Prospective Students

Are you interested in research in computer networks? Here I want to share with you my thoughts on what makes research in that area so fascinating, but also challenging, as well as my approach to research.

What makes research in computer networks so fascinating, and challenging, is that networking technologies and applications are constantly evolving. New technologies and applications can be disruptive and change the way we think about networks, and design network protocols. What is also important to me is that research in computer networks can have a real impact in our everyday life.

One focus of my current research is on online social networks and social networking applications. Online social networks have revolutionized the way we interact and share information over the Internet, and social networking applications such as YouTube, Flickr, MySpace, Facebook, etc., have millions of active users. While already being enormously popular, these applications only scratch the surface of online social networking possibilities. The goal of this research project is to investigate and find new and creative ways of how to make use of social networking applications to enrich people's everyday lives. Answering this question poses challenging and fascinating research problems that require both creativity and rigorous mathematical analysis. As part of the project, we are developing novel mathematical models of how online social networks are formed, and are trying to find creative ways to use the resulting network topologies to efficiently share/distributed information. While our work focuses on online social networks, our models and results also provide surprising insights into how and why the social networks that we form and use in our everyday life are so important and efficient.

An important part of research in the area of computer networks is to identify new technologies and applications that are going to have a high impact, and understand the opportunities and challenges that they bring. I am particularly interested in new technologies and applications (such as online social networks) that fundamentally challenge and question the way we build networks and design protocols. In my research group, we use mathematical models and analysis to study and understand these problems, and provide a rigorous basis for the design of new network protocols and algorithms. Research in computer networks is challenging, but also very rewarding - it requires you to have the desire to go beyond the obvious and come up with new and creative solutions.

If you are interested in using a rigorous mathematical approach to study research problems that are important and have can impact on our everyday lives, then the research that we do in my research group could be a perfect fit for you.

You can find more information about the research topics that I am currently interested under Research on my web page. Information on how to apply to the graduate program in computer science is provided on the web page of the Computer Networks Group of the Computer Science department.