Carnegie Mellon Professors   

PRIYA NARASIMHAN

Asst Prof of ECE and CS








I was born in Madras, India, and grew up in Ndola, Zambia, where I completed my high school education. I returned to India to complete my B.S. (majoring in Physics, Mathematics and Electronics) from the BMS College for Women in Bangalore, India. I came to the United States in 1994, and completed my M.S. (in 1995) and my Ph.D. (in 1999), both from the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department of the University of California, Santa Barbara.

From 1995-1999, as a part of my doctoral research, I designed and implemented the Eternal System, which was aimed at enhancing CORBA applications transparently with support for reliability and live software upgrades. My Ph.D. dissertation on Transparent Fault Tolerance for CORBA won the 1999-2000 UCSB Lancaster Award for the best graduate dissertation in the collective fields of engineering and sciences. From 1998-2000, I was actively involved in the efforts of the Object Management Group to develop a new standard for building fault-tolerant CORBA applications. My doctoral research greatly influenced the development of the Fault Tolerant CORBA specification, which the Object Management Group officially adopted as an industrial standard in March 2000.

From 1999-2001, I served as the Chief Technology Officer and, later, the Vice-President of Engineering of Eternal Systems, Inc., a high-tech startup company aimed at commercializing the results of my doctoral research in order to develop reliable software products that are being successfully used today. In Fall 2001, I moved from Santa Barbara to Pittsburgh, to join Carnegie Mellon University, where I am an Assistant Professor of ECE and CS, and a Visiting Scientist at the Software Engineering Institute.

RESEARCH

Middleware-Based Software Infrastructures for the Transparent Composition of System Properties,
P. Narasimhan,
NSF Workshop on New Visions for Software Design and Productivity: Research and Applications, Nashville, TN (December 2001).

CURRENT FOCUS

  • Autonomous Self-Adaptive Systems
  • Developing Reliable Secure Web Services
  • Sanitizing Non-Determinism to Build Reliable Applications
  • Providing Both Real-Time and Fault Tolerance to Middleware Applications
  • Wireless Dependability
  • Metrics for Evaluating Dependability

USEFUL RESOURCES

PREVIOUS RESEARCH

  • Eternal: Transparent infrastructure that I developed to provide strong fault tolerance to CORBA applications, without requiring any modification to the application, to the operating system, or to the ORB itself. Eternal provides support for active and passive replication, overcomes the non-determinism inherent in multithreaded CORBA applications, and provides for gateways to support external clients. The key contributions of this research work are the support for strong replica consistency, the sanitization of non-deterministic multithreading, and most importantly, the transparency of the fault tolerance. This transparency frees CORBA application programmers from worrying about the difficult issues of reliability, and allows them to focus on their area of expertise - the application. This also leads to considerable savings in terms of development time because, as soon as the application logic is ready, fault tolerance is available to be deployed "out-of-the-box" at run-time. Because it does not require any modification of the ORB, the current implementation of the Eternal system provides fault tolerance to the following implementations of CORBA: VisiBroker (Borland), Orbix (Iona), CORBAplus (Expersoft), TAO (Washington University, St. Louis), e*ORB (Vertel), omniORB2 (AT & T Laboratories, UK), ORBacus (Object-Oriented Concepts) and ILU (Xerox PARC). The understanding and insights gained from this research have impacted industrial practices through significant contributions to the Fault-Tolerant CORBA Specification, formally adopted by the CORBA standards body, the Object Management Group.
  • Interceptors: Operating-system "hooks" that allow the transparent insertion of code, at run-time, to modify the application behavior. Software interceptors can provide various enhancements to applications, without requiring the application to be re-linked, re-compiled, or re-written. Some of the possible enhancements include security, debugging, profiling, etc. By developing an interceptor to "attach" a reliable infrastructure to CORBA applications, I developed the interception approach to providing fault tolerance for CORBA.
  • Immune: Collaborative research effort with Prof. Kim P. Kihlstrom that led to the development of a survivable infrastructure for CORBA applications. Immune enables CORBA applications to continue operating, despite faults that occur within the system, as well as intrusions or malicious/Byzantine attacks that damage the underlying system. Majority voting on the traffic between replicated CORBA objects, value fault detection, and secure multicast protocols (which employ message digests and digital signatures) are the cornerstones of the Immune System.

