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08/18/11 Mainack Mondal won the bronze medal in SIGCOMM posters' student research competition for his work on limiting large-scale crawls of social networking sites. Congratulations, Mainack!
07/22/11 Our paper analyzing word-of-mouth based discovery of the Web has been accepted at IMC 2011.
07/22/11 Our paper quantifying the difference between users' actual and desired privacy settings in OSNs like Facebook has been accepted at IMC 2011.
07/18/11 Slides from my panel talk, Is Social Media Making News Generation and Consumption Better?, at ICWSM 2011 are available here.
05/10/11 MaxPlanck Research magazine featured an article titled The Echo of Digital Tweets about our studies of the Twitter social network.
Click here for older news posts.

I am broadly interested in the areas of networking and distributed systems. My research is motivated by the growing complexity (scale, heterogeneity, and distributed control) of today's networked systems. My projects focus either on understanding how well existing systems work in practice or on building new systems. We use a combination of measurement, analysis, design, and implementation methodologies to achieve our goals.

• Online Social Networks: Online social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have become extremely popular for finding and connecting to friends and for sharing and retrieving content. Our broad research agenda includes (a) understanding the structure and evolution of social network graphs, (b) understanding how content and information propagates through social networks, (c) leveraging social networks for building better information sharing systems (i.e., better search results and content recommendations as well as filtering unwanted communication and content), and (d) building scalable infrastructures for supporting social networking sites and their workloads.


• Internet Access Networks: Broadband acess network infrastructures, such as cable, DSL, and cellular networks, are being widely deployed. Yet we have very little knowledge about the real world access ISP deployments and we do not understand how well systems or protocols perform over these networks. We attempt to make ISP deployments more transparent by (a) conducting large-scale measurement studies of broadband ISP deployments, (b) designing tools and testbeds that enable researchers to evaluate the performance of systems and protocols in broadband network environments, and (c) designing measurement systems that enable end users to detect middleboxes (e.g., traffic shapers) deployed by their ISPs.


• Trusted Cloud Computing: Customers adopting cloud computing today worry about the security risks associated with outsourcing their private data and computation to cloud providers. We are investigating ways to leverage trusted computing technology in cloud infrastructures to improve customer trust in cloud services.

In the past, I have worked on peer-to-peer systems and overlay routing systems.

Graduate Students: I work with many fantastic graduate students at MPI-SWS.

• Farshad Kooti
• Juhi Kulshrestha
• Mainack Mondal
• Nuno Santos (Co-advised with Rodrigo Rodrigues)
• Bimal Viswanath

If you are interested in graduate studies at MPI-SWS, follow this link.

Former Students:

• Massimiliano Marcon, Ph.D. student, is a Software Engineer at SAP
• Marcel Dischinger, Ph.D. student, is a Senior Software Engineer at Barracuda Networks
• Meeyoung Cha, postdoctoral researcher, is an Assistant Professor at KAIST
• Alan Mislove, Ph.D. student (coadvised with Peter Druschel), is an Assistant Professor at Northeastern University
• Alexey Reznichenko, masters student, is Ph.D. student at MPI-SWS
• Malveeka Tewari, undergraduate student, is a Ph.D. student at UCSD

For a complete list of my publications in chronological order, follow this link.

Recent publications grouped by research topic: Online Social Networks | Internet Access Networks | Trusted Cloud Computing | Miscellaneous

Online Social Networks:

Measurement and Analysis Studies:

• The world of connections and information flow in Twitter,
  by Meeyoung Cha, Fabricio Benevenuto, Hamed Haddadi, and Krishna P. Gummadi
  To Appear in IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man and Cybernetics -- Part A, 2012.
  
• Delayed Information Cascades in Flickr: Measurement, Analysis and Modeling,
  by Meeyoung Cha, Fabricio Benevenuto, Young-Yeol Ahn, and Krishna P. Gummadi
  To Appear in Elsevier Computer Networks, 2012.
  
