ITEC Seminar: Toward the Next Computing Era: From Network Orchestration to Intelligent Cloud

Abstract:
The complexity of distributed data services is increasing rapidly especially with the development of mobile computing and Internet of things (IoT) where the data volume is exploding. New technologies; Edge Computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Network Function Virtualization (NFV), Software-Defined Networking (SDN), and Self-organizing Networks; will jeopardize new data silos and require a solution that makes the computing and network simpler. My research work takes full advantage of these technologies to empower next-generation networks, IoT applications, and data-driven services with sophisticated software architectures, real-time and historical analytics, and automation capabilities. With this in mind, this research envisions microservices architecture to exploit the potential of its adoption in building SDN/NFV platforms in a dynamic cloud environment. It also identifies the challenges of developing a flexible and dynamic orchestration of the NFV applications. Said that, this research will discuss novel algorithms and ML models that address the aforementioned challenges while taking into consideration the carrier-grade nature of the NFV applications. It will then continue down this line and discuss how the cloud-based environment can be augmented with ML models to build a capacity planning, infrastructure auto-scaling, and log analysis system. Furthermore, I will discuss the methodologies to achieve an intelligent self-healing and diagnostic cloud framework and integrate it with the above NFV model to provide a globally distributed view of the network while providing efficient traffic management policies. It is necessary to note that the power within any cloud solution to respond and scale depends on swift access, highly available applications, smart data management and delivery across the entire networking system.
Bio:
Manar Jammal received the B.E.Sc. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Lebanese University, Beirut, Lebanon, in 2011, and the M.E.Sc. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Ecole Doctorale des Sciences et de Technologie, Beirut, and from the University of Technology of Compiegne, France, in 2012, and the Ph.D. degree in High Availability of Cloud Applications from Western University, London, Canada, in 2017. Dr. Jammal is currently a Postdoctoral Associate at the OC2 group in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Western University and a Machine Learning Researcher and Consultant at Data Infusion Intelligence Inc. London Canada. Dr. Jammal is a reviewer of more than eight IEEE and non-IEEE journals, magazines, and conferences. She is the Past-Chair of IEEE Women in Engineering (WIE) London, ON, and she is now the Regional Coordinator of IEEE Canada WIE and the Chair of IEEE Canada WIE Committee. Dr. Jammal is also an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Champion, AI Canada Forum, CATAAlliance. Her research interests include machine learning, software engineering, distributed systems, cloud computing, network function virtualization, high availability, and software defined network.