ALI SHOKER

Research Professor on Cyber Security and Resilience

I am a Research Associate Professor at KAUST, CEMSE Division, KSA. My research is focused on building Cyber Security and Resilience by Design. My group and I aim to redefining Cyber Security and Resilience through the integration of Distributed System Security, Hardware (FPGA, ASIC) security, and AI.

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

BIOGRAPHY

I am currently a Research Associate Professor at KAUST, CEMSE Division, KSA.

I have a hybrid academic and industrial research leadership experience. I am privileged to have worked on the co-foundation and inception of two Cyber Security research centers: Resilient Computing and Cybersecurity Center (RC3), at KAUST and VORTEX, Capgemini Group, Portugal.

Prior to this position, I worked as Senior Staff Research Scientist at RC3, KAUST, assisting the Director (Paulo Esteves-Verissimo) on the inception of the center and building the research team. 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 C yber secure, resilient, scalable, available, efficient, green, smart, and distributed systems. I am interested in building tools and applications related to the Security Operation Center (SOC), e.g., SOAR, SIEM, XDR. IDS, IPS, etc. Automotive industry (i.e., Autonomous Vehicles, Connected Vehicles, V2X), Cyber-physical systems (i.e., smart and connected infrastructures), Secure/Resilient hardware System-on-Chip (FPGA, ASIC), New Space (MicroSatellite) systems, and Blockchain/Distributed Ledgers.

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Prior to this position, I have been a Senior Staff Research Scientist at the former Resilient Computing and Cybersecurity Center (RC3), at KAUST, KSA, assisting the Director Paulo Esteves-Verissimo on the research team and on the foundation and inception the KAUST's cybersecurity research. My role was to build and follow up the research work of the team, propose new research, propose projects, papers, host business guests, promote research, etc. In parallel, I've lead the building of the Cyber Security and Resilience (CSR) Lab project (infra, equipment, mini datacenter).

Prior to RC3@KAUST, I co-foundeed 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.). Before VORTEX, 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.

NEWS

I've been promoted to Research Associate Professor in 2025 .
New paper accepted at the SRDS 20214 "Resilient and Secure Programmable System-on-Chip Accelerator Offload".
I am speaking on a panel on "Blockchain’s Role in Space, Defense & Security" at INATBA Blockchain Horizons
New paper accepted at the VehicleSec Symposium at NDSS 20214 "Savvy: Trustworthy Autonomous Vehicles Architecture".
My PhD student Ziad Kassam defended his thesis on "Beyond Distributed Transactions through Exactly-once Exchanges" at the joint MAPi PhD program, organized among the universities of Minho, Aveiro, Porto, and hosted by INESC TEC, Portugal.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS (or see Full List)

ASPAS: As Secure as Possible Available Systems, with Houssam Yactine and Georges Younes. DisCoTec Best Paper Award, and DAIS Best Paper. 2021.
Blockchain Technology as a Means for Sustainable Development. Invited Paper at the One Earth Journal , Cell Press and Elsevier, 2021.
Delta state replicated data types, with Paulo Sérgio Almeida and Carlos Baquero JPDC Elsevier journal, 2018.
Sustainable Blockchain through Proof of eXercise. IEEE NCA, October 2017.
Making BFT Protocols Really Adaptive, with Jean-Paul Bahsoun and Rachid Guerraoui. IEEE IPDPS'15, 2015.
Making Operation-Based CRDTs Operation-Based, with Carlos Baquero and Paulo Sérgio Almeida. Joint Best Paper at IFIP DAIS 2014.
RAC: a Freerider-resilient, Scalable, Anonymous Communication Protocol, with Sonia Ben Mokhtar et al. IEEE ICDCS, 2013.

Awards & Scholarships

Ten wards, grants, or fundraising

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(Project fundraising) Portuguese RRP Research Grant 3M€/32.5M€, 2022. Route 25 project on Secure Scalable Over-the-Air Vehicle software/firmware updates, hardware-assisted verification, and cooperative maneuverer validation..
(Project fundraising) H2020 Research Grant 460K€/3.5M€. From the EU Commission, 2017-19. LightKone project on decentralized edge computing.
IFIP Best Paper Award'21 on the federated DisCoTec conferences (COORDINATION, DAIS, FORTE).
Best paper at DAIS'21.
Joint Best Paper at DAIS'14.
LimeLight Award from INESC TEC (2017).
PhD scholarship from the Lebanese University (2009-2012).
Outstanding Masters scholarship from University of Toulouse (2008).
PhD research intern scholarships from EPFL (2011).
PhD ATUPS research mission scholarship from the University of Toulouse (2011).
PhD research intern scholarships from EPFL (2010).
PhD ATUPS research mission scholarship from the University of Toulouse (2010).

