Dr. Nishanth Shankaran Software Development Engineer, Distributed Systems Engineering, Amazon.com 1918 8th Ave S. Seattle, WA, 98104 nshankar AT amazon.com

Vita Index

Research Interests	Referred Journal Publications	Software Tools Expertise
Education	Referred Conference Publications	Awards
Industry Research Experience	Referred Workshop Publications	Personal Interests
Academic Research Experience	Invited Talks	References
Biographical Information

Research Interests

• Research and development of large-scale distributed systems
• Design and implementation of adaptive resource-management algorithms, architectures, frameworks, and middleware for distributed systems
• Development of infrastructure middleware and frameworks that provide end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees for distributed systems

Top

Education

• Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN.
  Ph.D. in Computer Science, Oct 2008.
  Advisor: Prof. Douglas C. Schmidt
  Thesis: Adaptive Resource Management Algorithms, Architectures, and Frameworks for Distributed Real-time Embedded Systems.
• University of California, Irvine, CA.
  M.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, March 2004.
  Advisor: Dr. Raymond Klefstad
  Specialization: Computer Networks and Distributed Computing.
• University of Madras, Chennai, India.
  Bachelor of Computer Science and Engineering, May 2002.

Top

Industry Research Experience

• Software Development Engineer, Amazon.com, Seattle, WA (Nov 2008 - Present)
  • Involved in the design and development of services for Amazon.com's cloud initiavite.
• Intern, Amazon.com, Seattle, WA (Summer 2008)
  • Designed and developed a failure detection service to detect and diagnose failures of software load balancers deployed in Amazon.com's Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2) environment.
• Intern, IBM Research, New Delhi, India (Summer 2007)
  • Designed and developed a framework for problem diagnosis in large-scale distributed enterprise systems built atop IBM WebSphere.
• Intern, BBN Technologies, Cambridge, MA (Summer 2005)
  • Involved in research and development of fault tolerance for component based multi-layer resource management framework.
• Practice School, E-Brahma Technology, Coimbatore, India (August 2001 - May 2002)
  • Designed and implemented the Network Traffic Monitoring Tool (NTMT), that enables monitoring of network traffic in a local area network.

Top

Academic Research Experience

• Research Assistant, Vanderbilt University June 2004 - October 2008.
  
  • Lead the research and development of the Resource Allocation and Control Engine (RACE), an adaptive resource management framework for distributed real-time embedded systems.
  • Lead the research and development of the Hierarchical Distributed Resource-management Architecture (HiDRA), a control theoretic adaptive resource management architecture for distributed real-time embedded systems.
  • Lead the research and development of a Hybrid Adaptive Resource-management Middleware (HyARM) for distributed real-time embedded systems.
  • Involved in the research and development of an adaptive resource management middleware for a prototype implementation of the upcoming NASA's Magnetospheric Multi-scale Mission system in conjunction with Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center, Palo Alto.
  • Involved in the research and development of a multi layer resource management middleware for total shipboard computing environment in conjunction with Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Labs, Raytheon, and BBN technologies.
• Research Assistant, University of California, Irvine (August 2002 - March 2004)
  
  • Involved in research and development of ZEN, a Real-time CORBA Object Request Broker (ORB) developed using Real-time Java.
  • Designed and implemented Implementation Repository and Time Service for ZEN.

Top

Referred Journal Publications

1. Nishanth Shankaran, John Kinnebrew, Xenofon Koutsoukos, Chenyang Lu, Douglas C. Schmidt, and Gautam Biswas, An Integrated Planning and Adaptive Resource Management Architecture for Distributed Real-time Embedded Systems, IEEE Transactions on Computers, Special Issue on Autonomic Network Computing, Volume 58, Number 11, 1485-1498, November 2009.
2. Nishanth Shankaran, Douglas C. Schmidt, Xenofon D. Koutsoukos, Yingming Chen, and Chenyang Lu, Design and Performance Evaluation of an Adaptive Resource Management Framework for Distributed Real-time and Embedded Systems, EURASIP Journal on Embedded Systems (EURASIP JES): Special issue on Operating System Support for Embedded Real-Time Applications, Edited by Michael Gonzalez, 2008.
3. Nishanth Shankaran, Xenofon Koutsoukos, Chenyang Lu, Douglas C. Schmidt, and Yuan Xue, Hierarchical Control of Multiple Resources in Distributed Real-time and Embedded Systems, the Springer Real-time Systems Journal, Volume 39, Numbers 1-3, August, 2008, pages 237-282.