Fault Tolerance and Survivability for Middleware & Distributed Systems

Several research and commercial efforts have been directed at providing distributed object systems with features such as fault tolerance and survivability. Please contact me regarding any standardization, commercial or research efforts on fault-tolerant or survivable distributed systems that I may have overlooked in the following survey.

Useful Resources

Downtime Cost (Statistics, Surveys, Comparisons)

Standardization Efforts

Fault-Tolerant Middleware & Systems

Reliable and/or Secure Group Communication Systems

Survivable Middleware & Systems

Downtime and Outages: Real Incidents & Causes

(If you know of any resources or links that provide data on real incidents of downtime or outages, I would appreciate it if you could send me an email with the information.)

Software Interceptors & Wrappers

Several research and commercial efforts have been directed at building interceptors. Please contact me regarding any standardization, commercial or research efforts on interceptors that I may have overlooked in the following survey

Useful Resources

  • truss - System Call tracer
    Utility of the Solaris operating system
  • strace - System Call tracer
    Utility of the Linux operating system
  • TCP Wrappers - Securing your Network (article by Paul Dunne)
    Dr. W.Z. Venema, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

UStandardization Efforts

Software Interceptors

TEACHING

COURSES

  • Spring 2002: Special Joint Course on Embedded Internet Systems
    18-749: Dependable Embedded Systems (Instructor: Phil Koopman, ECE)
    17-637: Dependable Software and Systems (Instructor: Priya Narasimhan, ISRI)
  • Summer 2002: Analysis of Software Artifacts

TUTORIALS

PUBLICATIONS

Ph.D. DISSERTATION

  • Transparent Fault Tolerance for CORBA,
    P. Narasimhan,
    Ph.D. Dissertation, Technical Report #99-18,
    Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara (December 1999).

INDUSTRIAL STANDARDS

  • Final Adopted Specification for Fault Tolerant CORBA,
    Submitters: AT&T, Alcatel, Ericsson, Eternal Systems, HighComm, Iona Technologies, Lockheed-Martin, Lucent, Objective Interface Systems, Oracle and Sun Microsystems,

    OMG Technical Committee Document ptc/00-04-04, Object Management Group (March 2000).
  • Initial Joint Submission on Fault Tolerance for CORBA (Response to the OMG's Request for Proposals on fault-tolerant CORBA),
    L. E. Moser, P. M. Melliar-Smith and P. Narasimhan,
    Technical Report #98-27, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa Barbara.
    Submitters: Eternal Systems and Sun Microsystems,
    OMG Technical Committee Document orbos/98-10-08, Object Management Group (October 1998).
  • Initial Joint Submission on Portable Interceptors for CORBA
    (Response to the OMG's Request for Proposals on Portable Interceptors),
    ubmitters: Eternal Systems, Expersoft and Sun Microsystems,
    OMG Technical Committee Document orbos/99-04-07, Object Management Group (April 1999).

ENCYCLOPEDIA ARTICLES

  • The Eternal System,
    P. Narasimhan, L. E. Moser and P. M. Melliar-Smith,
    Encyclopedia of Distributed Computing, edited by P. Dasgupta and J. E. Urban, Kluwer Academic Publishers (2000).

REFEREED JOURNALS

1.Strong Replica Consistency for Fault-Tolerant CORBA Applications,
P. Narasimhan, L. E. Moser and P. M. Melliar-Smith,
Journal of Computer System Science and Engineering (Spring 2002).

