CITI seminar – Frédéric Prost (CITI) – 04/05 at 12:15

Speaker: Frédéric Prost is an associate professor hosted by the CITI laboratory: https://lig-membres.imag.fr/prost/

Date: 04/05/2023

Time: 12h15

Place: Amphi Chappe/Lamarr, 6 avenue des arts, La Doua Campus

Title: AI Risk: an Historical Perspective through the Game of Chess

Abstract: The game of chess as always been viewed as an iconic representation of intellectual prowess. Since the very beginning of computer science, the challenge of being able to program a computer capable of playing chess and beating humans has been alive and used both as a mark to measure hardware/software progresses and as an ongoing programming challenge leading to numerous discoveries.

Recent advances in AI (GPT-4, Midjourney etc.) have raised an important discussion on the societal risk of AI. Several articles, and a recent request for a moratorium of 6 months in AI research (signed by thousands of AI researchers and influential figures from politics, economics etc. https://futureoflife.org/open-letter/pause-giant-ai-experiments/) have been published in the last few weeks.

In this talk I will tackle the issue of AI risk from an historical perspective. In chess the AI are stronger than humans for more than a quarter of century (Kasparov loss to Deep Blue dates back to 1997). We can use this history as a proxy to discuss fears/hopes and to explore what happens when AI develops super human capabilities (for instance how the chess community has evolved). Of course the range of the chess is wolrd is limited in its scope with relation to LLMs. But it is interesting and justified because, when one is trying to study a complex phenomenon, isolating experiments in a lab allows the reduction of noise.

Bio: Frédéric Prost est MdC à l’université Grenoble Alpes et au laboratoire LIG, hébergé au CITI. Il a principalement travaillé dans la théorie des langages de programmation (réécriture de graphes, sémantique des langages d’interrogation des BD graphes) et les problématiques de confidentialité (analyse de non interférence, anonymisation de bases de données graphe).


CITI seminar – Khac-Hoang Ngo (Chalmers University of Technology) – 20/04 at 10:00

Speaker: Khac-Hoang Ngo (Chalmers University of Technology)

Date: 20/04/2023

Time: 10h00

Place: Amphi Chappe/Lamarr, 6 avenue des arts, La Doua Campus

Title: Unsourced Multiple Access: An Information-Theoretic Analysis

Abstract: The drastic growth of the number of connected devices gives rise to the Internet of Things (IoT). Massive IoT connectivity targets a large number of low-cost, battery-limited, narrowband devices—meters, sensors, trackers, wearables—that transmit small data volumes in a sporadic and uncoordinated manner. These key features are captured by the unsourced multiple access (UMA) model proposed by Polyanskiy (2017), where all users transmit their messages using the same codebook and the decoder returns an unordered list of messages. In this talk, we introduce the UMA framework and Polyanskiy’s random-coding achievability bound for the Gaussian UMA channel. We then extend this bound to the case of random and unknown number of active users, thus fully account for the random user activity. Finally, we investigate a setting where, on top of the standard UMA messages, the users transmit a common alarm message that needs to be decoded with higher reliability; we thereby study the coexistence of massive and critical IoT.

Bio: Khac-Hoang Ngo (https://khachoang1412.github.io/) received the B.Eng. degree (Hons.) in electronics and telecommunications from Vietnam National University, Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2014; and the M.Sc. degree (Hons.) and Ph.D. degree in wireless communications from CentraleSupélec, Paris-Saclay University, France, in 2016 and 2020, respectively. His Ph.D. thesis was also realized at Paris Research Center, Huawei Technologies France. Since September 2020, he has been a postdoc at Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden under a project funded by the MSCA Individual Fellowship. His research interests include wireless communications and information theory, with an emphasis on massive random access, edge computing, MIMO, noncoherent communications, coded caching, and network coding. He received the Honda Award for Young Engineers and Scientists in Vietnam in 2013 and the “Signal, Image & Vision Ph.D. Thesis Prize” by Club EEA, GRETSI and GdR-ISIS, France, in 2021.


