John Heidemann's Research

As a senior project leader at Information Sciences Institute I am active in research in several areas. (I also teach and advise students at the USC Computer Science Department.)

Just for fun: see LA through ISI's eyes (or at least windows).

For students interested in working with me or entering USC, please see my advice page.

Research Projects

At ISI my work is focused in two major areas: sensor networking and Internet traffic analysis. My networking research occurs in the context of ANT, the Analysis of Network Traffic group at ISI. My sensor networking work is part of I-LENSE, the ISI Laboratory for Embedded Networked Sensor Experimentation.

In these areas I'm currently active on several research projects:

• LACREND: Internet traffic analysis to improve network security. PIs are John Heidemann and Christos Papadopoulos (at CSU). Started in 2012, supported by DHS.

• Retro-Future (part of ANT): New approaches to Internet analysis over time and across organizations. PIs are Mike Fisk (LANL), John Heidemann, Dan Massey (CSU), Christos Papadopoulos. Started in 2012, supported by DHS.

• MEGA is developing new models and algorithms to examine dynamic, multi-modal, large-scale social and computer networks. PI is Ashish Goel (Stanford), am am co-PI at USC. (Started July 2012, supported by DARPA DSO.)

• CiSoft: I'm active in several CiSoft efforts, with my current focus being applying inexpensive, pervasive sensing to enhance production. Prior work has including improving oilfields safety, support underwater monitoring systems, subsidence monitoring, energy harvesting, and multi-sensor fusion. (Started in 2004, supported by Chevron via USC's CiSoft.)

In addition, I am grateful for industrial support from Intel Corporation (2000-2003), Northrop Grumman (2003), Chevron (2004-current), and Cisco (2005, 2007).

Research collaborations

Networking research is strongly collaborative. Organizations with which I am affiliated:

• the ISI Computer Networks Division
• I-LENSE: the ISI Laboratory for Embedded Networked Sensor Experimentation
• ANT: the USC Analysis of Network Traffic group
• the UCLA-headquartered Center for Embedded Networked Sesning

(And of course, many student, industry faculty collaborators as well.)

Prior Research Projects

A number of the research projects I've done at ISI have concluded, including:

• LANDER-2007: Internet traffic analysis to improve network security. (2007-2013, supported by DHS.)

• AMITE is building an annotated, edge-considering Internet topology. PIs are John Heidemann and Ramesh Govindan (USC/CS). (2009-2012, supported by DHS.)

• DATUNR is developing an open, always-on testbed for underwater networking research. PIs are John Heidemann and Wei Ye (USC/ISI) and Urbashi Mitra (USC/EE). (August 2008 to May 2012, supported by NSF.)

• ORTUN is developing an open, deployable testbed for underwater research. We expect to provide bouys with both WHOI and SNUSE modems that can be deployed several times a year in different environemnts. PI is Jim Preisig (WHOI); ISI PIs are Wei Ye and John Heidemann. (2007-2011, supported by NSF.)

• MADCAT is exploring the study of periodic patterns in Internet traffic to detect security problems (2006-2010, supported by NSF).

• MR-Net is exploring the use of parallel algorithms to processes of very large network datasets--Billions of pings in the Internet address space, flow headers packet headers. We are exploring the use of map/reduce-style parallelism over clusters of PCs. (2008-2010, supported by NSF, with additional support from ISI New Research Inititatives.)

• SRVC is exploring how automatic configuration and local- and wide-area communication for vehicle classification systems (2007-2010, supported by METRANS).

• SISS is looking at how sensornets and the Internet can work together (2006-2009, supported by NSF).

• SNUSE is developing sensor networks suitable for undersea use. (2004-2008, supported by NSF.)

• LANDER: Internet traffic analysis to improve network security. (2004-2007, supported by DHS.)

• Rapidly Deployable Sensors for Vehicle Counting and Classification (2003-2005) is investigating the use of sensor networks to classify roadway traffic. This proposal is funded by USC/CSULB METRANS with Genevieve Guiliano as co-PI.

• MACSS (MAC Protocols Specific for Sensor Networks, 2002-2005) is investigating Media Access Control (MAC) protocol design for sensor networks: energy efficiency via coordinated sleep, and interactions between the MAC and the physical layer and sensors. We also plan to study how sensor net applications differ from Internet-style applications. MACSS is supported by NSF and Intel Corporation.

• Pervasive Monitoring and Control of Water Lifeline Systems for Disaster Recovery (2002-2004) is investigating sensor net infrastructure and data integration algorithms applied to enhance the performance of civil infrastructure systems, particularly utility lifeline systems, under both emergency and daily operational conditions. This project is supported by NSF and is joint work with Masanobu Shinozuka (UC Irvine).

• CONSER (Collaborative Simulation for Education and Research, 2000-2004): CONSER is developing network simulation and visualization tools (ns and nam) to support networking research for protocol development and evaluation, and network education, illustrating concepts about existing and new network protocols.

• SAMAN (Simulation Augmented by Measurement and Analysis for Networks, 2000-2004): evaluated rapidly generating representative traffic models for network simulation, applying analytic techniques to speed simulation, and how to make current networks more robust to failure.

• SCADDS (Scalable Coordination Architectures for Deeply Distributed Systems, 2000-2003): early work in sensor networking, including directed diffusion, adaptive fidelity, localization, and MAC protocols suitable for long-lived, self-configuring networks.

• VINT (1997-2000), network simulation, in collaboration with Deborah Estrin and Polly Huang and others

• LSAM (1995-1998), web caching and transport-layer research, in collaboration with Joe Touch, Vikram Vishweswariah, and Lars Eggert, and others

• GOST (1995-1997), Prospero and file system stacking, in collaboration with Cliff Neuman and others

Earlier Research

In addition to work at ISI, I did my graduate work at UCLA as part of the Ficus project. My PhD dissertation (under Gerald Popek) concerned stackable filing, an approach to structure file-system components to support rapid development and deployment of new services. While at UCLA I also contributed to the Ficus replicated file system.

Before graduate school I worked for several years at the folks of Microimages (when it was still a research project at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln).

(Research) Community Service

One aspect of being active in academic research is supporting the process of peer review. To that end I am an active member of ACM, IEEE Computer Society, and Usenix. In addition to particpating in various program committees,

In the past, I was an associate editor of the ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, and on the editorial board of IEEE Pervasive Computing Magazine.