Robert Danek - Academic Information

[ Background | Theses | Publications | Seminars | Courses | TA'ing | Misc. Items | Homepage ]

Background Information
(This info is out of date.) I am currently a Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto. My Ph.D. supervisor is Vassos Hadzilacos. I completed my Master's degree back in 2004, also at the University of Toronto. I've also worked as a Software Developer at a couple of different companies, including Sitraka Software (now Quest Software), and most recently IBM.

My area of research can be broadly classified as the theory of distributed computing. More specifically, I'm interested in mutual exclusion and its various associated problems (group mutual exclusion, k-exclusion, obstruction freedom, wait-free and lock-free algorithms, etc).
Theses
Master's Thesis: Local-Spin Group Mutual Exclusion Algorithms
Ph.D. Thesis: Local-Spin Algorithms For Variants of Mutual Exclusion Using Read and Write Operations
Publications
NOTE: The material listed here is copyrighted by the respective publisher. Permission to copy pdf versions is granted under the principle of ``fair use''. In some cases, the pdf file provided here is of a slightly earlier version of the paper than the published one; the differences, if any, are minor.
R. Danek. ``The k-Bakery: Local-spin k-Exclusion Using Non-atomic Reads and Writes.'' Proceedings of the 29th Annual ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC), Zurich, Switzerland, 2010.
R. Danek and W. Golab. ``Closing the Complexity Gap Between FCFS Mutual Exclusion and Mutual Exclusion.'' Proceedings of the 22nd International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC), Arcachon, France, September 2008 . (Awarded Best Paper)
R. Danek and H. Lee. ``Brief Announcement: Local-Spin Algorithms for Abortable Mutual Exclusion and Related Problems.'' Proceedings of the 22nd International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC), Arcachon, France, September 2008 .
R. Danek and W. Golab. ``Brief Announcement: Closing the Complexity Gap Between FCFS Mutual Exclusion and Mutual Exclusion.'' Proceedings of the 27th Annual ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC), Toronto, Canada, 2008 .
R. Danek and V. Hadzilacos. ``Local-spin group mutual exclusion algorithms.'' Proceedings of the 18th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC), Amsterdam, the Netherlands, October 2004 .
Seminars
Internet Systems Group Seminar (Winter 2007, Summer 2007)

Theory of Distributed Computing Seminar (Summer 2007)
Courses
Fall 2007 (Ph.D.)

CSC 2501 - Computational Linguistics

Winter 2007 (Ph.D.)

CSC 2504 - Computer Graphics

Fall 2006 (Ph.D.)

CSC 2209 - Computer Networks
(Course Project webpage - Cooperative Browser Download Streams)
CSC 2204 - Operating Systems

Winter 2003 (M.Sc.)

CSC 2415 - Advanced Topics in Distributed Computing
CSC 2509 - Data Management Systems

Fall 2002 (M.Sc.)

CSC 2221 - Theory of Distributed Computing
CSC 2404 - Computability and Logic
CSC 2515 - Machine Learning
Teaching Assistantships
CSC148 - Introduction to Computer Science (Summer 2010)
CSC309 - Programming on the Web (Winter 2010)
CSCC73 - Algorithm Design and Analysis (Fall 2009, UTSC)
CSCB63 - Data Structures & Analysis (Winter 2009, UTSC)
CSC263 - Data Structures & Analysis (Fall 2008)
CSC236 - Intro to the Theory of Computation (Winter 2008)
CSCC73 - Algorithm Design and Analysis (Fall 2007, UTSC)
CSC148 - Introduction to Computer Science (Summer 2007)
CSC207 - Software Design (Winter 2007)
CSC108 - Introduction to Computer Programming (Fall 2002)
Miscellaneous Items
A Firefox Extension for Use With U of T my.access Service

I've written a very simple Firefox extension to use with the University of Toronto my.access service. The my.access service provides the University of Toronto community with off-campus access to licensed web resources (e.g., e-journals, article indexes, etc.). You can currently get access to these resources by navigating through the University of Toronto Library website, or by rewriting URLs manually (see the my.access FAQ). I found this somewhat cumbersome, since I frequently encounter links to articles through searches in Google and other places. My extension will automatically rewrite the URL of any resource to which you want to connect so that it goes through the my.access service.

After installing the extension, when you right click anywhere in the webpage (except a link),  you will see a new option "UofT my.access: Reload". This will reload the current webpage through the my.access service. You can also right click on a link. In this case you will see three options that allow you to open the link through the my.access service directly, in a new tab, or in a new window. Note: You will still be prompted to log into the U of T site if you have not already done so earlier in your web session.

Here is the extension: Firefox U of T my.access extension

I tested the extension using Firefox 2.0.0.5.

Useful Links

Latex Files - Useful class/style files for writing a UofT thesis