Top

Referred Conference Publications

1. John S. Kinnebrew, William R. Otte, Nishanth Shankaran, Gautam Biswas, and Douglas C. Schmidt, Intelligent Resource Management and Dynamic Adaptation in a Distributed Real-time and Embedded Sensor Web System, Proceedings of the 12th International Symposium on Object/Component/Service-oriented Real-time Distributed Computing (ISORC '09), Tokyo, Japan, March 17-20, 2009.
2. Nilabja Roy, John S. Kinnebrew, Nishanth Shankaran, Gautam Biswas, and Douglas C. Schmidt, Toward Effective Multi-capacity Resource Allocation in Distributed Real-time and Embedded Systems, Proceedings of the 11th IEEE International Symposium on Object/Component/Service-oriented Real-time Distributed Computing, Orlando, Florida, May 5-7, 2008.
3. Nishanth Shankaran, Douglas C. Schmidt, Yingming Chen, Xenofon Koutsoukous, and Chenyang Lu, The Design and Performance of Configurable Component Middleware for End-to-End Adaptation of Distributed Real-time Embedded Systems, proceedings of the 10th IEEE International Symposium on Object/Component/Service-oriented Real-time Distributed Computing, May 7-9, 2007, Santorini Island, Greece.
4. Amogh Kavimandan, Krishnakumar Balasubramanian, Nishanth Shankaran, Aniruddha Gokhale, and Douglas C. Schmidt, QUICKER: A Model-driven QoS Mapping Tool, proceedings of the 10th IEEE International Symposium on Object/Component/Service-oriented Real-time Distributed Computing, May 7-9, 2007, Santorini Island, Greece.
5. Dipa Suri, Adam Howell, Douglas C. Schmidt, Gautam Biswas, John Kinnebrew, Will Otte, and Nishanth Shankaran, A Multi-agent Architecture for Smart Sensing in the NASA Sensor Web, Proceedings of the 2007 IEEE Aerospace Conference Big Sky, Montana, March 3-10, 2007.
6. John S. Kinnebrew, Ankit Gupta, Nishanth Shankaran, Gautam Biswas, and Douglas C. Schmidt, A Decision-Theoretic Planner with Dynamic Component Reconfiguration for Distributed Real-Time Applications, Proceedings of the The 8th International Symposium on Autonomous Decentralized Systems (ISADS 2007) Sedona, Arizona, Wednesday March 21 - Friday March 23, 2007.
7. Nilabja Roy, Nishanth Shankaran, and Douglas C. Schmidt Bulls-Eye: A Resource Provisioning Service for Enterprise Distributed Real-time and Embedded Systems, Proceedings of the International Symposium on Distributed Objects and Applications (DOA), Montpellier, France, Oct 30th - Nov 1st, 2006.
8. John Kinnebrew, Nishanth Shankaran, Gautam Biswas, and Douglas Schmidt, A Decision-Theoretic Planner with Dynamic Component Reconguration for Distributed Real-Time Applications, Poster paper at the Twenty-First National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, July 16-20, 2006, Boston, Massachusetts.
9. Nishanth Shankaran, Xenofon Koutsoukos, Chenyang Lu, Douglas C. Schmidt, and Yuan Xue, Hierarchical Control of Multiple Resources in Distributed Real-time and Embedded Systems, Proceedings of the 18th Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS 06), Dresden, Germany, July 5-7, 2006.
10. Dipa Suri, Adam Howell, Nishanth Shankaran, John Kinnebrew, Will Otte, Douglas C. Schmidt, and Gautam Biswas, Onboard Processing using the Adaptive Network Architecture, Proceedings of the Sixth annual NASA Earth Science Technology Conference MD, June 27th - 29th, 2006, College Park, MD.
11. Nishanth Shankaran, Jai Balasubramanian, Douglas C. Schmidt, Gautam Biswas, Patrick Lardieri, Ed Mulholland, and Tom Damiano, A Framework for (Re)Deploying Components in Distributed Realtime and Embedded Systems, poster paper at the Dependable and Adaptive Distributed Systems, Track of the 21st ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, April 23 -27, 2006, Bourgogne University, Dijon, France.

