About
Paul Townend
Associate Professor at Umeå University. I'm interested in energy efficient and sustainable distributed systems, with a current focus on Cloud-Edge, Edge Intelligence, and Data Centres! I have several roles, including:
- Founder and Head:
Green Distributed Computing group - Scientific Coordinator:
Horizon Europe COGNIT project - Co-Manager & Scientific Advisor:
WASP WARA-Ops research area
- Research Leader:
Autonomous Distributed Systems lab - Management group member:
WASP Graduate School - Cluster leader:
WASP Autonomous Clouds & Networks
I am currently supervising 4 PhD students (Rohail Gulbaz, Yangyang Wen, Ileet Malla, Lidia Kidane) looking at various aspects of Cloud Computing - typically with an emphasis on "Green" issues.
I coordinate and teach Cloud Computing both at Umeå University, and I'm also a part of the national WASP PhD Program management team (with a goal of 600 PhDs). You can find my Google Scholar information here.
Resume (as of March 2024)
I am Associate Professor and Founder and Head of the Green Distributed Computing group at Umeå University in Sweden. I'm interested in research related to energy efficient and sustainable distributed systems. I have a current focus on Cloud-Edge, Edge Intelligence, and Data Centres, but I also have a general background in reliable and dependable systems engineering, stretching back to the year 2000.
Summary
Paul Townend
Associate Professor with an interest in energy efficient and sustainable distributed systems and Cloud computing.
- Founder and Head of the Umeå Green Distributed Computing group
- Research Leader in the Umeå Autonomous Distributed Systems lab
- Led and co-led over $5M in successful research projects
- 60+ peer-reviewed publications and 2 International Patents
- Served as General Chair of 14 IEEE international conferences
- Served as TPC Member of 25 IEEE international conferences
- Scientific Coordinator: Horizon Europe COGNIT project
- Scientific Advisor & Co-Manager: WARA-Ops Research Arena
- Advise 4 ongoing PhDs:
- I. Malla (main advisor, admitted April 2024)
- Y. Wen (main advisor, admitted January 2024)
- R. Gulbaz (main advisor, admitted November 2023)
- L. Kidane (co-advisor, admitted 2020)
- Advised 6 completed PhDs:
- X. Ouyang (main advisor, 2017)
- H. Aljahdali (main advisor, 2016)
- P. Garraghan (main advisor, 2014)
- D. Webster (main advisor, 2013)
- A. Sargeant (co-advisor, 2013)
- J. Arshad (co-advisor, 2011)
- Coordinator of 3 courses at Umeå:
- Cloud Computing, 2020 - present
- Distributed Systems, 2021 - 2023
- Advanced Distributed Systems, 2020 - 2023
Education
PhD. Computer Science
2002 - 2006
Thesis title: Topology-Aware Fault-Tolerance in Grids, 2006.
University of Leeds, UK
MSc. Computer Science (by Research)
2000 - 2001
Thesis title: Assessing the Effectiveness of Multi-Version Systems Using Fault Injection, 2001.
Durham University, UK
BSc. Computer Science
1997 - 2000
General 3 year degree in Computer Science.
Durham University, UK
Positions
Associate Professor
2020 - present
Umeå University, Sweden
CTO
2017 - 2020
Edgetic Ltd., UK
University Academic Fellow
2015 - 2017
University of Leeds, UK
Visiting Researcher
2011 (fall)
Pennsylvania State University, USA
Research Fellow
2006 - 2015
University of Leeds, UK
Ongoing Research Projects
Energy-Aware Autonomous Management for Cloud-Edge Infrastructures
- Funded by WASP Sweden. $440,000. 2024-2027.
Principle Investigator.
A Cognitive Serverless Framework for the Cloud-Edge Continuum
- Funded by Horizon Europe. $815,000. 2023-2025.
Co-Investigator & Scientific Coordinator.
WARA-Ops Research Arena
- Funded by WASP Sweden. $3,425,000. 2023-2025.
Co-Investigator & Scientific Advisor.
De facto Center of Excellence in Autonomous Distributed Systems
- Funded by the Kempe Foundations. $470,000. 2023-2025.
Co-Investigator.
Ongoing Infrastructure Grants/Projects
ARISEN: Advanced Research Infrastructure for Smart Edge Networks
- Funded by Umeå University. $57,000. 2024 - present.
