Abstract:

Contemporary ICT infrastructures are trending towards a pervasive substrate of internet-connected sensors, actuators and human interfaces. Effective use of this pervasive infrastructure is key to solving 21st century challenges such as: mass transportation, energy conservation and environmental monitoring. Building effective applications that execute on this infrastructure requires advanced middleware support that respects the resource constraints of embedded devices. In this talk, I will present recent work from KU Leuven in the area of middleware support for sensing applications, with a focus on the Loosely-coupled Component Infrastructure (LooCI). I will then discuss emerging opportunities for ‘social sensing’ wherein online social networks are used to source and configure participatory sensor networks.

Bio:

Dr. Danny Hughes is an Assistant Professor with the iMinds-DistriNet group of the department of Computer Science at KU Leuven, Belgium. He received his PhD in Computer Science from Lancaster University in 2007. He has since worked as a Visiting Scholar at UC Berkeley (USA) and Universidade de São Paulo (Brazil) and as a lecturer at Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (China). His research interests are in distributed systems, with a focus on middleware support for dynamic systems such as wireless sensor networks, peer-to-peer networks and online social networks. You can find out more about his research at: https://distrinet.cs.kuleuven.be/people/showMember.do?memberID=u0061846