Ali Shoker

About

Ali is a Research Scientist at the Resilient Computing and Cybersecurity Center (RC3).  He is currently part of the core research team at the foundation of the RC3 lab, whose mission is to improve the state of the art and practice of Cyber-secure Cyber-resilient Cyber-physical systems. Ali has a hybrid academic and industrial research leadership experience. He was a co-founder and the head of Cybersecurity and Smart Distributed Systems research and innovation team at the industrial VORTEX CoLAB (Capgemini Group). He was in charge of the entire R&I process: strategy, scouting, ideation, conception, design, implementation, proof, validation, evaluation, publication, patenting, and pitching, and interviewing.

Prior to that, Ali worked as Assistant Researcher at INESC TEC (HASLab research unit), Portugal, where he founded with his co-authors the mainstream models for CRDTs (a.k.a., Conflict-free Replicated  Datatypes). The work has seen significant adoption in the Geo-replicated scalable available systems (among them, Facebook Apollo, PayPal, SoundCloud, TomTom, Cassandra DB, Microsoft Azure CosmosDB). In 2012-2013, he worked as Postdoc at INSA de Lyon (France), focusing on scalable anonymous communications under malicious and rational attacks, following a Game Theory Nash Equilibrium model. In 2012, he obtained his PhD degree with European Label in Computer Science from the University of Toulouse, France, working on Adaptive Byzantine/malicious/intrusion tolerant protocols. During his PhD, he visited EPFL (Switzerland) twice, hosted by Rachid Guerraoui who co-mentored his PhD. Ali was also an Invited Assistant Professor at the Department of Informatics of University of Minho and at MAP-I PhD school (Portugal). He founded, coordinated, and taught a new PhD course on "Successful Systems in Production". Ali also taught Master-level courses on Security, Blockchain, and available geo-replicated systems topics.

Ali is currently advising 2 PhD students and co-advising 5 PhD and Masters students on topics related to resilient Byzantine/intrusion tolerant available systems and cyber-secure automotive systems.

Career Achievements and Recognitions

Ali is privileged to be a core member in the foundation of two Cybersecurity and Resilience labs in his career so far. He is the recipient of IFIP Best Paper Award'21 on the federated DisCoTec conferences (COORDINATION, DAIS, FORTE), Best paper at DAIS'21, and Joint Best Paper at DAIS'14. He is the holder of the PhD scholarship from the Lebanese University (2009-2012), the Outstanding Masters scholarship from University of Toulouse (2008), and the LimeLight Award from INESC TEC (2017). Ali also received  two Research Intern scholarships from EPFL (2010 and 2011) and two ATUPS PhD mission from the university of Toulouse (2010 and 2011).

Ali's work has been published in more than 30 peer-reviewed ACM, IEEE, IFIP, Springer, Elsevier conferences, journals, and books. Ali is a single-authored many papers, demonstrating his autonomous research skills. Ali is the inventor of two decentralized smart systems for automotive which are filed as two EU patents–under submission. 

Ali has served as proposal writer and project subsidiary leader for tens of European Commission Projects (EU FP7, EU Horizon 2020, EU, Horizon Europe, and COST Action) and National projects (French ANR and Portuguese P2020). He served on more than 20 Juries and Program Committees at ACM and IEEE conferences, Journal referee for a handful of premium IEEE and Elsevier journals, as well as Editorial Board Member at CFATI International Journal of Cyber Forensics and Advanced Threat Investigations, and EU H2020 Project evaluator. Ali spoke at more than 20 events, among them 5 invited talks and tutorials. Ali also volunteered on the Blockchain framework within the UN, UNECE, ITU report on "Blockchain for smart sustainable cities".

Ali is the founder and organizer Chain-in Blockchain conference, and founder and organizer of INESC TEC/HASLab InfoBlender seminar (for over 4 years).

Research Interests

Foremost, Ali has a strong belief in research and innovation that serve humanity as a priority.

In a nutshell, Ali's main interest lies in both research and practice that revolve around understanding and building cyber-secure, resilient, scalable, available, efficient, green, smart, and distributed systems.

Throughout his research career, Ali's work spanned diverse topics on Byzantine/malicious Fault/intrusion tolerance,  Blockchains, Resilience, Cybersecurity, Security, Anonymous Communication, Cloud/Fog/Edge Computing, Automotive, and data management (Conflict-free Replicated DataTypes - CRDTs). More recently, his focus has been on the Cybersecure Cyber-resilient Automotive industry (i.e., Autonomous Vehicles, Connected Vehicles, V2X), Cyber-physical systems (i.e., smart and connected infrastructures), and Blockchain/Distributed Ledgers. Given the diversity and multidisciplinary nature of these areas, Ali is interested in any research topics that intersect and make the aforementioned topics better (in all senses). 

Selected Publications

• Houssam Yactine, Ali Shoker, and Georges Younes. "ASPAS: As Secure as Possible Available Systems", 2021. DisCoTec Best Paper Award, and DAIS Best Paper.

• Ali Shoker. "Blockchain Technology as a Means for Sustainable Development". In the One Earth Journal , Cell Press and Elsevier, 2021. Invited Paper.

• Ali Shoker. "Sustainable Blockchain through Proof of eXercise". IEEE NCA, October 2017.

• Paulo Sérgio Almeida, Ali Shoker, and Carlos Baquero. "Delta state replicated data types". JPDC Elsevier journal, 2018.

• Jean-Paul Bahsoun, Rachid Guerraoui, and Ali Shoker. "Making BFT Protocols Really Adaptive". IEEE IPDPS'15, 2015. 

• Carlos Baquero, Paulo Sérgio Almeida, and Ali Shoker. "Making Operation-Based CRDTs Operation-Based". DAIS, 2014. DAIS joint Best Paper.

• Sonia Ben Mokhtar, Gautier Berthou, Amadou Diarra, Vivien Quema, and Ali Shoker. "RAC: a Freerider-resilient, Scalable, Anonymous Communication Protocol". IEEE ICDCS'13,  2013.

Full List of Publications

See updated list here: https://data.alishoker.com/p/publications.html

Education Profile

• 2009-2012 PhD in Informatics and Telecommunication, University of Toulouse, France

• 2007-2008 MSc in Informatics and Telecommunication, Lebanese University, Lebanon

• 2002-2006 BSc in Applied Mathematics, Computer Science,  Lebanese University, Lebanon

Awards and Distinctions

• IFIP Best Paper Award'21 on the federated DisCoTec conferences (COORDINATION, DAIS, FORTE).

• LimeLight Award from INESC TEC (2017).

• PhD scholarship from the Lebanese University (2009-2012).

• Outstanding Masters scholarship from University of Toulouse (2008).

• PhD research intern scholarships from EPFL (2011).

• PhD ATUPS research mission scholarship from the University of Toulouse (2011).

• PhD research intern scholarships from EPFL (2010).

• PhD ATUPS research mission scholarship from the University of Toulouse (2010).