ALI SHOKER

Senior Research Scientist

I am a Senior Staff Research Scientist at the Resilient Computing and Cybersecurity Center (RC3) at KAUST, KSA. I am privileged to be part of the core team building the 2nd Cybersecurity and Resilient Systems center in my career as researcher. 

Email: ali(.)shoker(@)kaust.edu(dot)sa

BIOGRAPHY

I am currently a Senior Staff Research Scientist at the Resilient Computing and Cybersecurity Center (RC3), at KAUST, KSA. I am assisting the Director Paulo Esteves-Verissimo on the research team and on the foundation and inception the new KAUST's research center, RC3, whose mission is to improve the state of the art and practice of Cybersecure Cyberresilient Cyberphysical systems. 

I have a hybrid academic and industrial research leadership experience. I am the co-founder and head of Cybersecurity and Smart Distributed Systems research lab and innovation team at VORTEX CoLAB, an industrial research and innovation center in Portugal, part of the Capgemini Group. Before moving to VORTEX, I visited and worked at INESC TEC (Portugal), Minho University (Portugal), INSA de Lyon (France), and EPFL twice (Switzerland). 

My research interests revolve around understanding and building cybersecure, resilient, scalable, available, efficient, green, smart, and distributed systems. I am interested in applications related to the Automotive industry (i.e., Autonomous Vehicles, Connected Vehicles, V2X), Cyber-physical systems (i.e., smart and connected infrastructures),  Blockchain/Distributed Ledgers, and more recently on Secure/Resilient hardware System-on-Chip, and Space systems.

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Prior to RC3@KAUST, I was the co-founder of the  VORTEX CoLAB research and innovation center, part of the Capgemini Group. I've built and lead the Cybersecurity and Smart Distributed Systems research lab. I was in charge of the entire R&I process: strategy, scouting, ideation, conception, design, implementation, proof, validation, evaluation, publication, patenting, and pitching, and interviewing. I was also coordinating the technical research proposals and projects (EU Horizon 2020, Horizon, Europe, P2020, etc.). 

Prior to that, I worked as Assistant Researcher at INESC TEC (HASLab research unit), Portugal, where I founded with my co-authors the mainstream models for CRDTs (a.k.a., Conflict-free Replicated  datatypes). The work has seen significant adoption in the Geo-replicated scalable available systems (among them, Facebook Apollo, PayPal, SoundCloud, TomTom, Cassandra DB, Microsoft Azure CosmosDB). I contributed in writing, researching, and leading several H2020 proposals.  I was also an Invited Assistant Professor at the Department of Informatics of University of Minho and at MAP-I PhD school (Portugal). I've founded, coordinated, and taught a new PhD course on "Successful Systems in Production". In 2012-2013, I worked as Postdoc at INSA de Lyon (France), focusing on scalable anonymous communications under malicious and rational attacks, following a Game Theory Nash Equilibrium model. I obtained my PhD degree with European Label in Computer Science from the University of Toulouse, France, working on Adaptive Byzantine/malicious/intrusion tolerant protocols. During my PhD, I visited EPFL, Switzerland, twice (hosted by Rachid Guerraoui) as a Research Intern. 

My research work spanned BFT/Blockchains, Resilience, Cybersecurity, Security, Anonymous Communication, Cloud/Fog/Edge Computing, Automotive, and data management (Conflict-free Replicated DataTypes - CRDTs).

NEWS

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS (or see Full List)

Awards & Scholarships

Ten wards, grants, or fundraising

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Mentoring

More than ten of RS, Postdoc, PhD, MS, Interns, & Research Engineers

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@ KAUST

@VORTEX

@INESC TEC MAPi

Projects

Dozen of EU or commercial funded projects

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Committees & Services

Dozens of conference PCs, Journals, and thesis defense examiner

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Services

Project Evaluation & Jury Examiner 

Journal Referee

Conference PC

Talks

Only tutorials and invited are listed

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Teaching

PhD course founder and coordinator

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Welcome to my office

KAUST, RC3, Building 4, Sea-side, Office 3240, Thuwal, 23955-6900, KSA

If you think education is expensive, try ignoranceDerek Bok.