk, I will flesh out this approach as a novel paradigm for deploying general purpose information technology services and discuss design challenges and use-cases beyond financial technology, such as anonymous communications and supply chain management.

Bio
Prof. Aggelos Kiayias FRSE is chair in Cyber Security and Privacy and director of the Blockchain Technology Laboratory at the University of Edinburgh. He is also the Chief Scientist at blockchain technology company IOHK and Associate Professor of Cryptography and Security at the University of Athens. His research interests are in computer security, information security, applied cryptography and foundations of cryptography with a particular emphasis in blockchain technologies and distributed systems, e-voting and secure multiparty protocols as well as privacy and identity management. He has received an ERC Starting Grant, a Marie Curie fellowship, an NSF Career Award, and a Fulbright Fellowship. He holds a Ph.D. from the City University of New York and he is a graduate of the Mathematics department of the University of Athens. He has over 150 publications in journals and conference proceedings in the area. He has served as the program chair of the Cryptographers’ Track of the RSA conference in 2011 and the Financial Cryptography and Data Security conference in 2017, as well as the general chair of Eurocrypt 2013. He also served as the program chair of Real World Crypto Symposium 2020 and the Public-Key Cryptography Conference 2020. He is in the editorial boards of ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security and IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing as well as in the advisory board of Cryptoeconomic Systems. In 2021 he was elected fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Bio

Prof. Aggelos Kiayias FRSE is chair in Cyber Security and Privacy and director of the Blockchain Technology Laboratory at the University of Edinburgh. He is also the Chief Scientist at blockchain technology company IOHK and Associate Professor of Cryptography and Security at the University of Athens. His research interests are in computer security, information security, applied cryptography and foundations of cryptography with a particular emphasis in blockchain technologies and distributed systems, e-voting and secure multiparty protocols as well as privacy and identity management. He has received an ERC Starting Grant, a Marie Curie fellowship, an NSF Career Award, and a Fulbright Fellowship. He holds a Ph.D. from the City University of New York and he is a graduate of the Mathematics department of the University of Athens. He has over 150 publications in journals and conference proceedings in the area. He has served as the program chair of the Cryptographers’ Track of the RSA conference in 2011 and the Financial Cryptography and Data Security conference in 2017, as well as the general chair of Eurocrypt 2013. He also served as the program chair of Real World Crypto Symposium 2020 and the Public-Key Cryptography Conference 2020. He is in the editorial boards of ACM Transactions on Privacy and Security and IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing as well as in the advisory board of Cryptoeconomic Systems. In 2021 he was elected fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Demetris Trihinas

Speaker	Affiliation	Talk	email	Mode
Demetris Trihinas	Lecturer at the Department of Computer Science, University of Nicosia and a Senior Member at the University’s Artificial Intelligence Lab	Demystifying Fog Computing: Large-Scale and Repeatable Experimentation via Emulation

Abstract
Fog Computing is emerging as the dominating paradigm bridging the compute and connectivity gap between sensing devices and latency-sensitive IoT services. However, experimenting and evaluating IoT services is a daunting task involving the manual configuration and deployment of a mixture of geo-distributed physical and virtual infrastructure with different resource and network requirements. This results in sub-optimal, costly and error-prone deployments due to numerous unexpected overheads not initially envisioned in the design phase and underwhelming testing conditions not resembling the end environment. This seminar series will survey the challenges involved with developing and testing IoT services operating in the “fog”. During the first day, we will introduce Fogify, an open-source emulation suite developed to ease the design of large-scale fog testbeds that can be deployed on the developer’s laptop or a computing cluster and subsequently be used to rapidly define reproducible experiments and “what-if” scenarios. During the second day, we will introduce an end-to-end tutorial of how to design emulated fog testbeds and perform application profiling and “chaos” testing by deploying a proof-of-concept intelligent transportation service.