Top

Referred Workshop Publications

1. Nishanth Shankaran, John S. Kinnebrew, Xenofon D. Koutsoukos, Chenyang Lu, Douglas C. Schmidt, and Gautam Biswas, Towards an Integrated Planning and Adaptive Resource Management Architecture for Distributed Real-time Embedded Systems, Proceedings of the Workshop on Adaptive and Reconfigurable Embedded Systems (APRES) at the 14th IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium, St. Louis, MO, United States, April 22 - April 24, 2008.
2. John S. Kinnebrew, Nishanth Shankaran, Gautam Biswas, and Douglas C. Schmidt, A Decision-Theoretic Planner with Dynamic Component Reconfiguration for Distributed Real-time and Embedded Systems, Proceedings of the Workshop on Artificial Intelligence for Space Applications at IJCAI 2007, January 6-12, 2007, Hyderabad, India.
3. John M. Slaby and Nishanth Shankaran, "Software Distribution in Ultra Largescale Systems", Proceedings of the ACM OOPSLA 2006 Workshop on Ultra-Large- Scale Systems, Portland, Oregon, October 26, 2006.
4. Nishanth Shankaran, Xenofon Koutsoukos, Douglas C. Schmidt, and Aniruddha Gokhale, Evaluating Adaptive Resource Management for Distributed Real-Time Embedded Systems, Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Adaptive and Reflective Middleware, November 28, 2005 Grenoble, France.
5. Nishanth Shankaran, Raymond Klefsatd, ZEUS: A CORBA Framework for Service Location and Creation, Proceedings of the 2004 International Symposium on Applications and the Internet (SAINT), January 26-30, 2004, Tokyo, Japan.

Top

Invited Talks

1. "Adaptive Resource Management Algorithms, Architectures, and Frameworks for Distributed Real-time Embedded Systems," invited talk at Qualcomm, San Diego, CA, October 8, 2007.
2. "Resource Allocation and Control Engine for Distributed Real-time Embedded Systems," NASA annual PI meeting at Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center, Palo Alto, CA, October 3, 2007.
3. "Adaptive Resource Management for Distributed Real-time Embedded Systems," invited talk at the CS WithIT Seminar, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, March 29, 2007.
4. "The Design and Performance of Configurable Component Middleware for End-to-End Adaptation of Distributed Real-time Embedded Systems," at The 10th IEEE International Symposium on Object Component Service-oriented Real-time Distributed Computing, May 7-9 2007, Santorini Island, Greece.
5. "Hierarchical Control of Multiple Resources in Distributed Real-time and Embedded Systems," at The 18th Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS 06), Dresden, Germany, July 5-7, 2006.
6. "Evaluating Adaptive Resource Management for Distributed Real-Time Embedded Systems," at The 4th Workshop on Adaptive and Reflective Middleware, Grenoble, France, November 28, 2005.
7. "Evaluating Adaptive Resource Management for Distributed Real-Time Embedded Systems," at The 6th OMG Real-time/Embedded CORBA workshop, Washington DC, July 11-14, 2005.

Top

Software Tools Expertise

• Programming Languages - C, C++, Java
• Modeling Tools & Languages - Generic Modeling Environment (GME), Component Synthesis with Model Integrated Computing (CoSMIC), Matlab
• Middleware - IBM WebSphere, Adaptive Communication Environment (ACE), The ACE ORB (TAO), Component Integrated ACE ORB (CIAO), The ZEN ORB
• Operating Systems - Linux, Windows

Top

Awards

• Listed in Who's Who in America, 2009 (Category: Information Technology)
• Sun Certified Java Programmer

Top

Personal Interests

• Photography
• Classical Piano
• Classical Guitar

Top

References

• Provided upon request.

Top

Last modified 18:00 PDT 8 March 2009