• On Word-of-Mouth Based Discovery of the Web,
  by Tiago Rodrigues, Fabricio Benevenuto, Meeyoung Cha, Krishna P. Gummadi, and Virgilio Almeida
  Proceedings of the 11th Usenix/ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC), Berlin, Germany, November 2011.
  (.pdf, 535 KB)
  
• Analyzing Facebook privacy settings: User expectations vs. reality,
  by Yabing Liu, Krishna P. Gummadi, Balachander Krishnamurthy, and Alan Mislove
  Proceedings of the 11th Usenix/ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC), Berlin, Germany, November 2011.
  (.pdf, 549 KB)
  
• Media landscape in Twitter: A World of New Conventions and Political Diversity,
  by Jisun An, Meeyoung Cha, Krishna P. Gummadi, and Jon Crowcroft
  Proceedings of the 5th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM), Barcelona, Spain, July 2011.
  (.pdf, 394 KB)
  
• Sharing Social Content from Home: A Measurement-driven Feasibility Analysis,
  by Massimiliano Marcon, Bimal Viswanath, Meeyoung Cha, and Krishna P. Gummadi
  Proceedings of the 21st International Workshop on Network and Operating Systems Support for Digital Audio and Video (NOSSDAV), Vancouver, Canada, June 2011.
  (.pdf, 311 KB)
  
• Measuring User Influence in Twitter: The Million Follower Fallacy,
  by Meeyoung Cha, Hamed Haddadi, Fabricio Benevenuto, and Krishna P. Gummadi
  Proceedings of the 4th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM), Washington, DC, May 2010.
  (.pdf, 205 KB)
  
• On the Evolution of User Interaction in Facebook,
  by Bimal Viswanath, Alan Mislove, Meeyoung Cha, and Krishna P. Gummadi
  Proceedings of the 2nd ACM SIGCOMM Workshop On Social Networks (WOSN), Barcelona, Spain, August 2009.
  (.pdf, 108 KB)
  
• A Measurement-driven Analysis of Information Propagation in the Flickr Social Network,
  by Meeyoung Cha, Alan Mislove, and Krishna P. Gummadi
  Proceedings of the 18th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW), Madrid, Spain, April 2009.
  (.pdf, 868 KB)
  
• Characterizing Social Cascades in the Flickr Social Network,
  by Meeyoung Cha, Alan Mislove, Ben Adams, and Krishna P. Gummadi
  Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGCOMM Workshop On Social Networks (WOSN), Seattle, WA, August 2008.
  (.pdf, 410KB)
  
• Growth of the Flickr Social Network,
  by Alan Mislove, Hema Swetha Koppula, Krishna P. Gummadi, Peter Druschel, and Bobby Bhattacharjee
  Proceedings of the 1st ACM SIGCOMM Workshop On Social Networks (WOSN), Seattle, WA, August 2008.
  (.pdf, 186 KB)
  
• Measurement and Analysis of Online Social Networks,
  by Alan Mislove, Massimiliano Marcon, Krishna P. Gummadi, Peter Druschel, and Samrat Bhattacharjee.
  Proceedings of the 7th Usenix/ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC), San Diego, CA, October 2007.
  (.pdf, 533 KB)
  

Systems Design and Implementation:

• Exploring the design space of social network-based Sybil defenses,
  by Bimal Viswanath, Mainack Mondal, Allen Clement, Peter Druschel, Krishna P. Gummadi, Alan Mislove, and Ansley Post
  Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Communication Systems and Networks (COMSNETS), Invited Paper, Bangalore, India, January 2012.
  (.pdf, 28 KB)
  
• Addressing the Privacy Management Crisis in Online Social Networks,
  by Krishna P. Gummadi, Alan Mislove, and Balachander Krishnamurthy
  The IAB Workshop on Internet Privacy, Position Paper, Boston, MA, December 2010.
  (.pdf, 19 KB)
  
• An Analysis of Social Network-based Sybil Defenses,
  by Bimal Viswanath, Ansley Post, Krishna P. Gummadi, and Alan Mislove
  Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2010, New Delhi, India, August 2010.
  (.pdf, 495 KB)
  
• You are who you know: Inferring user profiles in Online Social Networks,
  by Alan Mislove, Bimal Viswanath, Krishna P. Gummadi, and Peter Druschel
  Proceedings of the 3rd ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining (WSDM), New York, NY, February 2010.
  (.pdf, 181 KB)
  
• Ostra: Leveraging Trust to Thwart Unwanted Communication,
  by Alan Mislove, Ansley Post, Peter Druschel, and Krishna P. Gummadi.
  Proceedings of the 5th Usenix Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI), San Francisco, CA, April 2008.
  (.pdf, 372 KB)
  