Abstract

Fog Computing is emerging as the dominating paradigm bridging the compute and connectivity gap between sensing devices and latency-sensitive IoT services. However, experimenting and evaluating IoT services is a daunting task involving the manual configuration and deployment of a mixture of geo-distributed physical and virtual infrastructure with different resource and network requirements. This results in sub-optimal, costly and error-prone deployments due to numerous unexpected overheads not initially envisioned in the design phase and underwhelming testing conditions not resembling the end environment. This seminar series will survey the challenges involved with developing and testing IoT services operating in the “fog”. During the first day, we will introduce Fogify, an open-source emulation suite developed to ease the design of large-scale fog testbeds that can be deployed on the developer’s laptop or a computing cluster and subsequently be used to rapidly define reproducible experiments and “what-if” scenarios. During the second day, we will introduce an end-to-end tutorial of how to design emulated fog testbeds and perform application profiling and “chaos” testing by deploying a proof-of-concept intelligent transportation service.

Bio
Dr. Demetris Trihinas is a Lecturer at the Department of Computer Science, University of Nicosia and a Senior Member at the University’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the Univ.of Cyprus and a Dipl.-Ing. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical Univ. of Athens. His research interests include Data-Intensive Computing with particular focus in Geo-Distributed Big Data Management and Data Mining over Cloud, IoT and Edge Computing topologies. His work is published in IEEE/ACM journals and conferences such as TCC, TSC, Internet Computing, INFOCOM, BigData and CCGrid. Demetris is currently the Project Coordinator of the FlockAI project. FlockAI aims to deliver a framework capable of enabling Machine Learning and its applications to drone technology for handling time-critical missions. Demetris is also contributing as a Work Package Leader (Data Management for Fog Services) to the RAINBOW H2020 EU co-funded project that aims to develop an open and trusted fog computing platform that facilitates the deployment of scalable and heterogeneous IoT services.

Bio

Dr. Demetris Trihinas is a Lecturer at the Department of Computer Science, University of Nicosia and a Senior Member at the University’s Artificial Intelligence Lab. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from the Univ.of Cyprus and a Dipl.-Ing. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical Univ. of Athens. His research interests include Data-Intensive Computing with particular focus in Geo-Distributed Big Data Management and Data Mining over Cloud, IoT and Edge Computing topologies. His work is published in IEEE/ACM journals and conferences such as TCC, TSC, Internet Computing, INFOCOM, BigData and CCGrid. Demetris is currently the Project Coordinator of the FlockAI project. FlockAI aims to deliver a framework capable of enabling Machine Learning and its applications to drone technology for handling time-critical missions. Demetris is also contributing as a Work Package Leader (Data Management for Fog Services) to the RAINBOW H2020 EU co-funded project that aims to develop an open and trusted fog computing platform that facilitates the deployment of scalable and heterogeneous IoT services.

Spyros Voulgaris

Speaker	Affiliation	Talk	email	Mode
Spyros Voulgaris	Assistant Professor at the Department of Informatics of the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB)	Demystifying Blockchains: An Algorithmic Approach

Abstract
This lecture will offer a thorough yet intuitive look at the key mechanisms governing blockchain operation. It will help attendees grasp the essence of blockchain operation and develop a solid comprehension and strong intuition of the principles behind this technology. The focus will be on the incentives, motives, and reasoning that led to the design of these algorithms, as well as on their interplay and trade-offs. The lecture will illustrate the inner workings of the most prominent consensus mechanisms, including Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake, shedding light at their respective design decisions. Further, we will look into application-level algorithms for blockchains, notably those that enable Interledger Communication. Finally, we will discuss current application trends as well as new research challenges.

Abstract

This lecture will offer a thorough yet intuitive look at the key mechanisms governing blockchain operation. It will help attendees grasp the essence of blockchain operation and develop a solid comprehension and strong intuition of the principles behind this technology. The focus will be on the incentives, motives, and reasoning that led to the design of these algorithms, as well as on their interplay and trade-offs. The lecture will illustrate the inner workings of the most prominent consensus mechanisms, including Proof-of-Work and Proof-of-Stake, shedding light at their respective design decisions. Further, we will look into application-level algorithms for blockchains, notably those that enable Interledger Communication. Finally, we will discuss current application trends as well as new research challenges.

