Abstract: Distributed storage systems (a.k.a. cloud storage networks) are becoming increasingly important, given the need to put away vast amounts of data that are being generated, analyzed and accessed across multiple disciplines today. Besides serving as backbone systems for large institutions such as CERN, Google and Microsoft, distributed storage systems have been instrumental in the emergence and rapid growth of modern cloud computing framework.
In this talk, I'll present coding theoretic solutions to key issues related to designing distributed storage systems, especially focusing on 1) providing efficient mechanisms for repairing server failures, 2) enabling parallel accesses to data, and 3) securing information against eavesdropping attacks.
Bio: Ankit Singh Rawat received the B.Tech. degree from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, India, in 2010, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from The University of Texas at Austin in 2012 and in 2015, respectively. Since September 2015, he is a postdoctoral fellow at Carnegie Mellon University working with Venkatesan Guruswami. His research interests include coding theory, information theory, and statistical machine learning. Ankit is a recipient of the Microelectronics and Computer Development Fellowship from UT Austin. He has held summer internships at Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ, and Docomo Innovations Inc. in Palo Alto, CA.