Mentoring

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

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@ KAUST

Rehana Yasmin, Research Scientist, on Automotive and New Space Resilience/Security
Noor Hussein, Intern (MBZUAI) on Transferable Adversarial Attacks
Ines Pinto Gouveia, Postdoc on Resilient/Secure MPSoC FPGA
Erick Silva, MS/PhD on Cybersecure OTA Automotive
Ziwu Liu, MS/PhD on Resilient Cybersecure New Space
Ahmad Tariq Sheikh, Postdoc on Resilient and secure adaptive MPSoC FPGA and Gate Diversity.
Mohamed El Massad, Postdoc on Resilient and secure Chiplets.

@VORTEX

Fernando Baptista LEAL ALVES, Research Engineer on Automotive OTA Cybersecurity
Joao Ramos, Research Engineer on Decentralized V2X
Mariana Fernandes, MSc (co-supervisor) on PKI privacy schemes for automotive
José Pedro Sousa, MSc on Automotive storage
Augusto César Pereira Henriques, MSc on OTA security via TEE/SGX

@INESC TEC MAPi

Houssam Yactine, PhD at MAP-I (supervisor). Topic. Byzantine resilient highly available systems. Ongoing.
Ziad Kassam, PhD at MAP-I (supervisor). Topic. Exactly-once communication for almost-infinite scalable applications. Ongoing.
Georges Younes, PhD (concluded) at MAP-I (co-supervisor with Carlos Baquero). Topic. Operation-based CRDTs and scalable causal middlewares. Ongoing.

Projects

Dozen of EU or commercial funded projects

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P2020 CMU FLOYD project on safe and secure Platoon V2X/C-V2X/5G communications (Leading VORTEX contribution)
EU H2020 ECSEL InSecTT – Intelligent Secure Trustable Things (Leading VORTEX contribution)
V2XPlay NORTE2020 acceleration: V2X Simulation and Integration. (Lead.)
SecUp NORTE2020 acceleration: Secure Over the Air (OTA) Software updates fro automotive. (Advisor.)
CROWD NORTE2020 acceleration project: Decentralised computation for Automotive ITS services. (Lead & Dev)
(Concluded) EU H2020 LightKone project on edge computing. (Leading INESC TEC's contribution & WP3).
(Concluded) NESUS IC1305 EU COST Action - Network for Sustainable Ultrascale Computing, 2018. (Member.)
(Concluded) P2020 Tec4Growth SMILES Portuguese project on Internet of Things; Portugal, 2014. (Member).
(Concluded) NORTE ON.2 BESTCASE-RL3-NETSENSING: Network Sensing for Critical Systems Monitoring.
(Concluded) EU FP7 SyncFree project on Conflict-free Replicated DataTypes. Portugal, 2016. (Member)
(Concluded) ANR SocEDA, National Research Agency, France, 2013. (Member.)
(Concluded) EPFL BFT ABSTRACT: Modular switching for BFT state machine replication. 2011. (Member).

Committees & Services

Dozens of conference PCs, Journals, and thesis defense examiner

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Services

Academic Advisory Body of the International Association for Trusted Blockchain Applications (INATBA).
Volunteered on the Blockchain framework within the UN, UNECE, ITU report on "Blockchain for smart sustainable cities".
Founder and organizer Chain-in Blockchain conference.
Founder and organizer of INESC TEC/HASLab InfoBlender seminar.

Project Evaluation & Jury Examiner

EU H2020 Blockpool: External evaluator (4 Blockchain projects).
MSc thesis examiner: João Martinho (Tecnico, Portugal) on "AstroChain: Proof-of-Space with Random Beacons".
MSc thesis examiner: Pedro Fernandes (Minho University, Portugal).

Journal Referee

IEEE TC, 2024. Transactions on Computers.
IEEE TMLCN, 2023. Transactions on Machine Learning in Communications and Networking.
IEEE TC, 2022. Transactions on Computers.
IEEE TDSC 2021. Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing.
IJCFATI 2021. International Journal of Cyber Forensics and Advanced Threat Investigations.
IEEE TKDE 2019. IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering. Topic: Blockchain.
Elsevier JPDC 2018. Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing. Topic: IoT Security.
IEEE TCC 2014. IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing journal. Topic: Byzantine SDN.

Conference PC

FAB 2024. International Workshop on Foundations and Applications of Blockchain.
IFIP DAIS 2024. International Conference on Distributed Applications and Interoperable Systems.
EDCC 2024. European Dependable Computing Conference.
ICA3PP 2022. The International Conference on Algorithms and Architectures for Parallel Processing.
ICA3PP 2016. The 16th International Conference on Algorithms and Architectures for Parallel Processing.
FAB 2021. International Symposium on Foundations and Applications of Blockchain.
AFEC (ICCCN) 2021: IEEE International Workshop on Advances in Fog/Edge Computing.
PAPOC (EuroSys) 2021: Workshop on Principles and Practice of Consistency for Distributed Data.
CloudCom 2020. The 10th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science.
PAPOC (EuroSys) 2020: Workshop on Principles and Practice of Consistency for Distributed Data.
AFEC (ICCCN) 2020: IEEE International Workshop on Advances in Fog/Edge Computing.
ICA3PP 2019. The 16th International Conference on Algorithms and Architectures for Parallel Processing.
CloudCom 2019. The 10th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science.
CCGrid 2019. The 19th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Grid Computing.
PAPOC (EuroSys) 2019: Workshop on Principles and Practice of Consistency for Distributed Data.
CloudCom 2018. The 10th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science.
PAPOC (EuroSys) 2018: Workshop on Principles and Practice of Consistency for Distributed Data.
CloudCom 2017. The 9th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science.
CCGrid 2017. The 17th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Grid Computing.
PMLDC (ECOOP) 2017. The 2nd workshop on Programming Models and Languages for Distributed Computing.
CloudCom 2016. The 8th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science.
ICA3PP 2016. The 16th International Conference on Algorithms and Architectures for Parallel Processing.
PMLDC (ECOOP) 2016. The first workshop on Programming Models and Languages for Distributed Computing.
EuroSys 2014. EuroSys Shadow PC (live PC).

Talks

Only Panels, Invited and Tutorials are listed

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Panel on "Blockchain’s Role in Space, Defense & Security" at INATBA Blockchain Horizons, May, Darmstadt, 2024.
IEEE VTC 2023. Talk on "Intrusion Resilience Systems for Modern Vehicles", 2023.
EDCC CARS 2022. Talk on "Intrusion Resilience Systems for Modern Vehicles", 2022.
ESTG P.Porto. Invited talk on Automotive Cybersecurity: Scope, Challenges, and Opportunities. Nov., 2020.
RISE SICS DSAW. Invited talk on "Edge Compute at Hyperscale", Sweden, Sept. 2018.
UMinho Engineering Week SEI’17. Invited talk on "Everyone is excited to Bitcoin and Blockchain, shall I?", Portugal, Feb. 2018.
On the Three Vs of Big Data from a Quality of Data Perspective. Tutorial at NESUS Action winter school, Italy, 2017.
Fundamentals of Distributed Systems "Next Generation Clouds - Powering the Cloud", PhD tutorial at MAP-I, Portugal, Spring 2016.

Teaching

PhD course founder and coordinator

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KAUST Academy & National Cyber Security Authority Training. (material preparation, instructor). On the Cybersecurity kill-chain (Intro to Cryptography, Passwords, Network attacks, Web attacks, Social Engineering attacks), Madinah & Jeddah, Jan.-Feb 2024.
Successful Systems in Production, founder, proponent, and coordinator, a PhD course at MAP-I, Fall 2017 and Fall 2018. (See publication here.).
Technology of Security: Introduction to Blockchains and Cryptocurrencies, proponent and lecturer, MSc course at the School of Engineering, University of Minho, Fall 2017.
Reliable Distributed Systems, MSc course at the School of Engineering, University of Minho, Spring 2016.
Functional Programming lab, undergraduate course at the School of Engineering, University of Minho, Fall 2016.

Welcome to my office

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

If you think education is expensive, try ignorance — Derek Bok.

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