ASAP – As Scalable As Possible

We are pleased to receive Roberto Azeverdo from PUC Rio (Brazil). He will give a talk on Thursday, December 14 at 10:30 in room Sardaigne (F102, blue level).

Title:
Exploring Integrated Broadcast-broadband for Advanced Multimedia Services

Abstract:
Integrated Broadcast-Broadband (IBB) multimedia services combine both broadcast and broadband technologies to provide high quality, flexible, and interactive multimedia experiences. Broadcast provides efficient simultaneous delivery of high-quality information to many viewers. Broadband augments the broadcast service and enables personalized features that can drive the user engagement and provide an improved quality of experience.

In this talk, I will discuss the foundations of IBB multimedia services, cover ongoing research, provide practical concerns about them, and details two advanced IBB use cases from our current research efforts: an end-to-end interactive depth-based 3D video, and a high-quality IBB companion screen services.

On the depth-based 3D video side, I will discuss the coding, transmission, delivery, and rendering of an IBB system that supports immersive interactive applications for multiview autostereoscopic 3D displays.

On the companion screens side, I will present the foundations of our solution, which supports interactive distributed multimedia applications with a fine inter-device synchronization.

Finally, I will provide additional envisioned scenarios, highlight some of the open issues, and discuss research possibilities in the area.

We are pleased to receive Stevens Le Blond from EPFL (Switzerland). He will give a talk on Tuesday, December 5 at 10:30 in room Crête (F402, red level).

Title:
Towards providing digital immunity to humanitarian organizations

Abstract:
Humanitarian action, the process of aiding individuals in situations of crises, poses unique information-security challenges due to natural or manmade disasters, the adverse environments in which it takes place, and the scale and multi-disciplinary nature of the problems. Despite these challenges, humanitarian organizations are transitioning towards a strong reliance on digitalization of collected data and digital tools, which improves their effectiveness but also exposes them to computer security threats. This talk presents the first academic effort seeking to understand and address the computer-security challenges associated with digitalizing humanitarian action.

First, I will describe a qualitative analysis of the computer-security challenges of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), a large humanitarian organization with over sixteen thousand employees, legal privileges and immunities, and over 150 years of experience with armed conflicts and other situations of violence worldwide. Second, I will present a research agenda to design and implement anonymity networks, block chains, and secure-processing systems addressing these challenges, and to deploy them in collaboration with the ICRC. I will close with a discussion on how to generalize our approach to provide digital immunity to humanitarian and other at-risk organizations.

Bio:
After having enjoyed sun bathing at INRIA Sophia-Antipolis, and actual bathing at the MPI-SWS, Stevens is now skiing in Switzerland where he’s a research scientist at EPFL. His Ph.D. thesis on the privacy analysis of the Skype protocol has has led to privacy enhancements of the Skype architecture which is daily used by hundreds of millions of users. His post-graduate work on anonymity networks was qualified of the “[next-generation] anonymity network closest to deployment” by ArsTechnica. He is one of the first academic researchers to have studied the computer security practices of politically-motivated attackers and their targets. His research has been published in leading conferences such as Oakland, Usenix Security, NDSS, SIGCOMM, and IMC.

Stevens’ personal page: https://people.epfl.ch/stevens.leblond