RESEARCH INTERESTS AHMED KHURSHID Curriculum Vitae Ahmed Khurshid University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) 201 North Goodwin Avenue Urbana, IL 61801-2302, USA Email: khurshi1@illinois.edu Homepage: http://web.engr.illinois.edu/~khurshi1/ LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahmedkhurshid Designing and building scalable monitoring and management frameworks for analyzing control-plane and data-plane behavior of computer networks. EDUCATIONAL QUALIFICATIONS Ph.D. in Computer Science o o Advisor: Prof. Matthew Caesar o Institution: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), USA o CGPA: 4.00 (out of 4.00) o Term Entered: Fall 2008 o Term Graduated: Summer 2015 Master of Science in Computer Science and Engineering o and Engineering o Advisor: Prof. Md. Humayun Kabir o Institution: Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), Bangladesh o CGPA: 4.00 (out of 4.00) o Year of Completion: 2008 Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Engineering o and Engineering o Advisor: Prof. Md. Mostofa Akbar o Institution: Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET), Bangladesh o CGPA: 3.96 (out of 4.00); Merit Position: 3 rd (among 67 students) o Year of Completion: 2005 ENTREPRENEURSHIP Co-founder of Veriflow Systems, Inc. o We founded this company to commercialize the Veriflow network debugging tool that is the core of my Ph.D. thesis. o Founded: September 2012 o Location: Champaign, Illinois, USA o Related links: http://www.veriflowsystems.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/veriflow-systems Page 1 of 5
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE AHMED KHURSHID Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) o Department: Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) o Position: Assistant Professor (August 2008 to March 2015) o Position: Lecturer (July 2005 to August 2008) o Responsibilities: Teaching one CSE course every semester in a class of around 120 students. I have taught Computer Networks, Operating Systems, Software Engineering, Object Oriented Programming Language and Computer Interfacing. Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) o Program: Cisco Networking Academy Program (CNAP) o Position: Instructor (January 2007 to August 2008) o Responsibilities: Conducting classes of CCNA-1 to CCNA-4 at BUET Regional Academy of Cisco Systems. RESEARCH EXPERIENCE VeriFlow: Verifying Network-Wide Invariants in Real Time o Advisors: Prof. Matthew Caesar and Prof. P. Brighten Godfrey o In this project I developed a tool to verify the effect of new rules before they are allowed to propagate into the network. The goal is to detect faulty rules in real time and prevent them from affecting network operations. Stealthy Traffic Analysis of Low-Latency Anonymous Communication Using Throughput Fingerprinting o Advisors: Prof. Matthew Caesar and Prof. Nikita Borisov o This project focuses on throughput-based attacks to reduce anonymity of flows traversing the Tor network. Here, I developed throughput measurement tools, performed a large-scale measurement study over the live Tor network, and performed statistical analysis of our proposed attacks. Debugging the Data Plane with Anteater o Advisors: Prof. Matthew Caesar, Prof. P. Brighten Godfrey and Prof. Samuel T. King o I developed and coded a static analysis technique based on satisfiability testing to detect and diagnose network faults using data-plane information. Making DTNs Robust Against Spoofing Attacks with Localized Countermeasures o Advisors: Prof. Carl Gunter, Prof. Matthew Caesar and Prof. Tarek Abdelzaher o This project deals with detecting address spoofing attacks in Delay-Tolerant Networks (DTNs) and proposes a few countermeasures. I used ns-2 to evaluate the performance of the proposed countermeasures. Improving Robustness of DNS to Software Vulnerabilities o Advisor: Prof. Matthew Caesar o This project uses software diversity to mask arbitrary faults caused by DNS software implementation errors. Performance Evaluation of the Illinois Cloud Computing Testbed o Advisor: Prof. Indranil Gupta o I evaluated the performance of the Illinois Open Cirrus cloud computing research testbed. I developed a throughput measurement tool and analyzed the performance of both the storage and communication facilities of this testbed. Page 2 of 5
Scaling Data-Plane Logging in Large Scale Networks o Advisors: Prof. Matthew Caesar and Prof. Klara Nahrstedt o This project deals with designing a scalable logging framework for data-plane information. I developed a compression algorithm that improves upon existing traffic measurement techniques such as NetFlow, and evaluated its performance using real traffic traces and the Click software router. PUBLICATIONS Ahmed Khurshid, Xuan Zou, Wenxuan Zhou, Matthew Caesar, and P. Brighten Godfrey, VeriFlow: Verifying Network-Wide Invariants in Real Time, 10th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI), April 2013, Lombard, Illinois, USA. o A summarized version of this paper appeared in Open Networking Summit (ONS), April 2013, Santa Clara, California, USA. Ahmed Khurshid, Wenxuan Zhou, Matthew Caesar, and P. Brighten Godfrey, VeriFlow: Verifying Network-Wide Invariants in Real Time, ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Hot Topics in Software Defined Networking (HotSDN), August 2012, Helsinki, Finland. [Best Paper Award] o Republished in ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review, Volume 42, Issue 4, October 2012. Ahmed Khurshid, Firat Kiyak, and Matthew Caesar, Improving Robustness of DNS to Software