Future Internet Infrastructure Research at UMass Amherst and at the Isenberg School

I was delighted to hear this morning from Karen Hayes, the Director of Research Communications and Outreach, that the Feature Article, UMass Amherst experts are driving the future of Internet infrastructure, is now online on the ResearchNext website.

The faculty from Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Isenberg School of Management that appear in the article were interviewed last summer.

It is truly amazing that at UMass Amherst there are two (out of the five) funded National Science Foundation (NSF) Future Internet Architecture (FIA) projects.

As the article notes, my doctoral students and I are working with Professor Tilman Wolf of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering on the FIA project that we are calling ChoiceNet. Our collaborators include colleagues at the University of Kentucky (Professors Ken Calvert and Jim Griffioen), NCState (Professors Rudra Duuta and George Rouskas), and RENCI an UNC (Dr. Ilya Baldine). My doctoral students who have been funded on this NSF grant are: Sara Saberi, who is an Isenberg Scholar Award recipient, and Dong "Michelle" Li, who received the Outstanding Doctoral Student Researcher Award from the Isenberg School in 2014.  Both Sara and Michelle are PhD students in the Management Science track at the Isenberg School.

Just last week, I spoke at the INFORMS Computing Society conference on our latest research on ChoiceNet in the form of introducing duration-based contracts for Internet services so as to offer consumers more choices.  The paper, which is online, thanks to INFORMS and the great conference Proceedngs editors, is: A Game Theory Model for a Differentiated Service-Oriented Internet with Duration-Based Contracts,  Anna Nagurney, Sara Saberi, Tilman Wolf, and Ladimer S. Nagurney, Proceedings of ICS 2015: Operations Research and Computing: Algorithms and Software for Analytics, Brian Borchers, J. Paul Brooks, and Laura McLay, Editors, INFORMS (2015) pp 15-29. Our presentation can be viewed here.

The project page for ChoiceNet is here where you can find some of our papers.

I very much liked the quote from our Vice Chancellor in the article: “The fact that our campus was selected to take a leadership role on two of the five FIA projects speaks volumes about our faculty expertise,” says Mike Malone, vice chancellor for research and engagement. “We take an interdisciplinary approach to science, which is critical to an initiative of this size.”

In addition to ChoiceNet, the other FIA project that UMass Amherst researchers are involved in is MobilityFirst. Professors Jim  Kurose, Arun Venkataramani, and Michael Zink are working on that project.  And, for those who have not heard, Distinguished University Professor Jim Kurose of Computer Science is now the new Program Director of CISE (Computer & Information Science & Engineering)  Directorate at NSF!

ChoiceNet at Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) Engineering Conference (GEC21)

Today,  the GENI Engineering Conference 21  (GEC21) begins at Indiana University and, tomorrow afternoon, there will be a two part tutorial on our National Science Foundation (NSF) project ChoiceNet.    

More details on the tutorial can be found here and here. My UMass ciolleague, Professor Tilman Wolf,  and University of Kentucky colleague, Professor Jim Griffioen,  will be conducting the tutorial along with two doctoral students.

The full schedule can be accessed here.

GENI, also known as the Global Environment for Network Innovations, provides a virtual laboratory for networking and distributed systems research and education. It is well suited for exploring networks at scale, thereby promoting innovations in network science, security, services and applications.

ChoiceNet is our project, funded by NSF under the grant: Network Innovation Through Choice. UMass Amherst is the lead on this multiunveisrity project with Professor Tilman Wolf of the Department of Computer and Electrical Engineering as the PI and me as the Co-PI, along with colleagues from the University of Kentucky, North Carolina State University, and the University of North Carolina. ChoiceNet is one of five NSF Future Internet Architecture projects.

Professor Wolf prepared this page on our ChoiceNet project, which will continue to be updated.

Specifically, we seek to introduce an Economy plane into the Internet.

Vision

The goal of ChoiceNet is to enable choices and the associated economic relationships between entities in the network. ChoiceNet makes it possible for network service providers to compete for customers and be rewarded for quality and innovation. In today’s network, money enters the network ecosystem only around the edges: consumers (individuals or enterprises) pay access providers for Internet service. Most access providers, in turn, pay other ISPs to carry their traffic to/from the rest of the Internet. Indeed, most end-to-end traffic in the Internet traverses at least three distinct service
providers.

Thus, in today’s Internet (i) no single provider controls all end-to-end paths; (ii) money flow between providers is outside the architecture and by necessity changes slowly; and (iii) traffic flow is constrained at the granularity of providers to follow the money flow. The result is that transit providers have neither means nor incentive to compete via new service offerings, and consumers have essentially no control over the service they receive or its quality. A central thesis of ChoiceNet is that enabling money flow to follow traffic flow (instead of vice versa), coupled with greater support for choice among end-users, should lead to increased provider competition and more innovation.