2.A Component-based Framework for Transparent Fault-Tolerant CORBA,
P. Narasimhan, L. E. Moser and P. M. Melliar-Smith,
Software Practice and Experience, Theme Issue on Enterprise Frameworks (2001).

3.A Multicast Group Communication Protocol, Engine, and Bridge for CORBA,
L. E. Moser, P. M. Melliar-Smith, P. Narasimhan, R. Koch and K. Berket,
oncurrency and Computation Practice & Experience, vol. 13, no. 7, pp. 579-603 (June 2001).

4.Patterns for Building Transparent Reliable Middleware,
P. Narasimhan, L. E. Moser and P. M. Melliar-Smith,
Theory and Practice of Object Systems (Fall 2000).

5.Using Interceptors to Enhance CORBA,
P. Narasimhan, L. E. Moser and P. M. Melliar-Smith,
IEEE Computer (July 1999), pp. 62-68.

6.Consistent Object Replication in the Eternal System,
L. E. Moser, P. M. Melliar-Smith and P. Narasimhan,
Theory and Practice of Object Systems, vol. 4, no. 2 (1998), pp. 81-92.

7.Replica Consistency of CORBA Objects in Partitionable Distributed Systems,
P. Narasimhan, L. E. Moser and P. M. Melliar-Smith,
Distributed Systems Engineering Journal vol. 4, no. 3 (September 1997), pp. 139-150.

REFEREED CONFERENCES

1.Lessons Learned in Building a Fault-Tolerant CORBA System,
P. Narasimhan, L.E. Moser and P.M. Melliar-Smith,
International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN) , Washington D.C. (June 2002).

2.Practical Considerations in Making CORBA Services Fault-Tolerant,
P. Narasimhan,
IEEE International Symposium on Object-oriented Real-time Distributed Computing, Washington, D.C. (April-May 2002).

3.State Synchronization and Recovery for Strongly Consistent Replicated CORBA Objects,
P. Narasimhan, L. E. Moser and P. M. Melliar-Smith
International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks, Goteborg, Sweden (July 2001).

4.Experimental Evaluation of a Fault-Tolerant CORBA System,
W. Zhao, P. Narasimhan, L. E. Moser, and P. M. Melliar-Smith
International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Processing Techniques and Applications, Las Vegas, NV (June 2001).

5.Transparent Fault Tolerance for Enterprise Applications,
P. Narasimhan, L. E. Moser and P. M. Melliar-Smith
International Conference on Advances in Infrastructure for Electronic Business, Science, and Education on the Internet, L'Aquila, Italy (July-August 2000).

6.Gateways for Accessing Fault Tolerance Domains,
P. Narasimhan, L. E. Moser and P. M. Melliar-Smith
Proceedings of Middleware 2000, Lecture Notes in Computer Science 1795 , New York, NY (April 2000), pp. 88-103.

7.Eternal: Fault Tolerance and Live Upgrades for Distributed Object Systems,
L. E. Moser, P. M. Melliar-Smith, P. Narasimhan, L. Tewksbury and V. Kalogeraki,
Proceedings of the DARPA Information Survivability Conference, Hilton Head, SC (January 2000), pp. 184-196.

8.Realize: Resource Management for Soft Real-time Distributed Systems, P.
M. Melliar-Smith, L. E. Moser, V. Kalogeraki and P. Narasimhan, Pro
ceedings of the DARPA Information Survivability Conference, Hilton Head, SC (January 2000), pp. 281-293.

9.Enforcing Determinism for the Consistent Replication of Multithreaded CORBA Applications,
P. Narasimhan, L. E. Moser and P. M. Melliar-Smith,
Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium for Reliable Distributed Systems, Lausanne, Switzerland (October 1999), pp. 263-273.

10.The Eternal System: An Architecture for Enterprise Applications,
L. E. Moser, P. M. Melliar-Smith, P. Narasimhan, L. Tewksbury and V. Kalogeraki,
International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference, University of Mannheim, Germany (September 1999), pp. 214-222.