Vulnerabilities, Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC), December 2011, Orlando, Florida, USA. Ahsan Arefin, Ahmed Khurshid, Matthew Caesar, and Klara Nahrstedt, Scaling Data-Plane Logging in Large Scale Networks, MILCOM, November 2011, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. Prateek Mittal, Ahmed Khurshid, Joshua Juen, Matthew Caesar, and Nikita Borisov, Stealthy Traffic Analysis of Low-Latency Anonymous Communication Using Throughput Fingerprinting, ACM CCS, October 2011, Chicago, Illinois, USA. Haohui Mai, Ahmed Khurshid, Rachit Agarwal, Matthew Caesar, P. Brighten Godfrey, and Samuel T. King, Debugging the Data Plane with Anteater, ACM SIGCOMM, August 2011, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Ahmed Khurshid, Md. Humayun Kabir, and Md. Anindya Tahsin Prodhan, An Improved TCP Congestion Control Algorithm for Wireless Networks, IEEE PacRim, August 2011, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada. Md Yusuf Sarwar Uddin, Ahmed Khurshid, Hee Dong Jung, Carl Gunter, Matthew Caesar, and Tarek Abdelzaher, Making DTNs Robust Against Spoofing Attacks with Localized Countermeasures, IEEE Communications Society Conference on Sensor, Mesh and Ad Hoc Communications and Networks (SECON), June 2011, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. Ahsan Arefin, Ahmed Khurshid, Matthew Caesar, and Klara Nahrstedt, Scaling Data-Plane Logging in Large Scale Networks, Technical report, UIUC, http://hdl.handle.net/2142/25928, 2011. Md Yusuf Sarwar Uddin, Ahmed Khurshid, Hee Dong Jung, and Carl Gunter, Denial in DTNs, Technical report, UIUC, http://hdl.handle.net/2142/14821, 2010. Ahmed Khurshid, Abdullah Al-Nayeem, and Indranil Gupta, Performance Evaluation of the Illinois Cloud Computing Testbed, Technical report, UIUC, http://hdl.handle.net/2142/12983, 2009. Page 3 of 5
Abdullah Al Muzahid, Ahmed Khurshid, Md. Mostofa Ali Patwary, Md. Mostofa Akbar, and Masud Karim Khan, Reservation Based Adaptive Uplink Admission Control for WCDMA, First International Conference on Next-Generation Wireless Systems (ICNEWS), January 2006, Dhaka, Bangladesh. PRESENTATIONS VeriFlow: Verifying Network-Wide Invariants in Real Time, Summer School on Formal Methods and Networks, June 2013, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, USA. VeriFlow: Verifying Network-Wide Invariants in Real Time, Open Networking Summit (ONS), April 2013, Santa Clara, California, USA. VeriFlow: Verifying Network-Wide Invariants in Real Time, 10th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI), April 2013, Lombard, Illinois, USA. o https://www.usenix.org/conference/nsdi13/technicalsessions/presentation/khurshid Improving Robustness of DNS to Software Vulnerabilities, Annual Computer Security Applications Conference (ACSAC), December 2011, Orlando, Florida, USA. PATENT Ahmed Khurshid, Matthew Chapman Caesar, Philip Brighten Godfrey, Networkwide Verification of Invariants. o http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2014/0369209.html MEDIA COVERAGE [May 7, 2015] CS PhD Student Runner-Up for Illinois Innovation Prize o http://cs.illinois.edu/news/cs-phd-student-runner-illinois-innovation-prize [November 6, 2013] CS Startup Watch: Ensuring Internet Stability at Veriflow Systems o http://cs.illinois.edu/news/cs-startup-watch-ensuring-internet-stability-veriflowsystems [August 9, 2013] University of Illinois Researchers: VeriFlow Enables Real-Time Verification for SDN o http://www.sdnzone.com/topics/software-defined-network/articles/349088- university-illinois-researchers-veriflow-enables-real-time-verification.htm [August 8, 2013] VeriFlow Aims to Verify Application-Defined Networks in Real Time o http://www.enterprisenetworkingplanet.com/datacenter/veriflow-aims-toverify-application-defined-networks-in-real-time.html INTERNSHIPS Cisco Systems, Inc., San Jose, CA, USA o Co-Op. Student Worker (May 2012 to June 2013) o NSF Nebula Project o Managers: Edward Paradise and Robert Broberg Page 4 of 5
Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA o Summer Intern (May 2011 to August 2011) o Group: extreme Computing Group (XCG) o Mentors: Navendu Jain and Ravi Pandya AWARDS, GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS First runner-up in Illinois Innovation Prize 2015 administered by the Technology Entrepreneur Center in the College of Engineering at UIUC. UIUC 2013 Feng Chen Memorial Award. NSDI 2013 Student Grant. The International Fulbright Science and Technology Ph.D. Award for the year 2008-2009 sponsored by The Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, U.S. Department of State. This fellowship provides 3 years of funding for Ph.D. students. 1 st position at the Tech Fair held at BUET on the occasion of CSE DAY 2004. Merit scholarship and Dean's Award in BUET in every academic year. GRADUATE-LEVEL COURSES Advanced Internetworking Distributed Systems Advanced Distributed Systems Mobile Computing and Communications Computer Security II Multimedia Systems Graph Theory Data Mining Symbolic Machine Learning I Neural Networks REFERENCES 1. Dr. Matthew Caesar Associate Professor University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA Email: caesar@illinois.edu Homepage: http://web.engr.illinois.edu/~caesar/ 2. Dr. P. Brighten Godfrey Assistant Professor University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois, USA Email: pbg@illinois.edu Homepage: http://pbg.cs.illinois.edu/ 3. Dr. Md. Humayun Kabir Professor and Engineering Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, Dhaka, Bangladesh Email: mhkabir@cse.buet.ac.bd Homepage: http://teacher.buet.ac.bd/mhkabir/ Page 5 of 5