Date: April 14th, 2016, Thursday
Time/Location: 11 am, 5 MetroTech Center, LC 400

Thomas Richardson, Qualcomm

Abstract:

Large scale data storage is evolving as the amount and value of stored digital content continues to rapidly expand.  Reliable distributed storage systems consist of hundreds to tens of thousands of potentially unreliable storage nodes. To protect the data from node failures current systems use replication or erasure codes that protect data objects by redundantly spreading them over a small number of nodes.  We introduce a new solution that spreads data objects over a large number of nodes.  Our solution offers exceptional object durability, minimizes storage overhead and repair traffic, and provides fast predictable access to data objects.

Bio:

Tom Richardson received his Ph.D. from the Laboratory for Information and Systems in MIT in 1990.  From 1990-2000 he was a member of the Mathematical Research Center in Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies (originally AT& T Bell Labs). In 2000 he joined Flarion Technologies, which was spun out of Lucent and developed a pioneering IP-based cellular system.  In Flarion, he held the title of V.P. and Chief Scientist and focused on the design and implementation of the physical layer.  In 2006 Flarion was acquired by Qualcomm Inc., where he is currently employed with title V.P. Engineering.  Dr. Richardson’s main research area is iterative coding systems. He is a co-author, with Ruediger Urbanke, of a book on the subject, entitled “Modern Coding Theory” and was co-winner of the 2002 and the 2013 Information Theory Paper award.  He is a fellow of the IEEE, co-winner of the 2011 IEEE Koji Kobayashi award and the 2014 IEEE Hamming medal, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.