Robbert vanRenesse gave a keynote address at the Stochasticity in Distributed Systems Conference in December. As the first workshop on Stochasticity in Distributed Systems, the event brought together a collection of research white papers that originated from a diverse range of distributed systems topics, but were all centered around the theme of stochasticity. The white papers were on topics that ranged from design and study of sensor networks and overlays, to rationality and social networks, to the use of nature-inspired ideas and design methodologies for building real systems.
vanRenesse is a senior research associate with the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University. He was the co-founder of several companies, including DAG Labs, Norway and Reliable Network Solutions. He has worked on a variety of projects related to distributed systems, including Tacoma, Horus, Ensemble, NuPrl, and most recently and relevantly Spinglass and Quicksilver. Robbert has also served on numerous program committees and as editor of IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems.