Abstract

Our current understanding of complex Information Systems is such that minor perturbations may have inforeseen and catastrophic global repercussions.  What is required is that these systems be self-configuring, self-monitoring, self-adapting, self-tuning, self-repairing, and in general, self-managing.  The term "self-*" has been proposed as a catch-all to refer to these desirable properties collectively.  In this talk, I will put forth self-organization as a fundamental abstraction for achieving many of the self-* properties in a bottom-up fashion without having to program them explicitly.  I will support this view by illustrating completely decentralized, extremely robust and scalable solutions for important technological problems that draw inspiration from biological systems or processes and are based on a gossipping interaction model.

Short Bio of Professor Ozalp Babaoglu

Ozalp Babaoglu is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Bologna, Italy. He received a Ph.D. in 1981 from the University of California at Berkeley where he was a principal architect of BSD Unix. He is the recipient of 1982 Sakrison Memorial Award, 1989 UNIX International Recognition Award and 1993 USENIX Association Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to the UNIX system community and to Open Industry Standards. Before moving to Bologna in 1988, Babaoglu was an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University. He is an ACM Fellow, a resident fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Bologna and serves on the editorial boards for ACM Transactions on Computer Systems, ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems and Springer-Verlag Distributed Computing.