ACADEMIA

Research by Subject / Publications by Date / Teaching / Projects

Having worked with one of the most prolific researchers in Systems has ingrained one simple benchmark for my own work, building scalable systems to solve real problems. I was very actively involved in Undergraduate Research with some of the best engineers in the field. While I started my foray into Graduate School in the field of Computer Architecture, my course work in Graduate Operating Systems and work experience building a hypervisor encouraged me to switch to Systems research, full-time. My initial experiments with the Linux Kernel and the K42 Operating System re-affirmed my belief that Systems research was the best place to be. It tested a wide variety of my skills, design, implementation and testing. Much of my future work will be under the aegis of this theme. My dissertation work proposed Proactive Crowd Sourcing for Location Based Services and a prototype, Reverse-111 was built for Emergency Response using Proactive Crowdsourcing. In future, I propose to look at Location-Based Services using a variety of devices as sensors, from powerful cell-phones to simple RFID Tags.

Free Radical Years 2010 onwards..

• “Multi-Channel eCommerce“, International Case Masters Conference, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, July 2011. Amongst the Top 5 submissions in our category



• “Genetic Sequences within Indian Patents“, Best Practices Beyond Free-text: The Value of Indexing and Classification when Searching and Analyzing Patents,PIUG Annual Conference, May 2011, Cincinatti, Ohio.
• “eWaste Management in India using RFID“, The International Symposium on Sustainable Systems and Technology, IEEE-ISSST, May 2011, Chicago, Illinois.
• “Formative Assessment“, Anu Vaidyanathan, Thought Leaders – India Education Review, February 2011
• “Alternative Language Claims, perspectives and implications “, Anu Vaidyanathan 2nd IPR Conference, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. Confluence 2011, February 2011, Bombay, India.
• “Characterizing Cell Breathing using PCMD “, Anu Vaidyanathan, Wilfred Wong 25th International Conference on Information Networking, ICOIN 2011, January 2011, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
• “Crowd Sourcing using Individual Based Models “, Anu Vaidyanathan, The Tenth International Conference on Networks, ICN 2011, January 2011, St. Maarten, The Netherlands. .
• “The Wisdom of Crowds in Emergency Management“, Anu Vaidyanathan, NIPS workshop on “Computational Social Science and the Wisdom of Crowds”. December 2010, Whistler, Canada.
• “Community Outreach using MoyreReachTM for Rural Punjab“,Divya Sharma, Ankita Goyal, Tania Garg, Shruti Tripathi, Madhu Garg, Anu Vaidyanathan, Grace Hopper Women in Computing – Poster Session, Bangalore, India, December 2010.
• “A Test-Bed for Emergency Management Simulations“,Anu Vaidyanathan, International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, September 2010.
• “The Use of Cell Phone Technology for Improved Disaster Response: A Case Study from New Zealand”Anu Vaidyanathan, David Johnston Australasian Journal for Disaster Management, in Press, September 2010.
  
• “Emergency Response with Proactive Crowd-Sourcing — Reverse-111″, Anu Vaidyanathan, 5th International Conference on Critical Response Information Infrastructures Security (CRITIS), Athens Greece, September 2010.
• “Proactive crowd-sourcing for Location Based Services”, Anu Vaidyanathan, PhD Dissertation, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, April 2010.

Dissertation October 2007- December 2009

• “A Visualization tool to enable Emergency Management,” Anu Vaidyanathan, Mark Billinghurst, Harsha Sirisena, Australian Telecommunications Networks and Applications Conference (ATNAC) , Nov 2009 .
• “Understanding Directional Load Balancing using Per Call Measurement Data,” Anu Vaidyanathan, Wilfred Wong, Mark Billinghurst, Harsha Sirisena, International Symposium on Performance Evaluation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems (SPECTS) , July 2009
• “Data in Social Network Analysis,” Anu Vaidyanathan, Malcolm Shore, Mark Billinghurst, International Conference on Computer Mediated Social Networking (ICCMSN) , May 2008 .
• “Characterizing and Visualizing Mobile Phone Networks,” Anu Vaidyanathan, Mark Billinghurst, Harsha Sirisena, New Zealand Computer Science Research Student Conference (NZCSRSC) , Dec 2008 .