ChoiceNet’s economy plane aims to give assurances to providers that they can compete for customers and be compensated for the services they render. At the same time, ChoiceNet provides users with the ability to select from a set of offerings and combine them to form complex services, thereby separating services that are currently entangled in the current Internet. Key to such an architecture is the ability to market services and then form or dissolve business relationships on (potentially small) time scales. Moreover, ChoiceNet must enable providers (and consumers) to prove (or verify) that the contracted service was rendered as promised.

I have two doctoral students at the Isenberg School of Management conducting research on ChoiceNet: Sara Saberi and Dong "Michelle" Li. We are specifically working on the game theory and network economics aspects and have already published a series of papers, including:

• Anna Nagurney, Dong Li, Tilman Wolf, and Sara Saberi. A network economic game theory model of a service-oriented internet with choices and quality competition. NETNOMICS: Economic Research and Electronic Networking, 14(1–2):1–25, November 2013. (Notable Article in Computing in 2013 by ACM Computing Reviews) DOI
• Anna Nagurney and Tilman Wolf. A Cournot-Nash-Bertrand game theory model of a service-oriented internet with price and quality competition among network transport providers. Computational Management Science, 11(4), pages 475-502. DOI
• Sara Saberi, Anna Nagurney, Tilman Wolf, A network economic game theory model of s service-oriented Internet with price and quality competition in both content and network provision. Service Science, 6(4), December 2014, pages 1-24.

I hope that everyone at GEC21 has a rewarding conference!

Toward An Economy Plane for the Internet - A Paradigm Shift Through Our NSF Research

Yesterday we heard the good news that our paper:

had been accepted by the Editor of Computer Communication Review (CCR) for publication. We expect it to appear in the July 2014 issue.

CCR, according to its website, is the magazine of ACM SIGCOMM. ACM, as some of you may know, is the acronym for the Association for Computing Machiner, the world's largest educational and scientific computing society. SIGCOMM is the special interest group on Data Communication.

The scope of CCR is that:  Technical papers accepted to CCR typically report on practical advances or the practical applications of theoretical advances. CCR serves as a forum for interesting and novel ideas at an early stage in their development. The focus is on timely dissemination of new ideas that may help trigger additional investigations. While the innovation and timeliness are the major criteria for its acceptance, technical robustness and readability will also be considered in the review process. We particularly encourage papers with early evaluation or feasibility studies. 

Our paper reports on our vision for our National Science Foundation (NSF)  project: Network Innovation Through Choice, which, as you can see from the names on our paper, is multiuniversity and multidisciplinary (and also multiyear). I truly enjoy working with this great team of computer scientists and electrical and computer engineers and provide the network economics and operations research and management science perspective. 

In particular, we are envisioning and working on a Future Internet Architecture (FIA) and are, in fact, one of five such teams in the U.S. selected by NSF.   Our FIA is called ChoiceNet.

In this paper, in the Abstract, we state that: "The Internet has been a key enabling technology for many new distributed applications and services. However, the deployment of new protocols and services in the Internet infrastructure itself has been sluggish, especially where economic incentives for network providers are unclear.  In our work, we seek to develop an “economy plane” for the Internet that enables network providers to offer new network- based services (QoS, storage, etc.) for sale to customers. The explicit connection between economic relationships and network services across various time scales enables users to select among service alternatives. The resulting competition among network service providers will lead to overall better technological solutions and more competitive prices. In this paper, we present the architectural aspects of our ChoiceNet economy plane as well as some of the technological problems that need to be addressed in a practical deployment."

Also, we are delighted that our earlier paper,A Network Economic Game Theory Model of a Service-Oriented Internet with Choices and Quality Competition, Anna Nagurney, Dong Li, Tilman Wolf, and Sara Saberi, Netnomics 14(1-2): (2013) pp 1-25, which is also based on this NSF funded project was selected by ACM Computing Reviews in its list of Best of 2013.   The list recognizes notable items published in computing.

Our paper was selected in the Computer Applications category and the full list can be downloaded here.   Both Sara Saberi and Dong Li are my doctoral students in Management Science at the Isenberg School at UMass Amherst.

It is terrific to see interdisciplinary research making advances in what may actually be a paradigm shift!

Supernetwork Center Associates to Present Supply Chain + Future Internet Papers at POMS Atlanta

It is the first day of May and, although the academic semester is over in terms of teaching, faculty and doctoral students are, nevertheless, very busy getting ready for a new cycle of conferences.

This is exciting!