• Exploiting Social Interactions in Mobile Systems,
  by Andrew G. Miklas, Kiran K. Gollu, Kelvin K.W. Chan, Stefan Saroiu, Krishna P. Gummadi, and Eyal de Lara.
  Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing (UbiComp), Innsbruck, Austria, September 2007.
  (.pdf, 885 KB)
  
• Exploiting Social Networks for Internet Search,
  by Alan Mislove, Krishna P. Gummadi, and Peter Druschel.
  Proceedings of the 5th ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks (HotNets), Irvine, CA, November 2006.
  (.pdf, 140 KB)
  

Internet Access Networks:

Measurement and Analysis Studies:

• Detecting BitTorrent Blocking,
  by Marcel Dischinger, Alan Mislove, Andreas Haeberlen, and Krishna P. Gummadi
  Proceedings of the 8th Usenix/ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC), Vouliagmeni, Greece, October 2008.
  (.pdf, 470 KB)
  
• Characterizing Residential Broadband Networks,
  by Marcel Dischinger, Andreas Haeberlen, Krishna P. Gummadi, and Stefan Saroiu.
  Proceedings of the 7th Usenix/ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC), San Diego, CA, October 2007.
  (.pdf, 735 KB)
  
• Monarch: A Tool to Emulate Transport Protocols over the Internet at Large,
  by Andreas Haeberlen, Marcel Dischinger, Krishna P. Gummadi, and Stefan Saroiu.
  Proceedings of the 6th Usenix/ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC), Rio De Janeiro, Brazil, October 2006.
  (.pdf, 951 KB), (.ps, 10.8 MB)
  

Systems Design and Implementation:

• Measurement Lab: Overview and an Invitation to the Research Community,
  by Constantine Dovrolis, Krishna P. Gummadi, Aleksandar Kuzmanovic, and Sascha D. Meinrath
  Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review (CCR), Editorial Section, July 2010.
  (.pdf, 77 KB)
  
• Glasnost: Enabling End Users to Detect Traffic Differentiation,
  by Marcel Dischinger, Massimiliano Marcon, Saikat Guha, Krishna P. Gummadi, Ratul Mahajan, and Stefan Saroiu
  Proceedings of the 7th Usenix Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI), San Jose, CA, April 2010.
  (.pdf, 667 KB)
  
• SatelliteLab: Adding Heterogeneity to Planetary-Scale Testbeds,
  by Marcel Dischinger, Andreas Haeberlen, Ivan Beschastnikh, Krishna P. Gummadi, and Stefan Saroiu
  Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM 2008, Seattle, WA, August 2008.
  (.pdf, 340 KB)
  

Trusted Cloud Computing:

• Towards Trusted Cloud Computing,
  by Nuno Santos, Krishna P. Gummadi, and Rodrigo Rodrigues
  Proceedings of the Workshop On Hot Topics in Cloud Computing (HotCloud), San Diego, CA, June 2009.
  (.pdf, 513 KB)
  

Miscellaneous:

• The Local and Global Effects of Traffic Shaping in the Internet,
  by Massimiliano Marcon, Marcel Dischinger, Krishna P. Gummadi, and Amin Vahdat
  Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Communication Systems and Networks (COMSNETS), Bangalore, India, January 2011.
  (.pdf, 319 KB)
  
• Pretty Good Packet Authentication,
  by Andreas Haeberlen, Rodrigo Rodrigues, Krishna P. Gummadi, and Peter Druschel
  Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Hot Topics in System Dependability (HotDep), San Diego, CA, December 2008.
  (.pdf, 138 KB)
  

Some of our research projects and findings have been covered in the mainstream media and popular blogs.