Masters Thesis – 2001-2002

• “Poseidon : Microarchitectural prevention of stack-smashing attacks” Anu Vaidyanathan Masters Thesis, NC State, 2002 , Aug 2002 .
• “Poseidon, an architectural solution for Stack Smashing Attacks” Anu Vaidyanathan, Greg Byrd Programming Languages Design and Implementaion (PLDI) Berlin , June15-17 2002 .
• “A case for dynamic pipeline scaling J. Kopanallil, Sameer Desai, Anu Vaidyanathan, Eric Rotenberg International Conference on Compilers, Architecture and Synthesis for Embedded Systems (CASES) , May 2002 .

Technical Reports

• “K42 Scheduler Modifications,” Anu Vaidyanathan, Mike Dahlin, Jimi X UT Austin project , 2003-2004 .
• “Arachne, Quantifying content on the internet,” Anu Vaidyanathan, UW Madison, Technical Report , Nov 2004 .
• “Lazy Broadcasting in DataScalar architectures,” Anu Vaidyanathan, James E Goodman, UW Madison, Technical Report , 2002 .
• “Simple Clusters with in-order issue,” Anu Vaidyanathan, James E Smith, UW Madison, Summer Research Report , Aug 1999 .
• “Notes on Installing SUIF2 in Purdue’s network,” Anu Vaidyanathan, Purdue University, Research report , June 1999 .

Location Based Services / Intellectual Property / Computer Architecture

Location Based Services with Proactive Crowdsourcing

My thesis is that the use of location is central to enabling solutions that address the issues of scale, in providing meaningful solutions in both commercial and non-commercial applications, on the most ubiquitous sensor of them all, the cell-phone. In my dissertation, I proposed the use of location to enable an emergency response service called Reverse 111, which extends beyond a random mass-phone call or mass-SMS, to utilizing the user’s location to identify the users in the affected area, for more efficient information gathering and response. I further proposed the idea of proactive crowd-sourcing in which users co-located with an emergency are polled to obtain more robust information on the nature and changing parameters of the emergency[CrowdShare]. One of the main contributions of my thesis was the design and implementation of a number of approaches to live emergency response, while addressing the scale of the problem that concludes that a greedy approach to emergency response outperforms other approaches. I proposed the application of what can be considered crowd-sourcing for the domain of emergency response, which is the first proposal of its kind, to my knowledge.

Some Relevant Publications:

• “Characterizing Cell Breathing using PCMD “, Anu Vaidyanathan, Wilfred Wong 25th International Conference on Information Networking, ICOIN 2011, January 2011, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
• “Crowd Sourcing using Individual Based Models “, Anu Vaidyanathan, The Tenth International Conference on Networks, ICN 2011, January 2011, St. Maarten, The Netherlands. .
• “The Wisdom of Crowds in Emergency Management“, Anu Vaidyanathan, NIPS workshop on “Computational Social Science and the Wisdom of Crowds”. December 2010, Whistler, Canada.
• “A Test-Bed for Emergency Management Simulations“,Anu Vaidyanathan, International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, September 2010.
• “The Use of Cell Phone Technology for Improved Disaster Response: A Case Study from New Zealand”Anu Vaidyanathan, David Johnston Australasian Journal for Disaster Management, in Press, September 2010.
  
• “Emergency Response with Proactive Crowd-Sourcing — Reverse-111″, Anu Vaidyanathan, 5th International Conference on Critical Response Information Infrastructures Security (CRITIS), Athens Greece, September 2010.
• “Proactive crowd-sourcing for Location Based Services”, Anu Vaidyanathan, PhD Dissertation, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, April 2010.
• “A Visualization tool to enable Emergency Management,” Anu Vaidyanathan, Mark Billinghurst, Harsha Sirisena, Australian Telecommunications Networks and Applications Conference (ATNAC) , Nov 2009 .
• “Understanding Directional Load Balancing using Per Call Measurement Data,” Anu Vaidyanathan, Wilfred Wong, Mark Billinghurst, Harsha Sirisena, International Symposium on Performance Evaluation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems (SPECTS) , July 2009
• “Data in Social Network Analysis,” Anu Vaidyanathan, Malcolm Shore, Mark Billinghurst, International Conference on Computer Mediated Social Networking (ICCMSN) , May 2008 .
• “Characterizing and Visualizing Mobile Phone Networks,” Anu Vaidyanathan, Mark Billinghurst, Harsha Sirisena, New Zealand Computer Science Research Student Conference (NZCSRSC) , Dec 2008 .