Le laboratoire CITI à l’honneur aux distinctions scientifiques de l’INSA

Le laboratoire CITI en a obtenu 3 distinction aux distinctions scientifiques de l’INSA :

 


Mathieu CUNCHE (équipe PRIVATICS)

A reçu le IEEE 802 Working Group Chair award for “outstanding
contributions to the development of IEEE Standard 802E-2020”

IEEE 802E-2020 : Pratique recommandée de l’IEEE concernant les
considérations de confidentialité pour les technologies IEEE 802(R)

Un modèle de menace à la vie privée pour les technologies IEEE 802® est
spécifié par cette pratique recommandée. Le document fournit également
des recommandations sur la manière de se protéger contre les menaces
pour la vie privée et favorise une approche cohérente de l’atténuation
des menaces pour la vie privée par les développeurs de protocoles IEEE 802.


Razvan STANICA (équipe AGORA)

A reçu le prix du meilleur chercheur junior de l’année 2021 par le
Groupe de Recherche – Réseaux et systèmes distribués (GDR RSD) du CNRS

a contribué au domaine des réseaux véhiculaires avant d’élargir ses
thématiques de recherche aux stratégies de collecte de données des
réseaux mobiles, à leur analyse pour caractériser les usages aussi bien
que les performances et enfin aux architectures et protocoles réseaux en
proposant une approche innovante de convergence du réseau d’accès et du
réseau cœur.

L’impact de son travail est reflété par un grand nombre de citations et
par son leadership dans six projets de recherche, avec des partenaires
académiques et industriels, dont un JCJC (Jeunes Chercheurs et Jeunes
Chercheures) de l’Agence Nationale de la Recherche, qui a débuté en 2021.

 


L’équipe LyonTech (équipe CITI-Chroma INSA & CPE Lyon)

Impliquant du CITI : Fabrice Jumel, Benoit Renault, Jacques Saraydaryan,
Olivier Simonin
Autres membres : Raphael Leber, Sébastien Altounian, Simon Ernst,
Florian Dupuis, Jeanne Fort, Cedric Mathou

a obtenu les résultats suivant à la compétition internationale
Robocup@Home 2021 :

  • 2nd World Champion in SSPL (Social Standard Plateform League)
  • Best SSPL Clean Up Award
  • 6th World Champion In OPL (Open Plateform League).

La RoboCup@Home vise à développer une technologie robotique d’assistance
pour des applications domestiques. L’évaluation consiste à tester les
capacités et les performances de chaque robot dans un univers réaliste
et non-standardisé.


CITI PhD Day – 09/03

Le PhD Day du CITI se déroulera le 9 Mars toute la journée dans le bâtiment Chappe/Lamarr de l’Insa-Lyon !

Cette journée conviviale et scientifique est l’occasion rêvée pour découvrir les sujets de recherche du laboratoire et sur les doctorants qui les mènent.

Programme complet ainsi que les profils des doctorants participants ici.


Workshop on Performance Guarantees in Wireless Networks – 08-09/03 @LINCS

The CITI is glad to participate to a 2-day Workshop entitled Performance Guarantees in Wireless Networks, organized by François Baccelli (Inria and Télécom-Paris) and Jean-Marie Gorce (Insa Lyon and Inria Lyon).

The workshop will take place on March 2023, Wednesday 8th and Thursday 9th, @LINCS: Télécom-Paris, 19 place Marguerite Perey, Palaiseau, Amphi Rose Dieng.

The web site of the event is here and the list of the confirmed invited speakers and the program are there.

IMPORTANT! Registering is required to attend.


CITI seminar – Pablo Rauzy (Université Paris 8) – 10/02 at 12:15

Speaker: Pablo Rauzy (Université Paris 8)

Date: 10/02/2023

Time: 12h15

Place: Amphi Chappe/Lamarr, 6 avenue des arts, La Doua Campus

Title: Promesses et (dés)illusions : une introduction technocritique aux blockchains

Abstract: Une blockchain est un registre distribué et immuable dans lequel sont écrites des informations qui font consensus. ». Dans cet article, nous commencerons par donner du sens à cette phrase et à l’ensemble des termes qui y sont employés, en nous efforçant quand c’est nécessaire de rendre accessibles les notions informatiques (comme la décentralisation, la distribution, l’immuabilité, ou le consensus) et le fonctionnement technique des outils cryptographiques sous-jacents (comme les condensats, les signatures, ou la preuve de travail ou d’enjeu). L’objectif de cette introduction sera d’atteindre une compréhension réelle de ce qu’est une blockchain.