The Production and Operations Management Society (POMS) is holding its 25th Annual Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, May 9-12, 2014.

And, although I will then be speaking at a fascinating workshop in Erice, Sicily - Italy, the work conducted by Supernetwork Center Associates will be highly visible at POMS. .

One of my doctoral students, Dong "Michelle: Li,  who recently received a 2014Outstanding Doctoral Student Researcher Award from the Isenberg School,  will be presenting our joint paper, Equilibria and Dynamics of Supply Chain Network Competition with Information Asymmetry in Quality and Minimum Quality Standards, which has been  accepted for publication in the journal Computational Management Science We have prepared this POMS presentation:

Two other supply chain papers that I co-authored with Supernetwork Center Associates, both of whom were my former doctoral students, and are now thriving as Professors, will also be presented: One is: An Integrated Disaster Relief Supply Chain Network Model with Time Targets and Demand Uncertainty, co-authored with Professors Amir H. Masoumi and Min Yu,  and the other: Competitive Food Supply Chain Networks with Application to Fresh Produce, which was published in the  European Journal of Operational Research 224(2): (2013) pp 273-282.

Center Associate Professor Patrick Qiang will be presenting his latest work on supply chains and sustainability: The Closed-loop Supply Chain Network with Competition and Design for Remanufacturability. Dr. Qiang was also my doctoral student in Management Science at the Isenberg School of Management. He has done pioneering work in network vulnerability and performance assessment.


Finally, Doctoral Student Center Associate Sara Saberi will present a paper co-authored with Professor Tilman Wolf and me on work funded by the Future Internet Architecture (FIA) program at the National Science Foundation (NSF). The title of that paper is: A Network Economic Game Theory Model of a Service -Oriented Internet with Price and Quality Competition in Both Content and Network Provision. Our POMS presentation can be downloaded from the supernetworks site.

Networks can really take you places!

For the Love of Networks

When the invitation came from Dr. Adilson Motter to speak at the 2013 Network Frontier Workshop that he was organizing at Northwestern University I was very intrigued, even though the workshop was to take place in early December. Since I live (most of the time) in Massachusetts, I have experience with cold weather but, for some reason, that cold on Lake Michigan is quite unique.

But, since I love researching networks and teaching about the subject and find it one of the most powerful of scientific topics in bridging disciplines, of course, I said "yes!"

This workshop, which was a huge success, and I am still savoring the talks and discussions as well as the people that I met, was a three-day event, that took place last week, December 4-6, highlighting leading-edge research on complex networks. According to the workshop website: Participants working on innovative aspects of complex systems will communicate recent results and ideas relevant to fields as diverse as brain, climate, and socio-technological research. Sessions will include theory and applications of nonlinear dynamics and statistical physics in the context of synchronization, cascades, transportation, control, and failure recovery in complex dynamical systems.

The program, which featured talks on applications ranging from climate science to brain physiology and envisioning the future Internet (my topic) can be downloaded here.  The list of invited speakers can be viewed here.  Invited speakers were from the US, Europe, and Asia, and one industrialist told me that he flew in from China just to hear me speak. I hope that I did not disappoint.

I loved the applications described as well as the methodologies, which included innovations in dynamical systems and control theory applied to networks.

Thanks to Dr. Motter  and his team at the Northwestern Institute for Complex Systems (NICO) for putting this great workshop together. You succeeded in bringing researchers, practitioners, and students together to Evanston in December for the love of networks!

Below are some photos that I managed to take even though, honestly, my digital camera seemed to freeze (although I had charged it before flying out to Chicago).

The lunches and refreshments were delicious!

And, today, UMass Amherst has delayed its opening until noon because of the inclement weather but since we are interviewing a candidate for a faculty position, I will be going in. This afternoon, we are having our annual Isenberg Reindeer Seminar in the Isenberg School of Management atrium, which is a holiday party but first there will be a Personnel Committee meeting to attend. Never a dull moment in academia!

NSF Grants Should Matter Even in Business Schools

Last Friday, I spoke at Texas A&M University and had a wonderful discussion at breakfast with several students from their  INFORMS Student Chapter who were wise beyond their years. Talking with speakers that they had brought to College Station every week had given them information and knowledge (and not just of the technical variety) as well as academic "street smarts."

So, they "picked my brain" about various topics and were especially interested in what I perceived as the differences between being a Professor at a business school versus an engineering school. These were doctoral students in engineering with a good background in Operations Research so they were trying to figure out, assuming that they would become academics, what kind of school would be a good "home" for them. Analytics talent is prized now in both business and engineering schools because of the demand in industry, government, and numerous other organizations, and this is great for all the quant types out there!