Intellectual Property Law

Intellectual Property (IP) in India is still, for all intents and purposes, a fresh sheet of paper. No start can be a bad start. In the past few years, I have been constantly amazed at the amount of intellectual capital we possess right here. Even though, most of our sectors seem to strictly play within the service arena. If there be more debunking of folklore about IP, maybe some of these really smart people will feel more encouraged to hold on to some of their ideas. There is a real need for this for several reasons. Establishing such capital will go a long way to procure the mileage smaller and medium sized businesses need to differentiate themselves in the market. Protecting ideas always provides the leverage to run farther with the products generated as a result of those ideas. Encouraging research and development and more abstractly, critical thought, is the hallmark of progress. R&D need not be limited to the areas of pure science or medicine. Small and medium sized businesses should definitely consider putting in place teams to plan and innovate, in order to stay ahead of the curve. In doing so, they should also recognize the rewards IP rights bring with them and utilize them. The wealth in IP is not limited to future forecasts. The history of thought behind big ideas is well maintained by reasonable checkpoints in the literature that is available. This is another tool that small and medium businesses can fully utilize. One of my favourite authors, John Steinbeck, wrote several lines that I live furiously by. In his book called East of Eden, he introduces a character called Sam Hamilton who is a shining man, constantly inventing things. Often in my first meetings with inventors, I wonder if I will meet the next Sam Hamilton. Some one who is your average next-door-neighbor, who invented the next big thing.

Some Relevant Publications:

• “Genetic Sequences within Indian Patents“, Best Practices Beyond Free-text: The Value of Indexing and Classification when Searching and Analyzing Patents,PIUG Annual Conference, May 2011, Cincinatti, Ohio.
• “Alternative Language Claims, perspectives and implications “, Anu Vaidyanathan 2nd IPR Conference, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay. Confluence 2011, February 2011, Bombay, India.
• “Noutpam – A tool for Indian Patent Information”,Anu Vaidyanathan, PIUG Annual Conference, May 2008, Arlington, Virginia.

Computer Architecture

In 2002, stack smashing attacks were the most exploited security vulnerability in the decade prior, according to CERT. Using a method called stack smashing, a malicious user overflows a buffer in the stack frame, overwriting critical stack state. The return address of the current function, which is saved in the function’s stack frame, is overwritten when the buffer overflows. The new return address points to the attacker’s code. So, when the function is exited, control is transferred to the attacker’s code instead of back to the calling function.

A common way to prevent overflow-based stack smashing is to insert bounds checking code or insert sentinel values on the stack, but this requires recompilation. In my Master’s Thesis, I proposed a hardware-based method that does not require recompilation, based on the idea that an attack of this kind produces an unexpected return address. The processor maintains a separate hardware stack, called the shadow stack, and monitors the dynamic instruction stream for subroutine calls and returns. When a call instruction is retired, its return address is pushed on the shadow stack. When a return instruction is retired, the address at the top of the shadow stack is popped and compared to the target of the return instruction. If the addresses differ, then the conventional subroutine call/return semantics have been violated. This may truly be an attack, or it may be a legitimate program construct (e.g., setjmp()/longjmp()) that also violates call/return semantics. Legitimate cases are distinguished from attacks by recording the stack pointer along with the return address at the time of a call: when a subroutine returns, the stack pointer appears consistent in the case of an attack but not in the case of setjmp()/longjmp(). There are three distinct parts to the evaluation of the usefulness and the practicality of this idea. The first part is identifying the generality of this solution. This means that we seek to answer the question: “Do we detect all forms of buffer overflow attacks without raising unnecessary false positives in the case of legal program constructs?” The second part is the actual design details of such a stack and the amount of state that needs to be recorded to facilitate the generality described above. The third part is the actual recovery mechanism that could take the form of exceptions raised that could be further handled by the Operating System. This thesis answers the generality and design questions in entirety while laying a solid basic understanding and initial set of experiments for the recovery scheme that could be utilized.