Ainsi équipé·es, nous discuterons ensuite de ce que les blockchains permettent effectivement d’accomplir, et donc surtout ce qu’elles ne permettent pas. Nous questionnerons alors les utilisations qui en sont proposées en nous concentrant sur des cas d’usage typiques des blockchains que nous étudierons plus en détails : les « cryptomonnaies » bien sûr, la certification de documents (avec l’exemple des diplômes), et nous mentionnerons également le cas des NFT. Cela nous permettra en conclusion de questionner de manière générale le caractère d’« innovation de rupture » que l’on associe souvent à cette technologie.

Bio: Pablo Rauzy est maître de conférences en informatique à l’Université Paris 8 et membre de l’équipe PASTIS du LIASD. Avant sa prise de poste à Paris 8 en 2016, il a été doctorant dans l’équipe SEN de Télécom ParisTech puis post-doctorant dans l’équipe Inria Privatics au CITI. Ses travaux de recherche portent de manière générale sur la sécurité et touchent à différents aspects du domaine — privacy et contrôle, formalisation et modélisation, cryptographie et implémentation —, toujours avec la volonté d’une approche émancipatrice consciente du caractère non-neutre des sciences et technologies. C’est ce souci qui l’a conduit à devoir finalement s’intéresser aux blockchains dans le cadre de sa recherche, pour rendre accessible au plus grand nombre leur fonctionnement, leurs limites, et leurs dangers.


CITI seminar – Eleftherios Kofidis (University of Patras) – 24/01 at 14:00

Speaker: Eleftherios Kofidis (University of Patras)

Date: 24/01/2023

Time: 14h00

Place: Amphi Chappe/Lamarr, 6 avenue des arts, La Doua Campus

Title: Tensor methods and applications

Abstract: Tensor models have been well established as a natural and powerful way of representing systems and data that involve multiple aspects/dimensions. Assisted by their unique ability to unveil latent information through tensor decomposition methods, they have proved successful in numerous applications. In this talk, I will present some of our recent work and results on tensor methods, with example applications including wireless communications and remote sensing.

Bio: Eleftherios Kofidis received the Diploma (MEng) and Ph.D. degrees in 1990 and 1996, respectively, both from the Department of Computer Engineering and Informatics, University of Patras, Patras, Greece. From 1996 to 1998 he served in the Hellenic Army. In the period 1998 to 2000, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institut National des Télécommunications (INT), Évry, France (now Télécom SudParis). From 2001 to 2004, he was a research associate at the University of Athens, and adjunct professor at the Universities of Peloponnese and Piraeus, Greece. In 2004, he joined the Dept. of Statistics and Insurance Science, University of Piraeus, Greece, where he is now Associate Professor. He is also affiliated with the Computer Technology Institute & Press “Diophantus” (CTI), Greece. His research interests are in signal processing and machine learning, with applications including communications and medical imaging. He has served as technical program co-chair and in the organization and technical program committees of a number of conferences. Dr. Kofidis has served as Associate Editor in the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, the EURASIP Journal Advances in Signal Processing, and the IET Signal Processing journal.


PhD Defence: “Resilient IoT-based Monitoring System for the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry”, Safuriyawu Ahmed, amphi est, bâtiment des humanités, 16th of December 2022 at 10 AM

The defense will take place on Friday 16th December at 10 AM in the est amphi of the Humanities building, Insa-Lyon, Villeurbanne.

