Research

Research in systems-oriented computer science involves the implementation of prototypes and their experimental evaluation. It is not uncommon, in particular for young researchers (means students), to spent most of their time on the implementation itself, spending little time on the evaluation of the system. Of course, it is then often too late to discover that a proper experimental evaluation of a system takes lots of time and effort. I am writing this in order to help people to avoid falling into this trap.

I have just enjoyed reading a paper where the author reports about a number of measurements he did and draws very clear ‘opinionated’ conclusions from the facts presented in the paper. This was such a refreshing read and I started to wonder why I found this so refreshing. It turns out that most networking papers I read (or have to read) either have lots of opinion but only a very few facts to support them or the papers have lots of facts but the authors refrain from articulating a clear conclusion and a clear opinion from the facts.

Jacobs University is establishing Research Centers in order to focus research activities and graduate education. During the past few month (well, the whole year to be more precise), I have been working on a proposal of a research center called the Center for Advanced Systems Engineering (CASE). The CASE research center is rooted in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science faculty but in addition integrates colleagues from Ocean Research and Logistics. The CASE research center proposal finally got officially approved and we are now working on filling the center with life in 2010. Expect more CASE related news to come.