Speaker: Prof. Tansu Alpcan, OPTIMA

Engineering Smart and Secure Networks using Optimisation, Game Theory and Machine Learning

An important development within the triangle of communication, computing, and cybersecurity is the convergence of communications and computing. Beyond classical networking and computing paradigms, novel communication architectures are emerging within the context of 5/6G that combine computing and communication seamlessly, often at the edge of the network, for increased flexibility and performance. Along with virtualisation in computing (e.g., Docker, Kubernetes) and wireless access networks (e.g., O-RAN), these new generation of architectures bring exciting research opportunities. This talk will present an overview of our group’s latest research results combining modern machine learning with optimisation and game theoretic methods to engineer smart and secure networked systems. These powerful computational and mathematical tools lead to substantial improvements in efficiency, flexibility, and cybersecurity. Two specific examples from network resource allocation and cyber-physical system security will be presented to illustrate the adopted multi-disciplinary approach. The first example focuses on allocation of network and computing resources for QoS and real-time services. The second example investigates cybersecurity of networked autonomous platoons. The talk will conclude with a brief discussion on future research directions.

Tansu Alpcan received a Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 2006. His research interests include applications of game, optimisation, and control theories, and machine learning to security and resource allocation problems in communications, smart grid, and Internet-of-Things. He chaired or was an Associate Editor, TPC chair, or TPC member of several prestigious IEEE workshops, conferences, and journals. Tansu Alpcan is the (co-)author of more than 150 journal and conference articles as well as the book “Network Security: A Decision and Game Theoretic Approach” published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in 2011. He co-edited the book “Mechanisms and Games for Dynamic Spectrum Allocation” published by CUP in 2014. He has worked as a senior research scientist in Deutsche Telekom Laboratories, Berlin, Germany (2006-2009), and as Assistant Professor (Juniorprofessur) in Technical University Berlin (2009-2011). Tansu is currently with the Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at The University of Melbourne as a Professor and Reader. He is an OPTIMA Chief Investigator.

WED 03 NOVEMBER 4PM – 5PM AEST

ZOOM MEETING ID: 873 1557 5255; PASSWORD: 778635

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