Team

Faculty & Permanent Research Staff

Thomas Heide Clausen, cand.polyt, PhD : Professor

Thomas Heide Clausen, cand.polyt, PhD

Professor

A graduate of Aalborg University, Denmark (M.Sc., PhD – civilingeniør, cand.polyt), Thomas spent a number of years at INRIA where he, among other things, developed and standardised OLSR – the predominant routing protocol for community, mesh, and tactical networks.

In 2004 he joined faculty at Ecole Polytechnique, France’s premiere technical and scientific university, where he is currently a professor. He leads the computer networking research group, and enjoys working with with some of France’s best students.

Thomas has developed, and coordinates, the computer networking curriculum at Ecole Polytechnique, teaches several core classes therein. He’s the academic director of the elite and multidisciplinary Master of Science and Technology programme “IoT: Innovation and Management”.

In terms of research, Thomas is, particularly, interested in “keeping the Internet connected”, even when faced with the immense influx of “new devices” and “new uses”. Thus, his work has emphasized development of algorithms, protocols, and architectures for the (immodestly) termed “future internet”: the Internet of Things (IoT), personal-area networks (PANs), ubiquitous networks, rendering the current Internet routing more “robust” and “adaptive”, as well as for securely supporting new services across the Internet. Thomas has authored more than 100 peer-reviewed academic publications, which have attracted more than 16000 citations.

With a particular affinity for “applicable research”,  Thomas remains an active contributor to standardisation. He  served as co-chair of the MANET AUTOCONF working group from 2005 until its closure in 2012, within the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) – the international standardization body behind the Internet and behind protocols such as TCP/IP, HTTP etc. Also within the IETF, he has served on the Routing Area Directorate, an advisory group of routing experts providing final document reviews as part of the standardization process, as well as other expert advice on routing-related topics. Thomas has authored, edited, and contributed substantially to 24 published IETF standards. He has also consulted for the development of IEEE 802.11s, as well as contributed the routing portions of the recently ratified ITU-T standard G.9903 for G3-PLC networks – the international standard upon which, e.g., the SmartGrid/ConnectedEnergy initiatives are built.

Thomas maintains long-standing formal industrial research collaborations with, e.g., Hitachi (Japan), Fujitsu (USA), Toyota (Japan), Qualcomm (USA), EDF (France), ERDF (France), and Sagemcom (France). He also maintains close collaborative relations with peers in industry, including BAE Systems (UK), Cisco Systems (USA & France), and Alcatel-Lucent (France). He was involved in the  ADEME “SOGrid” project, on the future French national “Smart Grid”. Thomas holds the Cisco endowed “Internet of Everything” academic chaire at Ecole Polytechnique.

Thomas is a senior member of the IEEE, and was named an “IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Contributor”, as part of the inaugural 2021 class.

 

Thomas.Clausen@polytechnique.edu

Juan Antonio Cordero Fuertes, PhD : Assistant Professor

Juan Antonio Cordero Fuertes, PhD

Assistant Professor

Juan Antonio Cordero is an assistant professor at École polytechnique. He graduated in Mathematics ("Licenciatura", M.Sc.) and Telecommunication Engineering (B.Sc.+M.Sc., "Ingeniería Superior") at the Universidad Politécnica de Cataluña (Technical University of Catalonia, UPC, Spain) in 2006 and 2007, respectively. He got his Ph.D. at École polytechnique in 2011, with a dissertation on the optimization of link-state routing protocols for operation in MANETs and compound (wired/wireless) Autonomous Systems. As part of his PhD, he participated in the development of OSPF for MANETs. Before joining faculty at École Polytechnique, Juan Antonio held postdoctoral research positions at the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL, Belgium) and at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University (Hong Kong SAR, People's Republic of China). He attained tenure at Ecole Polytechnique in 2020.

Juan Antonio's scientific interests include wireless mesh and mobile ad hoc networking, routing protocols and information dissemination algorithms, integration of wired and wireless networks, Internet measurements and future Internet architectures.

juan-antonio.cordero-fuertes@polytechnique.edu

Kevin Jiokeng : Assistant Professor

Kevin Jiokeng

Assistant Professor


Distinguished Affiliated Researchers

Yoann Desmouceaux, PhD : Affiliated researcher, Cisco Research Engineer, PhD student (graduated)

Yoann Desmouceaux, PhD

Affiliated researcher, Cisco Research Engineer, PhD student (graduated)

After his studies at École Polytechnique (X11) where he followed the Network/Security track, Yoann Desmouceaux completed his MSc in Advanced Computing at Imperial College London. His Master’s research focused on bringing zero-copy deserialization capabilities to a userland TCP stack

Dr. Desmouceaux obtained his PhD at Ecole Polytechnique, under supervision by Thomas Clausen, in collaboration with Cisco France, on the topic high-performance networking, IPv6-centric protocols and protocol verification.

