Professor Omer Rana
College Dean of International
Professor of Performance Engineering
- ranaof@cardiff.ac.uk
- +44 (0)29 2087 5542
- Fax:
- +44 (0)29 2087 4598
- Room: 5.13, Abacws, Senghennydd Road, Cathays, Cardiff, CF24 4AG
- Available for postgraduate supervision
Overview
Professor of Performance Engineering and previously led the Complex Systems research group. His research interests lie in the overlap between intelligent systems and high performance distributed computing. He is particularly interested in understanding how intelligent techniques could be used to support resource management in distributed systems, and the use of these techniques in various application areas.
He is a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales and of the Higher Education Academy
He is the Dean of International for the Physical Sciences and Engineering College
Read more about his research and personal interests here.
2022
Keynote: Int. Conf. on Emerging Trends in Computing and Engineering Applications (ETCEA2022), Mutah University, Jordan, November 2022
Keynote: 2nd Int. Conf. on Ubiquitous Security (UbiSec 2022), Zhangjiajie, China, November 2022
Invited talk: 4th Cybersecurity Education and Research Conference, Kuwait, October 2022
Keynote: 30th Int. Conf. on Information Systems Development, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, August/September 2022
Panel Chair: Panel on "Circular Economy" -- as part of the "Demonstrating the Potential of Blockchain: Challenge Fund Finale" event, July 2022. The panel was coordinated by Blockchain Connected (Wales) -- video of the three panels covered as part of this event is also available
Panelist: "Servitizing" of Internet of Things at the IEEE Services 2022 conference, Barcelona, Spain, July 2022 -- a brief overview of the panel. A video recording of the full panel session is also available.
Invited Talk: IEEE Technical Committee on Cloud Computing (TCCLD) webinar on "Future Directions in Cloud/Edge/Fog Computing", July 2022
ACE-CSR Panel on Securing the Energy/Transport Interface, June 2022
Invited Talk: Supsec Project -- Summer Workshop, France, June 2022
Invited Talk: Digital Day, Messina, Italy, May 2022
Seminar: School of Computer Science and Information Technology, University College Cork, Ireland, March 2022
Panelist: Delivering Scalability through Cloud Applications, European Technology Summit, Hedge Fund Management, February 2022
Networks & Distributed Systems (NESTiD) seminar at Durham University, January 2022
Invited Talk: Workshop on Engineering Privacy Aware Urban Scale Cyber Physical Systems, UKIERI/DST, University of Surrey, January 2022
2021
Keynote Talk: 17th International Conference on Information Systems Security (ICISS), IIT Patna, India, December 2021
Keynote Talk: 14th International Conference on the Developments on eSystems Engineering (DeSE2021), Sharjah, UAE, December 2021 (Virtual)
Invited Talk: 18th International Conference on Frontiers of Information Technology (FIT 2021), Islamabad, Pakistan, December 2021 (Virtual)
Panel co-chair: Computing in the era of climate change (at the IEEE/ACM "Utility and Cloud Computing" conference, Leicester, UK), December 2021
Panel co-chair: Blockchains and the Circular Supply Chain (at the IEEE Blockchains Conf., Melbourne, Australia), December 2021
Keynote Talk: 6th International Conference on Fog and Mobile Edge Computing (FMEC 2021), Gandia, Spain. December 2021 (Virtual)
Invited Talk: Cybersecurity Education and Research Conference (CERC 2021), Kuwait, November 2021 (Virtual)
Keynote talk: Int. Conf. on Intelligent Data Science Technologies & Applications (IDSTA 2021), Tartu, Estonia, November 2021
Invited talk: Huawei Strategy & Technology Workshop, (online), October 2021
Invited Talk: 3rd IEEE International Conference on Communication Technologies (ComTech-2021), Islamabad, Pakistan, September 2021
Panelist: Global Blockchain Summit, Uruguay, September 2021 -- video of panel available on YouTube
Invited Talk: Global Smart Education Conference, Beijing Normal University & UNESCO Institute for Information Technologies in Education, China, August 2021 -- online event
Keynote talk: 5th International Conference on Interdisciplinary Computer Science and Engineering (ICICSE2021), Malaysia, August 2021 -- online event
Panelist: "IoT Cloud Continuum" at the Brazilian Symposium on Computer Networks and Distributed Systems (SBRC 2021 -- XXXIX Simpósio Brasileiro de Redes de Computadores e Sistemas Distribuídos), August 2021 -- online event
TRTWorld Roundtable: Winners and losers in the switch to electric cars? July 2021 -- also available on YouTube
Keynote talk: International Workshop on ADVANCEs in ICT Infrastructures and Services, Zaragoza, Spain, February 2021 -- online event
Keynote talk: 51st Asia Pacific Advanced Network (APAN51), Islamabad, Pakistan, February 2021 -- virtual event
2020
Invited talk: 6th Int. Conf. on Cyber Security, Privacy in Communication Networks, IIT Patna, India, December 2020 -- online event