 

Title

Resilient IoT-based Monitoring System for the Nigerian Oil and Gas Industry

 

 

Abstract

Pipeline failures in crude oil transportation occur due to ageing infrastructure, third-party interferences, equipment defects and naturally occurring failures. Consequently, hydrocarbons are released into the environment resulting in environmental pollution, ecological degradation, and unprecedented loss of lives and revenue. Hence, multiple leakage detection and monitoring systems (LDMS) are employed to mitigate such failures. More recently, these LDMS include Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and Internet of Things (IoT)-based systems. While they are proven more efficient than other LDMS, many challenges exist in their adoption for pipeline monitoring. These include fault tolerance, energy consumption, accuracy in leakage detection and localisation, and high false alarms, to cite a few.

Therefore, our work seeks to address some of these challenges in implementing IoT-based systems for crude oil pipelines in a resilient end-to-end manner. Specifically, we consider the aspect of accurate leakage detection and localisation by introducing a unique node placement strategy based on fluid propagation for sensitive and multi-sized leakage detection. We also propose a new distributed leakage detection technique (HyDiLLEch) in the WSN layer. It is based on a fusion of existing leakage detection techniques such as the negative pressure wave method, gradient-based method, and pressure point analysis. With HyDiLLEch, we efficiently eliminate single points of failure.

Furthermore, we implement fault-tolerant data and service management in the fog layer utilising the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) pipeline network as a use case. The problem is modelled as a regionalised data-driven game against nature on the NNPC pipelines. Our proposed regionalised solution (R-MDP) using reinforcement learning optimises accuracy and fault tolerance while minimising energy consumption.

Overall, our system guarantees resiliency to failures and efficiency in terms of detection and localisation accuracy and energy consumption.

 

Jury

  • Stolf, Patricia, Professeur des Universités, Université de Toulouse, Rapporteure
  • Guidec, Frédéric, Professeur des Universités, Université Bretagne Sud, Rapporteur
  • Menaud, Jean-Marc, Professeur des Universités, IMT-Atlantique, Examinateur
  • Caron, Eddy, Maître de Conférences, ENS Lyon, Examinateur
  • Takruri-Rizk, Haifa, Professeur des Universités, University of Salford, Examinatrice
  • Silva, Bhagya Nathali, Senior Lecturer, University of SriJayawardenepura, Examinatrice
  • Le Mouël, Frédéric, Professeur des Universités, INSA Lyon, Directeur de thèse
  • Stouls, Nicolas, Maître de Conférences, INSA Lyon, Co-Directeur de thèse
  • Yusuf, Kabir, Docteur en gestion des ressources environnementales, PTDF/SAPZ, Invité

PhD Defence: “Contributions to the development of passive RFID tag-to-tag communications for the Internet of Things”, Tarik Lassouaoui, amphi ouest, batiment des humanités, 16th of December 2022 at 10 AM

The defense will take place on Friday 16th December at 10 AM in the west amphi of the Humanities building, Insa-Lyon, Villeurbanne.

Title

Contributions to the development of passive RFID tag-to-tag communications for the Internet of Things

Abstract

With the emergence of cognitive sensor networks, and in particular the IoT (Internet of Things), passive RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) UHF (Ultra High Frequency) technology is evolving with new functionalities. New types of applications going beyond the classics such as logistics, security and traceability are being developed. Still benefiting from unitary identification, new types of tags, called augmented tags, are appearing integrating new capacities such as environmental sensitivity, cognitive behaviour, data processing, communication between tags, etc. In this context, the objective of this thesis is to propose strategies and methods to optimize communications between tags, called tag-to-tag “tag-to-tag” (T2T) communications. This new type of radio link, between directly communicating tags, relies on the presence of an external radio frequency (RF) source and is based on the principle of retro-modulation. In particular, the scenarios analyzed are projected within the framework of the Spie ICS – INSA Lyon chair, which focuses on the IoT.

This thesis more specifically targets the application domain of UHF RFID for which the concept of T2T communications has been proposed and demonstrated since 2011, but with relatively little work done so far. In a T2T RFID system, two RFID tags (passive or semi- passive) communicate with each other directly without going through the reader. One of the tags plays the role of “reader tag”: in the presence of an RF source (for example an RFID reader) in its vicinity, it emits binary information by retro-modulation (or backscatter by switching charges), by switching the load seen by its antenna on two distinct impedances, thus reflecting two distinct power levels (modulation here considered in amplitude). The other tag plays the role of “receiver tag”: it receives the information transmitted and demodulates it.

