Student spends three summers conducting comp sci research

What got you into research this summer and how did you find an advisor?

I am hoping to pursue a graduate degree in computer science. One of the reasons I chose Richmond was the opportunity to become involved in research. Dr. Lawson taught one of my classes freshman year and was also my academic advisor, so when I asked him how to get involved, he made room for me in the group. This is my third summer working with this group. We have done various projects together.

Describe your research project.

Volunteer distributed computations leverage the unused processor cycles of personal computers to provide computational power otherwise available only through expensive clusters or supercomputers. However, the volunteer nature of the systems involved in the computation leads to concerns over computation integrity. The supervisor of the computation recruits participants who volunteer their personal computers for use when otherwise idle. The participants then download code which allows them to be assigned tasks by the supervisor and return to the supervisor any significant results. The tasks are independent from each other; no communication is necessary between participants.

Since the tasks are run in an untrustworthy environment, there is potential for participants to corrupt results. The standard method of handling this problem is simple redundancy, in which multiple copies of each task are distributed across the computation. Simple redundancy, however, is vulnerable to collusion between participants unless additional (costly) protection measures are used. Previous work has identified an optimal redundancy strategy for this platform which guarantees that an adversary will be detected with a certain probability regardless of the number of copies of a task the adversary controls but requires the fewest resources to do so.  However, the platform described above is not the only topology available for a volunteer distributed computation. Future platforms will include multiple aggregators, nodes which act as supervisors for subsets of all the available participants. We wish to identify optimal redundancy strategies for both static and dynamic hierarchies of multiple levels, such as a three-level hierarchy in which there is one supervisor, multiple aggregators, and some number of participants.

What’s in store for you after graduation?  

I’m looking at graduate schools in computer science, particularly with an eye towards a Master’s, but I would also be interested in a Ph. D. and pursuing research full-time.

A full day of research lies ahead of you.  What’s on your iPod?

Explosions in the Sky, Mogwai, the Decemberists – maybe Sam Bush & David Grisman if Dr. Lawson is dropping by.

What has a liberal arts education at the University of Richmond meant to you?

I specifically attended a liberal arts school because I wanted to be able to take classes outside of the sciences. In that respect, the liberal arts curriculum here has really meant a lot to me. I’ve been able to explore my interests outside science - philosophy, English, Asian art and other subjects. Despite the fact that I’ve ended up majoring in mathematics and computer science, the freedom that I’ve had here to take classes with good, interesting professors both within and outside my majors is something I wouldn’t trade for a spot at a top-rated science school.

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