Invited Speakers
Robust ant colony algorithms: Density estimation and house-hunting
My research group has been studying Biological Distributed Algorithms for around four years, mainly algorithms for insect colonies but also for some other
biological systems such as brain networks. These algorithms have many interesting characteristics: They tend to be simple to describe, but hard to analyze. They are
typically probabilistic, and solve problems only approximately. They are flexible (work in different environments), robust (to failures), and adaptive (to changes during
operation). These are interesting features for distributed algorithms---not just biological algorithms but also engineered distributed algorithms.
We are studying these algorithms for two reasons: in order to understand the behavior of biological systems, and in order to extract ideas from biological systems that may
help in designing and analyzing algorithms for wireless networks and other engineered systems.
Another issue of interest is composition of algorithms. We would like to understand how one can combine (probabilistic, approximate) biological distributed algorithms for
simple problems to obtain algorithms for more complex problems.
This talk is mostly about a particular example: An ant colony density estimation algorithm recently developed by [Lynch, Musco, and Su], and an ant colony house-hunting
algorithm from Radeva’s thesis. I will describe these algorithms and their guarantees separately, and they show how they can be combined. This suggests many new directions
for further research.
Nancy Ann Lynch (born January 19, 1948) is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the NEC Professor of Software Science and
Engineering in the EECS department and heads the Theory of Distributed Systems research group at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.
She is the author of numerous research articles about distributed algorithms and impossibility results, and about formal modeling and validation of distributed systems
(see, e.g., input/output automaton). She is the author of the graduate textbook "Distributed Algorithms". She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences,
the National Academy of Engineering, and an ACM Fellow.
Lynch was born in Brooklyn, and her academic training was in mathematics, at Brooklyn College and MIT, where she received her Ph.D. in 1972 under the supervision of Albert
R. Meyer. She served on the math and computer science faculty at several other universities, including Tufts University, the University of Southern California and Georgia
Tech, prior to joining the MIT faculty in 1982. Since then, she has been working on applying mathematics to the tasks of understanding and constructing complex distributed
systems.
Elections, Technology, and the Pursuit of Integrity
- Voting systems are an integral component of the modern electoral procedures and an essential part of any democratic process. Such systems are composed of
several complicated entities working in concert. In addressing the need to modernize electronic election systems, the private sector rushed to market with a number of hastily
created and often inadequately engineered solutions. The net result was an adoption of products that suffer from severe flaws at multiple levels: poor engineering, lack of
resilience against the most elementary tampering or simple misconfiguration, the illusion of safety from misuse of cryptography, and in general under-appreciation for the
complexity of the electronic election systems that in essence need to be built as sophisticated distributed systems. The problems permeate the broad spectrum of on-site
electronic voting, electronic voter check-in process, and become even more troublesome with the increasing pressure to implement on-line/remote voting. The electronic poll
book systems are also now moving from manual to automated processes, and such systems must necessarily be dynamic distributed systems if they are to provide robust and
trustworthy services. The broad domain of electronic election systems can and should benefit from research in dependable distributed computing and it deserves greater
attention from the relevant research communities.
- Alexander A. Schwarzmann earned his B.S. from Stevens Institute of Technology in 1979, M.S. from Cornell University in 1981, and Ph.D.
from Brown University in 1992, all in Computer Science, and he did his post-doctoral work at MIT from 1995 to 1997. His research is in fault-tolerant distributed computing
and security of electronic election systems. Prior to pursuing his academic career he worked at Bell Labs and Digital Equipment Corp. From 1997 he is at the University of
Connecticut, where he is now serving the Department Head of Computer Science & Engineering. He chaired and served on the Program Committees of more than 50 leading conferences,
and he served as the Steering Committee Chair of both the ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC 2012-2015) and EATCS Symposium on Distributed Computing
(DISC 2004-2007). Since 2006 he is also the Director of the UConn Center for Voting Technology Research (VoTeR). The Center provides technological expertise in security and
integrity of electronic election systems. Schwarzmann is an Associate Editor of Information & Computation. He is an author of over 150 technical publication and three books.
The Dynamics of Initial Coin Offerings
- Using unique data on over 1,000 crypto tokens, we provide the first, comprehensive exploration of the phenomenon of Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs).
ICOs are increasingly used by entrepreneurs, open source teams, and established players in the blockchain space to raise capital, attract developers to an ecosystem,
crowdsource key resources, and encourage usage by early adopters. After exploring the economics of token sales and blockchain technology, we present novel data on the
characteristics of different tokens, the teams behind them, their evolution and performance. Our findings highlight that contrary to common belief, while many ICOs are
launched by teams across the globe, a disproportionate share of capital still flows to traditional entrepreneurial hubs. Investors, instead, are more geographically dispersed.
Nevertheless, while still nascent, in some regions and countries ICOs have outpaced seed and early stage venture capital activity in technology. By focusing on founders and
their skills, the codebases they maintain, and information contained in their white papers, we further separate high potential tokens from lower quality offerings.
- Christian Catalini is the Theodore T. Miller Career Development Professor at MIT, and an Assistant Professor of Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship,
and Strategic Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Christian's main areas of interest are the economics of digitization, entrepreneurship, and science.
His research focuses on blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies, the economics of equity crowdfunding and startup growth, and the economics of scientific collaboration.
Christian is one of the principal investigators of the MIT Digital Currencies Research Study, which gave access to all MIT undergraduate students to Bitcoin in the fall of
2014. He is also part of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy and the recently launched Digital Currency Initiative. His work has been featured in Nature, Science,
The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, WIRED, NPR, Forbes, Bloomberg, TechCrunch, the Chicago Tribune, The Boston Globe, and VICE news among others.
Christian has presented his research at a variety of institutions including Harvard University, MIT, Yale University, London Business School, New York University, UC, Berkeley,
the Federal Reserve Bank, the US Treasury, the World Bank, and the White House OSTP. In 2009-10, Christian was a visiting student at Harvard University. He holds a PhD from
the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, and MSc (summa cum laude) in economics and management of new technologies from Bocconi University, Milan.