Invited talk: 4th Int. Conf. on Information Technologies in Education and Learning (ICITEL 2020), Hangzhou, China, December 2020 -- online event
Panelist: "Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT) and Smart Edge Computing" at 18th IEEE International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing with Applications, Exeter, UK, December 2020 -- online event
Keynote: Int. Conf. on Identification, Information & Knowledge in the Internet of Things (IIKI), Zhuhai, China, November 2020 -- online event
Invited Talk: Cybersecurity Education & Research Conference (CERC 2020), Kuwait, November 2020 -- online event
Keynote: IEEE Int. Symposium on Networks, Computers & Comms. (ISNCC), Montreal, Canada, October 2020 -- online event
Invited Talk: 6th National High Performance Computing Conf., Ankara, Turkey, October 2020 -- online event
2019
General Co-Chair: 19th IEEE International Conference on Scalable Computing and Communications (ScalCom 2019), August 2019, Leicester, UK
Invited Talk: 5th IEEE Smart World Congress, August 2019, Leicester, UK
Keynote: 4th International Conference on Fog and Mobile Edge Computing (FMEC, June 2019), Rome, Italy
Invited: 2nd Int. Conf. on New Trends in Information Sciences (ICTCS, October 2019), Amman, Jordan
Workshops Co-Chair: 12th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing (UCC 2019, December), Auckland, New Zealand
Computer Science Colloquium Series -- University of Cyprus, November 2019
Invited talk: UK/Kuwait Cybersecurity Education & Research Conference, November 2019 (in collaboration with British Council (Kuwait) and CITRA (Kuwait))
Keynote Talk: Int. Conf. on Computing (December 2019), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
Invited Talk: 13th IEEE Int. Conf. on Open Source Systems and Technologies (ICOSST 2019, December 2019), Lahore, Pakistan
General Co-Chair: 17th IEEE International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Processing with Applications (ISPA 2019, December 2019), Xiamen, China
2018
General Co-Chair of the 2018 IEEE Fog and Edge Computing conference (May 2018, Washington DC, USA)
General Co-Chair of 4th IEEE International Workshop on Sensors and Smart Cities (June 2018, Sicily, Italy)
General Co-Chair of the 8th IEEE International Symposium on Cloud and Services Computing (IEEE SC2) 2018 (November 2018, Paris, France)
Steering Committee member of International Workshop on Smart Cities Systems Engineering (April 2018, Barcelona, Spain)
Steering Committee member of 11th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing (December 2018, Zurich, Switzerland)
Steering Committee member of 18th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Grid Computing (May 2018, Washington DC, USA)
Steering Committee member of 15th Int. Conference on the Economics of Grids, Clouds, Systems, and Services (September 2018, Pisa, Italy)
Keynote speaker: 7th European Conf. on Service-Oriented and Cloud Computing (September 2018, Como, Italy)
Keynote speaker: International Conf. on Identification, Information and Knowledge in the Internet of Things (IIKI, October 2018, Beijing, China)
Invited talk: 16th Int. Conf. on Frontiers of Information Technology (December 2018, Islamabad, Pakistan)
Keynote talk: Workshop on Big Data and Cloud Computing (December 2018, LUMS, Lahore, Pakistan)
2017
Keynote speaker: International Conference on new Trends in Computing Sciences (October 2017, Amman, Jordan)
General Co-Chair of 11th IEEE International Symposium on Service Oriented System Engineering (April 2017, San Francisco, USA)
General Co-Chair of the 2017 IEEE Fog and Edge Computing conference (May 2017, Madrid, Spain)
Technical Program Committee Co-Chair for the 20th IEEE International Symposium on Real Time Computing (May 2017, Toronto, Canada -- focusing on scalable, real-time data analytics)
Organising Committee & Tutorials Chair of 10th IEEE/ACM Conference on Utility & Cloud Computing (December 2017, Texas, USA)
Biography
1998: PhD: "Neural Computing and Parallel Architectures", Imperial College of Science, Technology & Medicine (London University)
1994: MSc: "Microelectronics Systems Design", University of Southampton
1989: BEng: "Information Systems Engineering", Imperial College of Science, Technology & Medicine (London University)
Professional memberships
I am a member of IEEE, ACM
Publications
We are currently unable to retrieve the list of publications. Visit our institutional repository.Teaching
I have taught courses to undergraduate and postgraduate students at Cardiff University and at a number of other Universities in the UK, Australia and New Zealand. I have also contributed (as co-presenter) to a number of conference tutorials and provided short courses at Universities in Europe (e.g. UNL (Portugal), Univ. of Alicante (Spain)) and to local companies (e.g. BT Labs (Cardiff and Martlesham)). I have also contributed to degree validation at a number of UK and European Universities.