The students were aware that, in business schools, typically, the teaching load is higher, and that more emphasis is put on teaching. They noted a speaker (this surprised me) who told them  that the unhappiest 3 years of her life were those that she spent while a prof at a business school -- she is now at an engineering school. They also were aware (savvy, aren't they?!) that in business schools there is emphasis on publishing in what are referred to as "premier" journals whereas in engineering schools getting grants does matter and may be a necessary condition for promotion and tenure if not a sufficient one.  Let's admit it that starting salaries in business schools, which may be a bit discipline-dependent, are also higher, sometimes substantially higher, than those in engineering schools.

As a chaired professor at a business school (the Isenberg School of Management at UMass Amherst) but one who also holds affiliated appointments in two different engineering departments at UMass Amherst, I clearly wear many "hats" and the interdisciplinary scope of my research and activities fuels my creativity and research. Also, since some of my support while a doctoral student at Brown University was provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF), given to my dissertation advisor at Brown, Dr. Stella Dafermos, I have always felt that getting grants, which are peer-reviewed,  is important to one's scientific recognition, plus, it allows you to do the following (of course, this depends on the size and type of grant):

1. Support additional doctoral students, which I have done and am presently doing under our NSF grant: NetS: Large-Scale: Collaborative Research: Network Innovation Through Choice project, in which we are working on envisioning and constructing a Future Internet Architecture known as ChoiceNet. This is truly an exciting project involving a multidisciplinary, multiuniversity  team of engineers, computer scientists,  and my doctoral students and me. The lead PI is my colleague, Professor Tilman Wolf of the College of Engineering at UMass Amherst. This is only one of several NSF grants that I have been so lucky to have received over my professional career. Without NSF support, I would not have started the Virtual Center for Supernetworks at UMass Amherst, nor would I have graduated as many successful PhDs as I have had, nor had amazing opportunities through its International Programs, its earlier Faculty Awards for Women Program and its Visiting Professorship for Women Program, under which I spent a great year at MIT in Engineering.

Plus, I have supported quite a few undergraduates at the Isenberg School through the NSF's Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program.

2. Fund travel for students and others supported by the grant. Even though we may spend time in virtual worlds it is essential that we meet face to face at conferences, at workshops, and at other professional venues to exchange ideas. There is only so much $$$ in departmental travel budgets and chaired professor budgets for this activity so financial support from grants helps tremendously.

3. Supplies from the latest computers to even books can be purchased for students' and researchers' use as well as software and other materials.

4. Summer support can be acquired which allows sustained periods of time for focused research activity without distractions.

5. Recognition by one's peers that NSF support provides gives one confidence and, for a female, this is of tremendous value.  It never gets "easy" and there are always roadblocks put in your way and challenges and I say that as a chaired professor. I enjoyed the post on Nine Things Successful People Do Differently on the Harvard Business Review blog network, especially Point 6. Have grit. Grit is a willingness to commit to long-term goals, and to persist in the face of difficulty. Studies show that gritty people obtain more education in their lifetime, and earn higher college GPAs. Grit predicts which cadets will stick out their first grueling year at West Point. In fact, grit even predicts which round contestants will make it to at the Scripps National Spelling Bee.

The good news is, if you aren’t particularly gritty now, there is something you can do about it. People who lack grit more often than not believe that they just don’t have the innate abilities successful people have. If that describes your own thinking …. well, there’s no way to put this nicely: you are wrong. As I mentioned earlier, effort, planning, persistence, and good strategies are what it really takes to succeed. Embracing this knowledge will not only help you see yourself and your goals more accurately, but also do wonders for your grit.

And let me celebrate that another colleague of mine in my Operations & Information Management Department at the Isenberg School, Professor Senay Solak, has also had an NSF grant with multiple universities since starting as an Assistant Professor just over 5 years ago. (Another colleague, Professor Ahmed Ghoniem, has been receiving funding from Qatar in terms of other grants, and, most recently, to work on the FIFA World Cup in Qatar for 2022 -- so cool!)

Plus, let us not forget that receipt of NSF grants enhances the stature, visibility, and reputation of your business school and your university!

Moreover, look at some of the fascinating projects that NSF has funded that were given to faculty at Business Schools: at the Eller School at the University of Arizona for ethics research (our Dean's alma mater), to a consortium, which includes Stanford and Haas at UC Berkeley for innovation, and even at Wharton for a workshop. Of course, the Sloan School at MIT has had many faculty receive NSF grants including the prestigious CAREER awards and even a PECASE award given to Professor Georgia Perkais, who is my academic sister, because her advisor at Brown was also Stella Dafermos, who, sadly, passed away while Georgia was her student and Professor Tom Magnanti, a good friend of Stella's, and of OR/MS renown,  took over as her advisor.