Principle Investigator.
CETI: Cloud-Edge Teaching Infrastructure
- Funded by Umeå University. $38,000. 2022 - present.
Principle Investigator.
Completed Projects
WCIB: WARA Common Information Bridge for Enabling Research on Data-Driven Cloud Operations
- Funded by WASP Sweden. $83,000. 2021-2022.
Principle Investigator.
Server Modelling Capability: Continuity
- Funded by Innovate UK. $105,000. 2020-2021.
Principle Investigator.
Server Modelling Capability
- Funded by Innovate UK. $336,000. 2020-2021.
Principle Investigator.
Service for Enhancing Energy Efficiency in Data Centres
- Funded by UK EPSRC. $180,000. 2014-2017.
Principle Investigator.
Trusted Digital Spaces through Timely Reliable and Personalised Provenance
- Funded by UK TSB. $1,552,000. 2011-2014.
Co-Investigator.
WRG: White Rose Grid Phase III Platform Grant
- Funded by UK EPSRC. $683,000. 2008-2013.
Co-Investigator.
COLAB: E-Science Collaboration between Leeds and Beihang in China For Grid-Enabled Visualisation Applications
- Funded by UK EPSRC. $87,000. 2006-2009.
Co-Investigator.
Appointments and Merits
- External reviewer, Uppsala University, 2023
- PhD defence Grading Committee member, Chalmers, 2023
- Cluster Leader: WASP Autonomous Clouds and Networks, 2021 - present
- Member: Umeå Computing Science Committee for Research, 2020 - present
- Member: WASP Graduate School Management committee, 2020 – present
- Coordinator & examiner: WASP Cloud Computing and SE, 2020 – present
- Examiner: WASP Learning Feature Representations Course, 2020 - present
- Guest editor: IEEE Transactions on Services Computing 12(1), 2019
- Permanent steering committee member: IEEE JointCloud, 2018 – present
- PhD thesis examiner: University of Newcastle, UK, 2017 – 2018
- Visiting Scientist: University of Leeds, UK, 2017 – 2021
- Guest editor: Phil. Transactions of the Royal Society A, 371(1983), 2013
- Team Leader: Distributed Systems & Services Group, Univ. Leeds, 2004 - 2017
- Editor: IEEE Distributed Systems Online Journal (dependability) 2004 – 2007
Publications (as of March 2024)
It's a little difficult to keep track of everything, so if you're interested in my publications I suggest you have a look at my Google Scholar page. That being said, here is an attempt at listing them!
Journal papers
Conference papers
Workshop papers
Book chapter
Research
My research has covered a lot of ground across a variety of Distributed Systems topics since the early 2000s. Given that I have a lot of (somewhat random) icons to use up, I'll try to summarise some of the things that I've done. These descriptions are obviously at a really high level, but sometimes it's nice to look back and reflect a bit.
Green Cloud Computing
I've worked in what is now Cloud Computing since the early 2000s, when I was part of the UK e-Science Core Programme. I've worked on architectures, testing, middlewares, and more. I now focus on improving the energy-efficiency and sustainability of these systems.
Cloud-Edge modelling
I'm interested in how Cloud, Edge, and Fog resources and infrastructures are federated, and how workloads can be placed and scaled across them. I'm doing a lot of work into how to model these systems and integrate realistic energy models and concerns.
Data Centers
I've been researching energy efficiency and sustainability within Cloud data centers since 2013 - working both in academia and industry. This mainly concerns monitoring mechanisms, analysis of metric data, and efficient scheduling mechanisms.
Simulation
I spent several years working on Cloud-based simulators for the social sciences. More recently, I'm interested in the use of simulations to validate energy-aware Cloud-Edge systems.
Provenance
I have explored the use of provenance techniques to augment fault-tolerance mechanisms in Grids/Clouds, and I have also used them in industrial projects to improve customer trust in production systems .
Dependability
My early research (and PhD) looked at how to enable fault-tolerance in Grid and Cloud Computing, often with some fault injection research. I was particularly interested in using N-Version design techniques.
Contact
Location:
Dept. Computing Science, Umeå University, Sweden
Email:
paul.townend @ umu.se
Call:
+46 90 786 6138 (goes to MS Teams - rarely checked!)