Pablo Rodriguez (computer scientist)

Dr. Pablo Rodríguez Rodríguez
Rodriguez in 2011.
Born
NationalitySpanish
Alma materÉcole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
AwardsACM Fellow (2015)
Scientific career
Fields
InstitutionsÉcole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Columbia University
Telefónica
ThesisScalable Content Distribution in the Internet (2000)
Doctoral advisorErnst Biersack
Websitewww.rodriguezrodriguez.com

Pablo Rodriguez (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈpaβlo roˈðɾiɣeθ]; born 17 April) is a Spanish computer scientist and researcher, who is best known for his research in the mid-2000s on peer-to-peer file sharing and user-generated content. After working for technology and communications companies AT&T and Microsoft Research, Rodriguez returned to Spain in 2006 to become the research director for telecommunications provider Telefónica. In 2010 he took a position as an adjunct professor at Columbia University in New York.

Rodriguez has been a frequent guest speaker at technology conferences in Europe, such as the International World Wide Web Conference, TEDx Barcelona, and the Wired Conference in London. He has collaborated with chef Ferran Adrià of the restaurant elBulli to develop Bullipedia, and in 2014 with football team FC Barcelona to analyze their strategies.

Early life and education

[edit]

Rodriguez was born in Oviedo, in the Asturias region of Spain.[1][2][3] After studying for his Bachelor and Master of Science in Telecommunications Engineering at the Universidad Pública de Navarra (1990–1995), Rodriguez continued his Master's in computational physics at King's College London, studying electro-optical sensors and collaborating on the research paper Advances in high-resolution distributed sensing using a time-resolved photon counting technique.[4][5]

Travelling to Switzerland and France, Rodriguez studied communication systems at a postgraduate level, and gained a PhD in Computer Science in 2000 from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.[4] During his doctorate studies, Rodriguez worked as an intern at AT&T Labs in New Jersey, and researched scalability at the Institut Eurécom.[4] At AT&T, Rodriguez filed his first patents, TCP transparent proxies.[6] His dissertation in 2002, Scalable content distribution in the Internet, focused on scaling existing Internet architecture to perform content distribution to millions of users. As part of his doctorate, he designed parallel download algorithms to improve download times and resilience in peer-to-peer file swarming systems.[7]

Career

[edit]

In the early 2000s, Rodriguez worked as a software architect for Silicon Valley companies such as search engine Inktomi, and network equipment company Tahoe Networks.[2][8] In 2002, Rodriguez returned to AT&T to work at Bell Labs, where he researched many of the early concepts of peer-to-peer networks and mobile computing.[9] Following this, Rodriguez returned to England to begin working at Microsoft Research Cambridge in their systems and networking research group.[8] By 2004, Rodriguez had already having ten patents.[3][8] In 2005, Rodriguez co-designed Avalanche, a peer-to-peer client for legal files proposed to improve download efficiency and copy protection, which was released in 2007 as Microsoft Secure Content Distribution.[10][11] In addition to Avalanche, Rodriguez researched content distribution, wireless systems, and complex networks, while conducting studies assessing Windows Update, FolderShare and Xbox Live.[8][9] Rodriguez further researched low-power datacasting with Julian Chesterfield of the University of Cambridge.[12]

Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales (center) with the Bullipedia team, including chef Ferran Adrià (bottom left) and Rodriguez (bottom right).

In November 2006, Rodriguez left the Avalanche project at Microsoft to work at Telefónica Catalunya in Barcelona,[13] a center separate from Telefónica's main Madrid offices that was created in March 2006.[14] There, he worked as the head of Telefónica's Barcelona research and development team, leading research on highly scalable distributed systems, next generation social networks and advanced wireless systems.[8] In 2008, the team began working on BeWifi, a technology that employs ideas from peer-to-peer networks to gather additional bandwidth for Wi-Fi connections, using additional routers in the user's area.[15] Initially employed as the Internet scientific director,[8][14] in 2013 he became the center's director of research and innovation,[16] focusing on big data concepts,[17] until Telefónica Digital was merged into the company's Global Corporate Centre.[18]