He successfully defended his PhD on April 10, 2019, before a jury presided by professor Marceau Coupechoux, and composed from dr. Walid Dabbous (rapporteur), professor Olivier Bonaventure (rapporteur), dr Pascale Minet, dr. Sonia Vanier, and mr. Mark Townsley.

Yoann.Desmouceaux@polytechnique.edu

W. Mark Townsley : Professeur Charge de Cours, Cisco Fellow & Vice President

W. Mark Townsley

Professeur Charge de Cours, Cisco Fellow & Vice President

Mark joined Cisco in 1997 as a software engineer, focused on remote access and tunneling protocols in Cisco’s IOS, as well as scaling of the core IOS virtual interface system to support the rapid growth of dial-up and broadband connectivity in the 1990s and early 2000s. Mark is well-known in the Internet Protocol community as well, twice-nominated for terms as IETF Internet Area Director (2005-2009), Layer 2 Tunneling Protocol (L2TP) Working Group Chair (1999-2005), Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG) Liaison to the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), IETF Pseudowire Working Group Technical Advisor, and is currently co-Chair of the IETF Home Networking Working Group (Homenet). On faculty at Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, Mark also serves as “Professeur chargé de cours”, teaching and mentoring some of the brightest undergraduate and graduate engineering students in France. Before Joining Cisco, Mark held engineering and research positions at IBM, the Institute for Systems Research (ISR) and the Center for Satellite and Hybrid Communications Networks at the University of Maryland.

Mark holds a Bachelor of Science (summa cum laude) degree in Electrical Engineering from Auburn University and a Master’s degree in Computer Science (magna cum laude) from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Mark.Townsley@polytechnique.edu


Postdoctoral Researchers

Dr. Rim El Malki : Research Fellow

Dr. Rim El Malki

Research Fellow

Rim El Malki received her B.S. degree (with High Distinction) in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) from the Rafik Hariri University (RHU), Lebanon, in 2013, and her M.S. degree in 2015. She was the recipient of the Academic Excellence Award at RHU in 2013 for ranking first on the graduating class. In September 2020, she received her Ph.D. degree from the American University of Beirut (AUB), Lebanon, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. During her Ph.D, she worked as a research and teaching assistant for several courses in the ECE department. As a Ph.D student, she was also a part of a two-year research collaboration with Iberdrola Innovation Middle East, Doha, Qatar. Since December 2020, Dr El Malki is PostDoctoral researcher at the Computer Science Laboratory of Ecole Polytechnique (LIX), Paris, France. She is working in collaboration with Cisco Systems on enhancing the security of microservices in distributed networks. Her research interests also include the areas of Information Security, Physical Layer Security, Cryptography, Wireless Communication Systems, Security in Distributed Networks and Internet of Things.

rim.el-malki@polytechnique.edu


PhD Students

Thomas Feltin : PhD Student

Thomas Feltin

PhD Student

After his studies at École Polytechnique (X15) where he followed the Network/Security track, Thomas Feltin completed his MSc in Advanced Computing at Imperial College London where he focused on data science and AI. His Master’s research focused on building a decentralized personal data management system leveraging the audibility properties of the blockchain technology.

Thomas is now undertaking an industrial PhD under the joint supervision of Frank Brockners (Cisco) and Thomas Clausen (École polytechnique)

Thomas.Feltin@polytechnique.edu

Alexandre Poirrier : PhD Student

Alexandre Poirrier

PhD Student

After his master in Computer Science (cybersecurity track) at Ecole polytechnique (X16), Alexandre Poirrier joined the corps de l'Armement, a technical Grand Corps of the French State. As part of his formation in the Corps de l'Armement, he completed a master in Computer Science at ETH Zürich. For his Master's research, he extended the Signal protocol to capture a broader and more realistic post-compromise security notion.
He is now a PhD student as part of his formation in the Corps de l'Armement under the supervision of Thomas Clausen (Ecole polytechnique).

Alexandre.Poirrier@polytechnique.org


Research Interns