11.Multicast Group Communication for CORBA,
L. E. Moser, P. M. Melliar-Smith, P. Narasimhan, R. R. Koch and K. Berket,
International Symposium on Distributed Objects and Applications, Edinburgh, Scotland (September 1999), pp. 98-107.

12.Replication and Recovery Mechanisms for Strong Consistency in Reliable Distributed Systems,
P. Narasimhan, L. E. Moser and P. M. Melliar-Smith,
ISSAT International Conference on Reliability And Quality In Design, Las Vegas, NV (August 1999), pp. 26-31.

13.A Fault Tolerance Framework for CORBA,
L. E. Moser, P. M. Melliar-Smith and P. Narasimhan,
Proceedings of the IEEE International Symposium on Fault-Tolerant Computing, Madison, WI (June 1999), pp. 150-157.

14.Providing Support for Survivable CORBA Applications with the Immune System,
P. Narasimhan, K. P. Kihlstrom, L. E. Moser and P. M. Melliar-Smith,
Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, Austin, TX (May 1999), pp. 507-516.

15.The Realize Middleware for Replication and Resource Management,
P. M. Melliar-Smith, L. E. Moser, V. Kalogeraki and P. Narasimhan,
Proceedings of Middleware '98, The Lake District, England (September 1998), pp. 123-138.

16.Supporting Enterprise Applications with the Eternal System,
L. E. Moser, P. M. Melliar-Smith, P. Narasimhan, V. Kalogeraki and L. Tewksbury,
Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Enterprise Networking and Computing, ICC/SUPERCOMM '98, Atlanta, GA (June 1998).

17.The Interception Approach to Reliable Distributed CORBA Objects,
P. Narasimhan, L. E. Moser and P. M. Melliar-Smith,
Panel on Reliable Distributed Objects, Third USENIX Conference on Object-Oriented Technologies and Systems, Portland, Oregon (June 1997), pp 245-248.

18.Exploiting the Internet Inter-ORB Protocol Interface to Provide CORBA with Fault Tolerance,
P. Narasimhan, L. E. Moser and P. M. Melliar-Smith,
Third USENIX Conference on Object-Oriented Technologies and Systems, Portland, Oregon (June 1997), pp 81-90.

19.Consistency of Partitionable Object Groups in a CORBA Framework,
P. Narasimhan, L. E. Moser and P. M. Melliar-Smith,
Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, Maui, Hawaii (January 1997), pp 120-129.

20.Message Packing as a Performance Enhancement Strategy with Application to the Totem Protocols,
P. Narasimhan, L. E. Moser and P. M. Melliar-Smith,
Proceedings of the IEEE Global Telecommunications Conference, London, UK (November 1996), pp 649-53.

REFEREED WORKSHOPS

1.Middleware-Based Software Infrastructures for the Transparent Composition of System Properties,
P. Narasimhan,
NSF Workshop on New Visions for Software Design and Productivity: Research and Applications, Nashville, TN (December 2001).

2.Providing Strong Replica Consistency for Fault-Tolerant CORBA Applications,
P. Narasimhan, L. E. Moser and P. M. Melliar-Smith,
IEEE Workshop on Object-oriented Real-time Dependable Systems, Rome, Italy (January 2001).

3.Transparent Fault Tolerance for CORBA using the Eternal System,
P. Narasimhan, L. E. Moser and P. M. Melliar-Smith,
International Workshop on Reliable Middleware Systems, Lausanne, Switzerland (October 1999), pp. 7-13.

4.The Eternal System,
L. E. Moser, P. M. Melliar-Smith, P. Narasimhan, V. Kalogeraki and L. Tewksbury
Workshop on Compositional Software Architectures , Monterey, California (January 1998).