Online Social Networks:

• The Echo of Digital Tweets (MaxPlanck Research, Germany)
Media landscape in Twitter (ICWSM 2011):
• How Twitter Could Unleash World Peace (Businessweek)
Measuring user influence in Twitter (ICWSM 2010):
• The Million Follower Fallacy: Audience Size Doesn't Prove Influence on Twitter (ReadWriteWeb and The New York Times)
• On Twitter, Followers Don't Equal Influence (Harvard Business Review)
• Size Doesn't Matter: Why Ebert Beats Oprah on Twitter (TheWrap)
• Live phone interview with Fabricio Benevenuto (MTV News in Brazil)
• TV interview with Meeyoung Cha (Science TV in Korea)
• KAIST president highlights Meeyoung Cha and her research (Seoul SinMun in Korea)
Inferring user profiles in online social networks (WSDM 2010):
• Privacy: Facebook's Achilles Heel (CNET News)
• On Facebook, You Are Who You Know (Miller-McCune)
• On Social Networks, You are Who You Know (Slashdot)
Exploiting social networks for Internet search (HotNets 2006):
• Web searches benefit from some human help (New Scientist)
• Suchen im Netz der Nutzer (MIT Technology Review, Germany)
• Web hits from my PeerSpective (New Scientist)

Internet Access Networks:

Glasnost project (NSDI 2010, IMC 2008):
• Study: Cox, Comcast Internet subscribers blocked (Associated Press)
• Study Shows Comcast and Cox Slow P2P Traffic (The New York Times)
• Elude Your ISP's BitTorrent Blockade (PCWorld)
• Cox, Comcast biggest BitTorrent blockers in the world (Ars Technica)
• Glasnost im Internet (MaxPlanck Research, Germany)
• Israeli ISPs Caught Interfering with P2P Traffic (Slashdot)
• Test If Your ISP Is Shaping your Download Speed (The Consumerist)

Trusted Cloud Computing:

Towards Trusted Cloud Computing (HotCloud 2009):
• 5 cool cloud computing projects (CIO)

• IMC 2012: Program Committee, Internet Measurement Conference 2012.
• WOSN 2012: Program Committee, Fourth ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Online Social Networks 2012.
• SIGCOMM 2012: Program Committee, ACM SIGCOMM conference 2012.
• WSDM 2012: Program Committee, 5th ACM International Conference on Web Search and Data Mining.
• HotNets 2011: Program Committee, 10th ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks.
• CoNext 2011: Program Committee, ACM CoNext conference 2011.
• FOCI 2011: Program Committee, Usenix Workshop on Free and Open Communications on the Internet.
• NetEcon 2011: Workshop on the Economics of Networks, Systems, and Computation.
• DBSocial 2011: First ACM SIGMOD Workshop on Databases and Social Networks.
• IEEE J-SAC: Guest Editor, Special Issue of JSAC on Measurement of Internet Topologies.
• IMC 2010: Program Committee, Internet Measurement Conference 2010.
• SIGCOMM 2010: Poster Committee, ACM SIGCOMM conference 2010.
• WWW 2010: Program Committee for Performance, Scalability, and Avaiability Area, 19th International World Wide Web Conference.
• HotNets 2009: Program Committee, 8th Workshop on Hot Topics in Networking.
• CoNext 2009: Program Committee, ACM CoNext conference 2009.
• WOSN 2009: Program Committee, Second ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Online Social Networks 2009.
• SIGCOMM 2009: Program Committee, ACM SIGCOMM conference 2009.
• NSDI 2009: Program Committee, 6th Usenix/ACM Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation 2009.
• ROADS 2008: Program Committee Co-Chair, 3rd International Workshop on Real Overlays and Distributed Systems 2008.
• CoNext 2008: Program Committee, ACM CoNext conference 2008.
• SIGCOMM 2008: Program Committee, ACM SIGCOMM conference 2008.
• WOSN 2008: Program Committee, First ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Online Social Networks 2008.
• NSDI 2008: Program Committee and Poster Committee Co-chair, 5th Usenix/ACM Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation.
• INFOCOM 2008: Program Committee, IEEE Conference on Computer Communications.
• HotNets 2007: Program Committee, 6th Workshop on Hot Topics in Networking.
• SIGCOMM 2007: Program Committee, ACM SIGCOMM conference 2007.
• EuroSys Authoring Workshop 2007: Program Co-Chair, The Second EuroSys Authoring Workshop 2007.
• NSDI 2007: Program Committee and Poster Committee Co-chair, 4th Usenix/ACM Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation.
• ICDCS 2007: Program Committee, 27th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems.
• WORLDS 2006: Program Committee, 3rd Usenix Workshop On Real, Large Distributed Systems.
• SIGCOMM 2006: Poster Committee, ACM SIGCOMM conference 2006.
• IPTPS 2006: Program Committee, 5th International Workshop on Peer-to-Peer Systems.

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