Bio
Spyros Voulgaris is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Informatics of the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB) since 2018. Prior to that, he was a tenured Assistant Professor in Computer Science at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He obtained his MSc from the University of Michigan and his PhD from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (2006), after which he served as a senior researcher at ETH Zurich, Switzerland (2006 to 2008). He has also paid a number of research visits, including Microsoft Research Cambridge, INRIA Rennes, the University of Bologna, and the University of Patras, while he has worked for HP Labs in Palo Alto, California, and for Hughes Network Systems, in Germantown, Maryland. His research interests include distributed ledger technology, Internet-scale distributed systems, publish/subscribe protocols, Big Data infrastructures, information dissemination, peer-to-peer and epidemic algorithms, large-scale self-organization, mobile ad-hoc networks, and sensor networks. His publications have attracted over 3000 citations, shaping his h-index to 22.

Bio

Spyros Voulgaris is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Informatics of the Athens University of Economics and Business (AUEB) since 2018. Prior to that, he was a tenured Assistant Professor in Computer Science at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He obtained his MSc from the University of Michigan and his PhD from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (2006), after which he served as a senior researcher at ETH Zurich, Switzerland (2006 to 2008). He has also paid a number of research visits, including Microsoft Research Cambridge, INRIA Rennes, the University of Bologna, and the University of Patras, while he has worked for HP Labs in Palo Alto, California, and for Hughes Network Systems, in Germantown, Maryland. His research interests include distributed ledger technology, Internet-scale distributed systems, publish/subscribe protocols, Big Data infrastructures, information dissemination, peer-to-peer and epidemic algorithms, large-scale self-organization, mobile ad-hoc networks, and sensor networks. His publications have attracted over 3000 citations, shaping his h-index to 22.

Maarten Gijssel

Speaker	Affiliation	Talk	email	Mode
Maarten Gijssel	Founder of Kinetic Analysis BV and an entrepreneur in the sports and health tech domain	3D Analytics for Human Motion Data

Abstract
Three-dimensional (3D) representations of the physical world are now available at a large scale, due to progress in sensor technologies. Leveraging such 3D representations with analytics has the potential to advance science and in areas like sports- and health tech. Although sensor technologies are already available for decades, this novel data type has by far reached it’s potential. Kinetic Analysis addresses this gap, we first explain how 3D analytics generates benefits for sports analytics and how to process 3D data to add value to the trainers, coaches and players.

Abstract

Three-dimensional (3D) representations of the physical world are now available at a large scale, due to progress in sensor technologies. Leveraging such 3D representations with analytics has the potential to advance science and in areas like sports- and health tech. Although sensor technologies are already available for decades, this novel data type has by far reached it’s potential. Kinetic Analysis addresses this gap, we first explain how 3D analytics generates benefits for sports analytics and how to process 3D data to add value to the trainers, coaches and players.

Bio
Maarten Gijssel is the founder of Kinetic Analysis BV and an entrepreneur in the sports and health tech domain. He creates impact and opportunities with human movement data. After working as a physiotherapist, he specialized in motion data. In addition to his work in clinical practice, he worked for more than 10 years as a lecturer for healthcare professionals and engineers in the health domain. With a special focus on biomechanics and exercise physiology, his team is creating new wearable devices such as smart textiles and smart patches.

Bio

Maarten Gijssel is the founder of Kinetic Analysis BV and an entrepreneur in the sports and health tech domain. He creates impact and opportunities with human movement data. After working as a physiotherapist, he specialized in motion data. In addition to his work in clinical practice, he worked for more than 10 years as a lecturer for healthcare professionals and engineers in the health domain. With a special focus on biomechanics and exercise physiology, his team is creating new wearable devices such as smart textiles and smart patches.