I firmly believe that Resilient Computing in general will be a game changer in the craft of designing computer systems of today and future. Having been part of one of the teams that pioneered intrusion tolerance and resilient computing, I am absolutely convinced of the power of this paradigm. The threat surface presented to computer and network systems became too uncertain, dynamic and polymorphic to be addressed in a static way by aprioristic design techniques, and/or by isolated disciplines such as security or dependability. Teams, organisations, companies, nation-states mastering this paradigm will be at the forefront of cyberspace technology. As such, it will be at the centre of my vision and the inspiration for the research I propose to foster in RC3@KAUST.

Paulo Esteves-Veríssimo is since November 2020 a professor at KAUST, and Director of the Resilient Computing and Cybersecurity Center (RC3). Previously, he has been a professor and FNR PEARL Chair at the University of Luxembourg FSTM, and Head of the CritiX Research Lab at SnT center at the same University. CritiX has achieved world-class results and enduring capacity of research in resilient computing, cybersecurity and dependability. Previously, he had also been a Professor of the University of Lisbon (Portugal) and Member of the Board of the same university. There, he created the Navigators research group and was later founding Director of LaSIGE in 1998, a computer science and engineering lab, whose research in cutting-edge areas has consistently been backed by key indicators of excellence until today.

He was the representative of UNILU-SnT in ECSO, the European Cyber Security Organization, and member of its Scientific & Technical Committee (STC), as well as Chair of the IFIP WG 10.4 on Dependable Computing and Fault-Tolerance and vice-Chair of the Steering Committee of the IEEE/IFIP DSN conference. He is Fellow of the IEEE and Fellow of the ACM, and associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing (TETC).

Research Interests

Professor Esteves-Veríssimo is currently interested in architectures, middleware and algorithms for resilient modular and distributed computing. It is increasingly believed that Resilient Computing will become the main paradigm for achieving secure and dependable operation of computer systems and networks in a near future, improving classic Cybersecurity techniques. This is due to important intrinsic characteristics of this B.o.K., such as: common approach to accidental and malicious faults/attacks; incremental and adaptive protection against polymorphic threat surfaces; elasticity, plasticity and sustainability. 

To this end, he investigates such paradigms and techniques reconciling security and dependability, as well as novel ways to apply them in order to achieve system resilience, in areas like: autonomous vehicles from earth to space; distributed control systems; digital health and genomics; SDN-based infrastructures; or blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

His research is published in over 200 peer-refereed international publications and 5 international books. He was invited as well to present it in more than 70 keynote speeches or distinguished lectures at reputed venues. Esteves-Veríssimo also has a solid systems and engineering track record, having contributed to the design and engineering of several advanced industrial prototypes of distributed, fault-tolerant, secure or real-time systems, emerging from R&D projects he took part in.

Selected Publications

  • Jiangshan Yu, David Kozhaya, Jérémie Decouchant, Paulo Esteves-Veríssimo. RepuCoin: Your Reputation is Your Power (2019). In IEEE Trans. on Computers, 68(8), 1225-1237.
  • Kreutz, Diego; Ramos, F. M. V.; Verissimo, Paulo; Rothenberg, C. E.; Azodolmolky, S.; Uhlig, S. “Software-Defined Networking: A Comprehensive Survey”, in Proceedings of the IEEE (2015), 103(1), 14-76.
  • Giuliana Veronese, Miguel Correia, Alysson Bessani, Lau Lung, Paulo Verissimo, “Efficient Byzantine Fault-Tolerance”, IEEE Tacs. on Computers, vol. 62, no. 1, Jan. 2013.
  • Paulo Sousa, Alysson Bessani, Miguel Correia, Nuno Ferreira Neves, Paulo Veríssimo.  Highly Available Intrusion-Tolerant Services with Proactive-Reactive Recovery. IEEE Tacs. on Parallel and Distributed Systems. Apr. 2010. 
  • Veríssimo, P., Casimiro, A.: The timely computing base model and architecture. IEEE Tacs. on Computers, Special Issue on Asynchronous Real-Time Distr. Systems (2002).
  • D. Powell, D. Seaton, G. Bonn, P. Veríssimo, and F. Waeselynk. The Delta-4 approach to dependability in open distributed computing systems. In N. Suri, C. Walter, and M. Hugue, editors, Adv. in Ultra-Dependable Distr. Sys. IEEE Computer Society, 1995.

Selected Keynotes

Education Profile

  • Ph.D., Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Lisbon (PT), 1990
  • MSc, Electrical and Computer Engineering,  University of Lisbon IST (PT), 1984
  • Lic., Electrical Engineering, University of Lisbon IST (PT), 1978