Rodriguez has been collaborating with chef Ferran Adrià of the former Michelin 3-star restaurant elBulli to develop Bullipedia: a Wiki format culinary repository of information about Spanish cuisine, which was first announced in early 2012.[19][20] In 2014, Rodriguez collaborated with football team FC Barcelona to develop new strategies for football, by analyzing the team using network theory techniques.[21][22]

Rodriguez is a member of several advisory boards for companies and associations, including the scientific journal IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking,[23] the IMDEA Networks Institute since 2010,[24] and the art and science exhibition centre LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial in Gijón since 2013,[25] and serves as a trustee board member of the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies since 2014.[26]

University and educating

[edit]

In the mid-2000s, Rodriguez collaborated on research papers dealing mainly with peer-to-peer content distribution. Two of these were highly influential in computer science: Network coding for large scale content distribution (2005) and Should internet service providers fear peer-assisted content distribution? (2005), which became highly cited papers for researchers. Network coding for large scale content distribution, as well as a paper analyzing YouTube networks, I tube, you tube, everybody tubes: analyzing the world's largest user generated content video system (2007), have been cited by thousands of papers and studies.[27]

In 2010 he joined the computer science department of Columbia University as an adjunct professor,[28][29] where he taught about social networks and next generation system architectures.[30] He held this position until 2012.[2]

In 2009, Rodriguez was one of four keynote speakers at the International World Wide Web Conference, held in Madrid.[31] Rodriguez has spoken at TEDx Barcelona in 2011 and 2014, discussing distributed programming and later net neutrality.[32][33] At the 2013 Internet Measurement Conference, Rodriguez delivered the keynote speech, while receiving an award for a paper he collaborated on, entitled Follow the Money: Understanding Economics of Online Aggregation and Advertising.[34] In 2013 he was a part of a panel on Re-architecting the Internet for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' conference Infocom 2013,[35] and in 2014 attended the Wired Conference as a guest speaker, discussing his research on FC Barcelona's strategies.[36]

Awards and honors

[edit]

In 2015 he was named a fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery "for contributions to content distribution architectures in peer-to-peer networks."[37]