5.The Eternal System,
L. E. Moser, P. M. Melliar-Smith and P. Narasimhan,
Workshop on Dependable Distributed Object Systems, OOPSLA'97, Atlanta, Georgia (October 1997).

6.Separation of Concerns: Functionality vs. Quality of Service,
. M. Melliar-Smith, L. E. Moser and P. Narasimhan,
Proceedings of the IEEE Workshop on Object-oriented Real-time Dependable Systems, Newport Beach, California (February 1997), pp 272-4.

7.Object-Oriented Programming of Complex Fault-Tolerant Real-Time Systems,
L. E. Moser, P. Narasimhan and P. M. Melliar-Smith,
Proceedings of the IEEE Computer Society Second International Workshop on Object-oriented Real-time Dependable Systems, Laguna Beach, California (February 1996), pp 116-119.

PROFESSIONAL SERVICE

PROGRAM COMMITTEES, SESSIONS, PANELS

STANDARDIZATION ACTIVITIES

  • Fault Tolerance for CORBA
    Co-authored and co-designed the joint initial proposal ( OMG Technical Committee Document orbos/98-10-08 ) of Eternal Systems and Sun Microsystems, to the Object Management Group's Request for Proposals on Fault-tolerant CORBA. Involved in the OMG process for crafting the final specifications of the standard for fault-tolerant CORBA that was adopted in March 2000.
  • Portable Interceptors for CORBA
    Contributor to the joint initial proposal ( OMG Technical Committee Document orbos/99-04-07 ) of Eternal Systems, Expersoft and Sun Microsystems, to the Object Management Group's Request for Proposals on Portable Interceptors.

REVIEWING PROFESSIONAL PUBLICATIONS

  • Books
    Real-Time Systems: Design Principles for Distributed Embedded
    Applications
    Professor Hermann Kopetz, Kluwer Academic Publishers (1997)
  • Journals
    IEEE Computer - 1999
    IEEE Concurrency - 1999
    Software Practice & Experience - 2001
    ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology - 2001
  • Conferences & Workshops
    ACM Java Workshop - 1998
    International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks - 2002
    IFIP/ACM International Conference on Distributed Systems, Platforms and Open Distributed Processing - 2000
    International Parallel Processing Symposium - 1998
    ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing - 1998
    International Symposium on Distributed Computing - 1998
    IEEE International Symposium on Object-oriented Real-Time Distributed Computing - 1999, 2000, 2002
    International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks - 2000
    Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems - 2000
    IEEE Workshop on Object-oriented Real-time Dependable Systems - 2001, 2002
    Principles of Distributed Computing - 2001
    International Conference on Software Engineering - 2002

HONORS & AWARDS

IBM Faculty Partnership Award
For ongoing research on developing secure dependable Web Services, in collaboration with IBM's Advanced Enterprise Middleware research group in Hawthorne, N.Y. (July 2002)

Winifred & Louis Lancaster Graduate Dissertation Award
For the best doctoral dissertation in the fields of Engineering, Mathematical and Physical Sciences. To serve as UCSB's entry in these fields to the national dissertation competition sponsored by the Council of Graduate Schools and University Microfilms International (June 2000)

Delco Defense Systems Operations Graduate Fellowship
Awarded by Delco Systems, in conjunction with the UCSB General Affiliates, for outstanding achievement in the research and development of the Eternal system (June 1997)

University of California Regents Scholarship
Awarded by University of California, Santa Barbara (1994-1995)

CONTACT INFORMATION

Assistant Professor of ECE and CS
Institute for Software Research International
School of Computer Science
Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Avenue
Pittsburgh. PA 15213-3890

Office: Wean Hall 8116
Tel: (412) 268-8801
Fax: (412) 268-2338
Email: priya@cs.cmu.edu

Visiting Scientist
Software Engineering Institute
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh. PA 15213-3890

Office: SEI 5115
Tel: (412) 268-9144
Email:pn@sei.cmu.edu