Falcon

Foundations of Algorithms, Learning, Control, and Optimization of Networks

The FALCON Research Group  studies the design of computer systems, but it’s not your ordinary systems group. FALCON is distinguished by its rigorous/analytic approach to design. The group develops new theory, uses theoretical results to provide new design tools and methodologies, puts these new design tools and methodologies into practice, and develops new theory motivated by practice, thus closing the loop.

The research process of FALCON is centered around three principles, the combination of which distinguish FALCON from most other CS systems groups:

• Theory is the foundation. Everybody in the group develops new theoretical results that inform system design and performance analysis.
• Get your hands dirty. Everybody in the group builds, or uses measurements from, systems and prototypes.
• Be truly interdisciplinary. Everybody in the group uses ideas from disciplines outside computer science (such as operations research, economics, and control theory) or develops systems that are used in varied disciplines (such as space exploration or control of power grids).

Research in FALCON

Research in FALCON combines development of theory about system design with development of new tools and techniques to apply to system design and implementation. The research areas studied in the group emphasize an integrated approach to practical applications and fundamental theory.

Application Domains

• The Smart Grid
• Energy efficient computing
• Network protocols
• Network coding
• Wireless networks
• Distributed systems
• Cloud computing
• CDNs and P2Ps

Analytic Techniques

• Stochastic modeling
• Optimization
• Game theory
• Machine learning
• Information theory
• Control theory
• Queueing theory
• Temporal logic
• Applied probability

FALCON is unique because of the interplay between these two sets of interests. Every member of the group works in at least one area from both columns.

Some current areas where FALCON is focusing are:

• Algorithms for sustainable IT
• Everyone has heard the statistics about how much of an energy hog ICT has become: The emissions of a server are nearly that of a car! The electricity usage of data centers is growing 12 times faster than that of the US as a whole! While the last decade has led to significant improvements in energy-efficiency across IT, there is still a long ways to go to be truly sustainable. This project is led by Adam Wierman and Steven Low. You can find out more at the Sustainable IT project page and the Resnick Institute website.
• Power networks and the smart grid
• Modern communication and power networks are undoubtedly the most complex and critical pieces of infrastructure that the world has created and relies on. Both are distributed nonlinear feedback control systems of a massive scale and both have served as a platform for innovations that have drastically changed our world with impacts far beyond communications and energy. We believe the power network will undergo in the next few decades the same architectural transformation that the telephone network has recently gone through to become more sustainable, more interactive, more open yet secure, more autonomous, and with much greater user participation. Our goal is to develop engineering and economic theories and algorithms that will help understand and guide this historic transformation. This project is led by Steven Low, K. Mani Chandy, and Adam Wierman. More details can be found at the Smart grid project page and the Resnick Institute website.
• Network economics
• It is almost impossible to study networking today without considering economic issues. Economics plays a defining role in routing (e.g., hot potato routing and net neutrality) and further, economics has come to play a major role in how protocols are designed and analyzed (e.g., the analysis of TCP and the design of BitTorrent). In fact, even the study of social networks originated in Economics and Social Sciences. FALCONs’ work in Network Economics bridges all these areas. This project is led by Laura Doval, Federico Echenique, and Adam Wierman. More details can be found at the Network Economics project page and the Social and Information Sciences Laboratory (SISL, pronounced “sizzle”) page.

To find out about other ongoing projects, please check out Rigor + Relevance (the FALCON Blog), along with the personal pages for the group members.