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ Menendez, Marco (24 February 2012). "Para innovar hay que perder el miedo a fallar" (in Spanish). Elcomercio.es. Retrieved 22 May 2015.
  2. ^ a b c Rodriguez, Pablo. "Bio". Rodriguez, Pablo. Retrieved May 13, 2015.
  3. ^ a b Gómez, Pablo (April 5, 2004). "Pablo Rodríguez Investigador de Microsoft "Un botón de camisa también se podrá conectar a Internet"" (in Spanish). Digital Vasca. Archived from the original on September 1, 2004. Retrieved May 13, 2015.
  4. ^ a b c "Pablo Rodriguez". Institut Eurécom. Archived from the original on October 28, 2001. Retrieved May 13, 2015.
  5. ^ Feced, Ricardo; Farhadiroushan, Mahmoud; Rodriguez, Pablo; Handerek, Vincent A.; Rogers, Alan J. (November 27, 1996). "Advances in high-resolution distributed sensing using a time-resolved photon counting technique". Proc. SPIE. 2838: 105. Bibcode:1996SPIE.2838..105F. doi:10.1117/12.259788. S2CID 93816093.
  6. ^ US patent 7016973, Sibal, Sandeep; Spatscheck, Oliver & Rodriguez, Pablo, "Apparatus and methods for providing translucent proxies in a communications network", published March 21, 2006, issued November 16, 2000, assigned to At&T Corp. 
  7. ^ Rodriguez, Pablo (August 2002). "Dynamic parallel access to replicated content in the internet". IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking. 10 (4). IEEE Press Piscataway: 455–465. doi:10.1109/TNET.2002.801413. S2CID 10729070. Retrieved May 13, 2015.
  8. ^ a b c d e f "Presenting Telefonica I+D Internet research group". Centre Tecnològic de Telecomunicacions de Catalunya. February 6, 2009. Retrieved May 13, 2015.
  9. ^ a b "Pablo Rodríguez Rodríguez". Telefonica. February 6, 2009. Retrieved May 13, 2015.
  10. ^ Knight, Will (June 21, 2005). "Data trading races with Avalanche algorithms". New Scientist. Reed Business Information Ltd. Archived from the original on November 16, 2005. Retrieved May 13, 2015.
  11. ^ Miller, John L. (July 26, 2007). "Microsoft Secure Content Distribution". Microsoft. Retrieved May 13, 2015.
  12. ^ TR Staff (September 1, 2005). "Prototypes". Technology Review. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Retrieved May 13, 2015.
  13. ^ Rodriguez, Pablo. "Pablo Rodriguez Rodriguez". Microsoft. Archived from the original on February 18, 2008. Retrieved May 13, 2015.
  14. ^ a b EFE (December 4, 2006). "Telefónica centra en Barcelona sus investigaciones sobre internet". El País (in Spanish). Retrieved May 13, 2015.
  15. ^ Collins, Katie (January 24, 2014). "BeWifi lets you steal your neighbour's bandwidth when they're not using it". Wired. Condé Nast UK. Retrieved May 13, 2015.
  16. ^ EFE ECONOMÍA (June 13, 2013). "El centro de I+D de Telefónica en Cataluña liderará su innovación mundial". El País (in Spanish). Retrieved May 13, 2015.
  17. ^ "Mobile multinational Telefónica turns Barcelona into its world innovation lab". Agència Catalana. Intracatalònia SA. June 23, 2013. Retrieved May 13, 2015.
  18. ^ McGarrigle, Pádraig (February 26, 2014). "Mobile multinational Telefónica turns Barcelona into its world innovation lab". Mobile News. Retrieved May 13, 2015.
  19. ^ Williams, Greg (September 24, 2012). "After elBulli: Ferran Adrià on his desire to bring innovation to all". Wired. Condé Nast UK. Retrieved May 13, 2015.
  20. ^ FDL (March 20, 2012). "FERRAN ADRIÀ TO LAUNCH WIKIPEDIA STYLE COOKING SITE". Wired. Fine Dining Lovers. Retrieved May 13, 2015.
  21. ^ Nave, Kathrin (October 17, 2014). "Pablo Rodriguez: footballers are just like computers". Wired. Condé Nast UK. Retrieved May 10, 2015.
  22. ^ Ball, Philip (October 24, 2014). "FC Barcelona: The science behind their success". Under the Radar. BBC. Retrieved May 10, 2015.
  23. ^ "IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking publication information". IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking. 17 (5). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers: C2. 2009. doi:10.1109/TNET.2009.2034358.
  24. ^ "Institute IMDEA Networks appoints new Scientific Council members". Fundación IMDEA. November 17, 2010. Retrieved May 13, 2015.
  25. ^ "LABoral renews its Board of Trustees with the incorporation of Luis Figaredo, Pablo Rodríguez and Alicia Ventura". LABoral. December 14, 2013. Retrieved May 13, 2015.
  26. ^ "The Board of FCRi". Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies. Retrieved May 13, 2015.
  27. ^ "Pablo Rodriguez Rodriguez". Google Scholar. Retrieved May 13, 2015.
  28. ^ "SPRING 2010 COURSES". Columbia University. Archived from the original on June 22, 2010. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
  29. ^ "DIRECTORY". Columbia University. Archived from the original on June 22, 2010. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
  30. ^ Rodriguez, Pablo. "COMS E6998.003 NEXT GENERATION NETWORK ARCH". Columbia University. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
  31. ^ "Keynote Speakers". International World Wide Web Conference. Retrieved May 13, 2015.
  32. ^ "TEDxBARCELONA SCIENCE 2011". TEDxBarcelona. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
  33. ^ "TEDxBarcelona - New world". TEDxBarcelona. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
  34. ^ "IMC 2013 Program". Internet Measurement Conference. Retrieved May 13, 2015.
  35. ^ "All Conference Panel". Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
  36. ^ "WIRED2014 Main Stage speakers". Wired UK. Retrieved May 12, 2015.
  37. ^ ACM Fellows Named for Computing Innovations that Are Advancing Technology in the Digital Age, Association for Computing Machinery, 2015, archived from the original on 2015-12-09, retrieved 2015-12-10.

Papers

[edit]
[edit]