Biography

I graduated from the Institut National des Télécommunication (INT, Evry, France) in 1995 and I was awarded a PhD degree from Université Toulouse III (France) in January 2000. Before joining LAAS, I spent one year in the private sector, working for Delta Partners company as a R&D engineer. I am DR CNRS (research director) since 2018, and I was the scientific leader of the SARA research group at LAAS (2016-2017, 2018-2020). In addition to my research activities, I am also giving courses at INSA Toulouse and I am one of the founders of QoS Design, a spin-off of LAAS-CNRS. 

Research Interests

What performance can we expect from a communication network or a distributed system? How to design these complex systems at minimum cost so as to guarantee a target grade of service to users? What resource management mechanisms do we need to optimize performance? Using game and queueing theories as well as mathematical optimization techniques, my research work aims at answering these questions. The goal is to design mathematical models and methods that take into account the size and complexity of communication networks, the random nature of the traffic demand, as well as the decentralized resource management schemes used in large networks.

Publications

I have authored more than 70 publications. Please, refer to the Publications page for a complete list.

Mobility

Teaching and Dissemination of Scientific Culture

Teaching

• Course on Performance Evaluation and Optimization of Communication Networks, INSA Toulouse, since 2003.
• Course on Distributed Architectures and Parallel Programming, M2R SAID, 2006-2009.
• Course on Stochastic Analysis and Control of Distributed Systems, doctoral school EDSYS, 2015-2017.

Post-doc and Ph.D. Students

• 15 PhD students: Charles Bockstal, Anouar Rachdi, Hassan Hassan, Cédric Fortuny, Zied Ben Hamouda, Ahmad Al Sheikh, Tatiana Seregina, Josu Doncel, Josselin Vallet, Henda Ben Cheikh, Hang Nguyen, Ioanna Stypsanelli, Mathis Zamboni, Nga Nguyen.
• 6 Postdoc students: Anouar Rachdi, Ahmad Al Sheikh, Dawood Khan, Christopher Thraves Caro, Ali El Amine, Quang-Trung Luu.

Dissemination of Scientic Culture

I am a member of TetaNeutral.net for the community's understanding of what is really at stake with the Internet.

Research Projects

• Local projects: coordinator of 2 LAAS projects (STM and OSEC),
• National Projects: I have been involved in 8 national projects - ESQUIMAUX (RNRT), OPIUM (RNRT), CASP (RNTL), AVIPS (ANR), SATRIMMAP (ANR),  SOP (ANR),  NEC (FUI),  GESTION (CNES), ONSET (RAPID, DGA). For 3 of them I was the local coordinator.  
• International projects: I was the coordinator of the FP7 PANACEA project and of the PROVE STIC AmSud project, and I was also a participant to the H2020 projects Konfido and Ghost while at Imperial.

Technology Transfer

• I am one of the founders of QoS Design, a start-up developping the software suite NEST (Network Engineering and Simulation Tool), with among its customers Alcatel, British Telecom, SFR, Tunisie Telecom, etc.
• I have supervised 3 CIFRE Ph.D. thesis, and managed 2 direct contracts with the industry.
• I am the co-inventor of an international patent on hybrid simulation.