Some Relevant Publications:

• “Poseidon : Microarchitectural prevention of stack-smashing attacks” Anu Vaidyanathan Masters Thesis, NC State, 2002 , Aug 2002 .
• “Poseidon, an architectural solution for Stack Smashing Attacks” Anu Vaidyanathan, Greg Byrd Programming Languages Design and Implementaion (PLDI) Berlin , June15-17 2002 .
• “A case for dynamic pipeline scaling J. Kopanallil, Sameer Desai, Anu Vaidyanathan, Eric Rotenberg International Conference on Compilers, Architecture and Synthesis for Embedded Systems (CASES) , May 2002 .

One of the most influential books I have read is “To Sir, with love” by E R Braithwaite. I believe being a teacher is a privilege and a responsibility, not to be taken lightly. The ivory tower should be agnostic to student background and cognizant of individual and collective challenges one and all face when obtaining their education, be it basic or advanced. Here are some thoughts on teaching.

In the July 2010 Semester, I had the opportunity to teach a class on Computer Architecture to a
set of second year Computer Science and Engineering students at the Indian Institute of Technology, Ropar. In watching my own professors teach and discussing their methods, choice of books and assignment of grades based on various components in a course including projects, exams and assignments, I have come to understand that there are many paths to choose from. The nature of the disciplines of Computer Architecture and Systems is closely tied to design followed by effective implementation and robust testing. Additionally, students should ideally see a holistic view of how a high-level program goes through the motions of being compiled/interpreted before being executed. I usually use three metrics to assign a final grade to the students, which includes, the normal exams/homeworks/quiz component, a significant project component with an ambitious attempt at hacking SimpleScalar and running SPEC or other test benchmarks and third, a research component, where they are to perform a literature survey and come up with a succinct description of a brand-new architecture, one that they have not been exposed to via lectures or via the project. This way, I get to evaluate their test-taking skills, their coding skills and their analytical skills.

Courses Taught

• Innovation and Intellectual Property
• Computer Architecture

iWiSE – Indian Women in Science and Engineering

iWiSEstands for Indian Women in Science and Engineering and we have our beginnings at the Indian Institute of Technology Ropar. We got together for the first time on August 10th, 2010 in one of our lecture halls here on the transit campus. It was a meeting to introduce the group to each other, talk about our issues as women that are common amongst all and just build a group-effort atmosphere. It was great fun talking about stereotypes, fears, dreams and activities we would like to participate in. It was a round-table meeting with one faculty facilitator and aimed at being a non-hierarchical atmosphere whose goal was to encourage open discussion. This was followed by electing a number of student facilitators as we don’t believe in titles (such as president etc., that is outside the realm of our good fun atmosphere) or an authoritarian structure. Student facilitators take on a leadership role to enable co-ordination amongst all members and we recognize the extra effort and time they take out of their day towards activities for iWiSE. Our goals are broadly to:

(a)Bring together a group of women who are already in the Sciences and Engineering to share ideas on their day to day lives, both professionally and personally.
(b)Recognize that this group of women is already in a very privileged position being in a difficult field of study and coming from what are really prestigious institutions in the country in order to pay our success forward.
(c)Encourage leadership by activities in the local community including local-area schools where our members serve as role-models or just plain mentors who take on a very low-profile but emphatic role in encouraging other children and women to consider our field of study; and
(d)Be an inclusive group that extends across several institutions that agree to our basic tenets of a non-authoritarian setup, facilitation roles and active community involvement.

At the end of the day, we are in this to support other girls on campus in a non-competitive manner, support the community with our actions and learn and assimilate the great experiences from where we are. We also go for runs and walks together, where we end up giggling for hours and sharing our stories outside work! We are a fun and focussed group and we hope you can join us.