In the traditional case of UHF RFID, the reader emits, in accordance with the standard, a modulated signal with a high modulation depth in order to facilitate the detection of the message transmitted by the tag. The tag responds by retro modulation and the signal it returns is then a signal where the two levels of information (in the case of amplitude modulation) are not very distinct and noisy. However, the player’s demodulator is very efficient, based on quadrature synchronous demodulation, it has very good sensitivity. In the case of T2T communication, a fundamental difference is that the detection is here performed by the second tag which is in the vicinity of the reader tag. Consequently, on the one hand, the performance of the receiver (that of a “simple” RFID tag) is much more limited, while the modulated signal is not necessarily at high modulation depth. And on the other hand, the two tags interact. This inter-tag electromagnetic coupling impacts in particular radiation patterns and impedances, and moreover, it depends on the mutual positions of the two tags, more precisely on their antennas (distance separating them, relative orientation, etc.), which leads to high variability the characteristics of the T2T system (and therefore its performance). In addition, there is the impact of the relative position of the external RF source with the pair of tags, which significantly modifies the characteristics of the retro-modulated signals.

The main challenge of the thesis is to determine a framework that can take into account all the factors (signal, component, circuit and system) impacting T2T communication with the aim of evaluating performance, particularly in terms of communication rate. binary error, a metric conventionally used in the field of telecommunications.

Keywords: Backscattering, passive tags, tag to tag communications, UHF RFID

Jury

  • Bergeret Emmanuel Professor Université Clermont Auvergne Reviewer
  • Breard Arnaud Professor Ecole Centrale de Lyon Examiner
  • Lepage Anne-Claire Associate Professor Telecom Paris Examiner
  • Lienard Martine Professor Université de Lille Examiner
  • Vena Arnaud Associate Professor HDR Université de Montpellier Reviewer
  • Villemaud Guillaume Associate Professor HDR INSA-Lyon Thesis director
  • Hutu Florin-Doru Associate Professor INSA-Lyon Co-director
  • Duroc Yvan Professor Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 Co-director

CITI seminar – Prasenjit Mitra (Penn State) – 13/12 at 10:00

Speaker: Prasenjit Mitra (Penn State)

Date: 13/12/2022

Time: 10h00

Place: Amphi Chappe/Lamarr

Title: Secure Federated Learning: Lessons Learned, and Future Directions

Abstract: In this talk, I will introduce the topic of federated learning and discuss about its implications to computer security and machine learning. Federated learning has a wide range of applications in several areas where machine learning is gaining prominence but the need to preserve privacy arises. For example, hospitals prevented from sharing patient data can nevertheless collaborate to build a better model that utilizes data from multiple hospitals; next generation cars can share their data to enable dynamic, personalized, just-in-time preventive maintenance that can save customers money as well as make cars reliable, while preserving the privacy of individual drivers. The talk will survey the state-of-the-art for the technology, outline several open issues, and briefly mention our previous work on making federated learning solutions robust when adversaries attack. We will also briefly mention issues related to fairness and federated learning and how we can implement explainable and interpretable federated learning. The objective will be to raise questions that are of interest to the community that we can jointly address to improve the state-of-the-art in federated learning with respect to a wide range of attributes, e.g., computational complexity, security, privacy, fairness and equity, robustness, interpretability, etc.

Bio: Prasenjit Mitra is a Professor at The Pennsylvania State University and a visiting Professor at the L3S Center at the Leibniz University at Hannover, Germany. He obtained his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 2003 in Electrical Engineering and has been at Penn State since. His research interests are in artificial intelligence, applied machine learning, natural language processing, etc. His research has been supported by the NSF CAREER award, the DoE, DoD, Microsoft Research, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Dow Chemicals, McDonnell Foundation, etc. His has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers at top conferences and journals, supervised or co-supervised 15-20 Ph.D. dissertations; his work has been widely cited (h-index 60) and over 12,500 citations. Along with his co-authors, he has won the test of time award at the IEEE VIS and a best paper award at ISCRAM, etc.