Current Research Interests
Broadly, my research interest is in fault-tolerant distributed computing. There currently is an acute need for fault-tolerance in distributed systems due to the rapid increase in the number and mobility of computing devices, the ubiquity of network connections, and the increase of transient failures that alter the system in an arbitrary fashion. For instance, sensor networks can consist of thousands of nodes operating in hostile environments where node failures, network disconnections, and topological changes are expected behavior. A useful property for these systems, then, is the ability to automatically recover from faults. Examples of these properties include self-healing, self-organizing, and self-stabilizing. My research focuses on the study of these properties, collectively referred to as self-* properties.
My recent work is on a fault-tolerant paradigm called self-stabilizing overlay networks. An overlay network is a network where communication occurs over logical links, where each logical link is realized by one or more physical links. Self-stabilizing overlay networks guarantee the correct overlay network topology is built regardless of the initial state. Currently, I am working on novel applications for self-stabilizing overlay network algorithms with Dr. Sukumar Ghosh.
Publications
Journal Papers
- Andrew Berns, Sukumar Ghosh, and Sriram V. Pemmaraju. Building Self-Stabilizing Overlay Networks with the Transitive Closure Framework. Theoretical Computer Science, Vol 512, pages 2-14, Essex, UK, 2013. Elsevier Science Publishers Ltd. The original publication is available at ScienceDirect.
Full Conference Papers
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Andrew Berns. Avatar: A Time- and Space-Efficient Self-Stabilizing Overlay Network. In Proceedings of the 17th International Symposium on Stabilization, Safety, and Security of Distributed Systems, SSS ‘15, pages 233-247, 2015. Springer International Publishing. The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com.
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Andrew Berns, James Hegeman, and Sriram V. Pemmaraju. Super-Fast Distributed Algorithms for Metric Facility Location. In Proceedings of the 39th International Colloquium Conference on Automata, Languages, and Programming - Volume Part II, ICALP ‘12, pages 428-439, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2012. Springer-Verlag. The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com.
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Andrew Berns, Sukumar Ghosh, and Sriram V. Pemmaraju. Building Self-Stabilizing Overlay Networks with the Transitive Closure Framework. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Stabilization, Safety, and Security of Distributed Systems, SSS ‘11, pages 62-76, Berlin, Heidelberg, 2011. Springer-Verlag. (Best Paper Award). The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com.
- Andrew Berns, Anurag Dasgupta, and Sukumar Ghosh. Stabilizing Pipelines for Streaming Applications. In Proceedings of the 24th IEEE International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing, IPDPS ‘10, pages 1-9, Los Alamitos, CA, USA, 2010. IEEE Computer Society.
- Andrew Berns and Sukumar Ghosh. Dissecting Self-* Properties. In Proceedings of the 2009 Third IEEE International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing Systems, SASO ‘09, pages 10-19, Washington, DC, USA, 2009. IEEE Computer Society.
- Andrew Berns. A Comparison of CORBA and Ada’s Distributed Systems Annex. In Proceedings of the 2005 Annual ACM SIGAda International Conference on Ada, SIGAda ‘05, pages 103-108, New York, NY, USA, 2005. ACM. The original publication is available in the ACM Digital Library.
Brief Announcements
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Thamer Alsulaiman, Andrew Berns, and Sukumar Ghosh. A Framework for Containing the Degree Growth in Topological Self-Stabilization. In Proceedings of the 17th International Symposium on Stabilization, Safety, and Security of Distributed Systems, SSS 2015, pages 282-283, 2015. Springer International Publishing. The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com.
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Thamer Alsulaiman, Andrew Berns, and Sukumar Ghosh. Self-Stabilizing Power-Law Networks. In Proceedings of the 2015 International Conference on Distributed Computing and Networking, ICDCN ‘15, pages 35:1-35:4, 2015. ACM. The original publication is available in the ACM Digital Library.
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Thamer Alsulaiman, Andrew Berns, and Sukumar Ghosh. Brief Announcement: Low-Communication Self-Stabilizing Leader Election in Large Networks. In Proceedings of the 15th International Symposium on Stabilization, Safety, and Security of Distributed Systems, SSS 2013, pages 348-350, 2013. Springer International Publishing. The original publication is available at www.springerlink.com.
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Andrew Berns, Sukumar Ghosh and Sriram V. Pemmaraju. Brief Announcement: A Framework for Building Self-Stabilizing Overlay Networks. In Proceedings of the 29th ACM SIGACT-SIGOPS Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing, PODC ‘10, pages 398-399, New York, NY, USA, 2010. ACM. The original publication is available in the ACM Digital Library.
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Andrew Berns, Anurag Dasgupta, and Sukumar Ghosh. Brief Announcement: Optimal Self Stabilizing Multi-Token Ring: A Randomized Solution. In Proceedings of the 28th ACM SIGACT-SIGOPS Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing, PODC ‘09, pages 302-303, New York, NY, USA, 2009. ACM. The original publication is available in the ACM Digital Library.
Technical Reports
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Andrew Berns. Avatar: A Time- and Space-Efficient Self-Stabilizing Overlay Network. arXiv:1506.01688 [cs.DC], 2015.
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Andrew Berns and Eunjin Jung. Searching for Malware in BitTorrent. Technical Report UICS-08-05, The University of Iowa Department of Computer Science, 2008.