I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK).
I was previously the director of the MSc program in "Information Security & Privacy" (renamed to MSc in Cybersecurity).
Courses
- Business Continuity & Transformation (postgraduate)
- MBA with Artificial Intelligence (with Cardiff Business School)
- Multi-Agent Systems (postgraduate)
- Neural & Knowledge Based Systems (postgraduate)
- Prolog Programming (undergraduate)
- Operating Systems (undergraduate)
- Computer Architecture & Networks (postgraduate)
- Distributed Computing (postgraduate & undergraduate)
- Data Communication & Pervasive Computing (undergraduate)
- Emerging Technology (undergraduate)
- Web & Social Computing (postgraduate)
- Digital Libraries
- Computer Networks
- Multi-Agent Systems
External Examiner
I have served/serve currently as an external examiner for a number of UK & European Universities -- for both undergraduate and postgraduate degree programs. These have included:
- MEng: University College London (UCL), London University
- MSc (Distributed Systems): Brunel University, London
- MSc (Computer Science): Bangor University
- MSc (part of Doctoral Training Centre): Imperial College of Science, Technology & Medicine, London University
- BSc/MSc: King's College, London University
- MSc: Open University
- Four year undergraduate degree: University College Cork, Ireland
- MSc (Cybersecurity): Coventry University
- MSc (Cloud Computing for Big Data): Newcastle University
- MSc (Data Science): Bristol University
- BSc Computer Science (Computer Networks), Dept. of Comms Technology and Network, Universiti Putra Malaysia
- BA/MCS, Integrated Computer Science, School of Computer Science and Statistics, Trinity College Dublin (TCD), Ireland
- Imam Abdulrahman bin Faisal University (previously University of Dammam), Saudi Arabia
- Prince Muqrin University, Al Madina, Saudi Arabia
- Imam Abdulrahman bin Faisal University (previously University of Dammam), Saudi Arabia
- Prince Muqrin University, Al Madina, Saudi Arabia
- Princess Noura University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia
- University of West of Scotland, UK
- Liverpool University, UK
- Newcastle University, UK
- Bristol University, UK
- Chester University, UK
My research interests lie in the overlap between Intelligent Systems and High Performance Distributed Computing. I am particularly interested in how techniques from intelligent systems could be used to support resource management & performance enhancement in parallel and distributed systems. This interest has led me to consider a number of possible aspects over recent years, which include:
- Improving performance and coordination within particular applications in science and engineering. This has involved collaboration with computational and social scientists who need to scale their applications or need access to specialist computational capability to improve accuracy and response time within their applications.
- Integrating intelligent resource management mechanisms within existing high performance distributed computing infrastructures. This has involved collaboration with infrastructure vendors and administrators, such as within Grid and Cloud computing, to: (i) evaluate where such resource management strategies could be most suitable; (ii) investigate techniques for undertaking such integration in practice.
- Understanding theoretical foundations that better enable (1) and (2), in order to formally assess how scale, performance or coordination could be supported when such applications or infrastructure change. My focus has particularly been on the use of dynamic systems models centered on Petri nets for undertaking such formal modelling.
- Understanding how requirements of emerging applications – such as streaming and “Big Data” impact (1), (2) and (3) – and validate these with realistic end user applications.
Impactio link: https://www.impactio.com/researcher/omer-rana
ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Omer_Rana2
Supervision
Areas of interest:
1. Cloud & Edge Computing;
2. Internet of Things
3. Cybersecurity
4. Data Science
