During 2019-20 and 2020-21, Dr. Dutta served on the URPTC. This committee advises the provost in continually reviewing the RPT process, including randomly selected dossiers from each college, and other material associated with the process such as the academic regulations. As part of the process review, the URPTC is also charged with reviewing all dossiers for faculty who received a negative decision for reappointment, promotion and/or tenure from the Dean.
Russell successfully defended his doctoral thesis in June, 2019. He was advised by Dr. Douglas Reeves, and co-advised by Dr. Dutta since his Oral Preliminary exam. His primary work has been in security of Open Shortest Path First (OSPF), the routing workhorse of the Internet. Russell examined several key vulnerabilities of OSPF, and conceived and demonstrated various security mechanisms at various levels, which together make for comprehensive security against OSPF attackers. He goes on to a research job with the US government in Maryland.
Shireesh successfully defended his doctoral thesis in May, 2017. His primary work has been in the ChoiceNet project, specifically issues of efficient service composition, and the representation of service alternatives.
During 2016-17 and 2017-18, Dr. Dutta served on the USCoEEED. This committee advises university leadership on extension, engagement and economic development, recommends related regulations and procedures, and performs advocacy activities that include awarding of various established awards, including the prestigious Opal Mann Green award.
In Fall, 2016, Dr. Pathak started on a new position as faculty at George Mason University. He had previously completed his Ph.D. at NCSU under Dr. Dutta’s guidance, followed by a post-doctoral fellow position at UC Davis with Dr. Prasant Mohapatra. All the best to Dr. Pathak in his new position! Update: Following the post-doc, Dr. Pathak accepted a faculty position at George Mason University. Check out Dr. Parth Pathak’s current activities!
Magreth successfully defended her doctoral thesis in June, 2016. Her primary work has been in studying the human aspect of network administration and management, specifically errors in network configuration, through surveys, controlled experiments, and interviews; followed by the design of SDN-based systems that can counteract the introduction of such errors into network configurations.
Following up on the highly successful 2014 NCSU CentMesh Drones Challenge, which concluded in April 2014, we kicked off another year-long student challenge for 2014-15. This time, it was not only a programming challenge, but also a challenge to design and hone some of the drone’s subsystems. In addition, there was a specific real-world mission – to design and demonstrate a drone capable of aiding a firefighter by going into burning buildings as advance guard. Several teams completed the challenge, which was administered as a Special Topic course, conducted by Dr. Dutta, Dr. Mihail Sichitiu (ECE), Dr. Edgar Lobaton (ECE), or Dr. Larry Silverberg (MAE). More details are available from the Firefighting Drone Challenge webpage. We continue to be interested in guiding motivated students to build on the platforms produced for even more increased realism.
for getting a paper accepted at the CoolSDN Workshop co-located with ICNP 2014. Rob’s paper presents his work on designing and demonstrating a seamless general-purpose in-network service insertion mechanism integration into OpenFlow. He made a short video describing this work – see the SDN Labs link below.
Dr. Dutta delivered an invited talk in Summer, 2014, at the Advanced Computing and Microelectronics Unit at the world-famous Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. The talk was on the evolution of Internet architecture, with special reference to network-neutrality issues, and the emergence of the service-oriented Internet. The talk was on the kind invitation of Dr. Bhabani P Sinha, head of the ACMU.
for successfully defending his M.S. thesis! Kasyap not only did very challenging work for his MS thesis, but also was one of the two students who between them enabled the entire CentMesh Drones Challenge 2014. He is moving on to employment at Citrix, and has a bright career ahead of him.