Sanjai Narain is a Senior Research Scientist in the Information Assurance and Security Department at Telcordia Technologies in Piscataway, NJ. His current research is in automated design of secure, reliable network infrastructure. It is based upon his experience with designing, building, testing, managing and analyzing such infrastructure for large enterprises. He has secured funding from Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Intelligence Agencies Research Projects Activity, Department of Homeland Security and Defense Information Systems Agency. In support of his research, he has organized and led several university-industry teams. He joined Telcordia in 1990 when it was called Bellcore. From 1981 to 1990 he was an Associate Computer Scientist at RAND Corporation. His formal education is in mathematical logic, programming languages and electrical engineering. He studied logic with Professors Alonzo Church and J.A. Robinson.

Education

- Ph.D., Computer Science, University of California, Los Angeles, 1988

- M.S., Computer Science, Syracuse University, 1981

- B.Tech., Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, 1979

Recent Projects

- Configuration Synthesis And Debugging. ConfigAssure is a new system for automated synthesis of network infrastructure from end-to-end requirements on security, reliability, connectivity and performance. Uses modern constraint solvers based on those for Boolean satisfiability. System scales to infrastructure of realistic size and is being transitioned into a major enterprise. Joint work with Professor Daniel Jackson, MIT and Professor Sharad Malik, Princeton. Funded by Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity. Principal Investigator.

- Infrastructure Security and Reliability Analysis. IPAssure is a new non-invasive system for checking compliance of network infrastructure to end-to-end requirements. Works just by analyzing component configurations. System scales to hundreds of components and constraints, and has been transitioned to major enterprises including the Securities and Exchange Commission. Joint work with Principal Investigator Rajesh Talpade. Funded by Department of Homeland Security

- Network Planning. This project designed new techniques for automating DoD network planning. Joint work with Professor Daniel Jackson, MIT, Professor Sharad Malik, Princeton, Professor Bart Selman, Cornell, and senior DoD network planners. Funded by DARPA. Principal Investigator

- Wireless Network Security. This project developed algorithms to detect malicious behavior with incomplete information in mobile ad hoc networks. Funded by CERDEC.

Recent Professional Activity

- Invited Panelist for National Science Foundation's Assurable and Usable Security Configuration Workshop

- Proposal Reviewer for National Science Foundation, 2008

- Network Configuration Analysis and Validation. Book Chapter in "Building and Running Robust Networks and Applications: A Handbook", editors Richard Yang, Yale University, Chuck Kalmanek, AT&T Laboratories, Research. To appear in 2009.

- Lead editor, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC), Special Issue on Network Infrastructure Configuration, 2008.

- Program committee member for ACM Internet Network Management Workshop, in conjunction with IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols, Orlando, FL, 2008

- Program committee member for IEEE Workshop on Automated Network Management, Phoenix, AZ, 2008

- Program committee member for IEEE Policy Workshop, Palisades, NY, 2008

- Program committee member for ACM SIGCOMM Internet Network Management Workshop, Kyoto, Japan, 2007

- Program committee member for USENIX Large Installation System Administration (LISA) Conference, Dallas, TX, 2007

- Organizer, USENIX LISA Configuration Workshop, Dallas, TX, 2007

- Organizer, USENIX LISA Configuration Workshop, Washington D.C., 2006

Patents & Awards

- Method and system for estimating ability of subscriber loop to support broadband services. Awarded 2000.

- ConfigAssure: A scalable and interactive method of generating and modifying network configurations to enforce compliance with high-level requirements. Filed 2007.

- IP network vulnerability and policy compliance assessment by IP device analysis. Filed 2007

- Network configuration management via model finding. Filed 2006.

- DARPA award given to the Dynamic Coalitions Policy Representation and Management Infrastructure project team, for technology transfer to Future Combat Systems program, 2003

- Ph.D. Thesis nominated by UCLA for ACM Distinguished Dissertation Award, 1988.

Prior Projects

- Distributed Infrastructure Synthesis. Developed a distributed protocol for automatically synthesizing secure, fault-tolerant virtual private networks. Used group-communication protocols. Funded by DARPA and DISA, 2005. Co-Principal Investigator

- Survivable Collaboration Infrastructure. Developed a defensive architecture to ensure availability of mission-critical services in spite of attacks. Joint work with Professor Yair Amir at Johns Hopkins University, and Boeing and Sparta. Funded by DARPA, 2003. Principal Investigator.

- Low-Cost DSL Testing. Developed a patented system called Sapphyre for reducing DSL Loop Qualification costs by two orders of magnitude. It was used by at least 500,000 customers. Funded by Bellcore, 1998.

- Reducing ISP Help-Desk Cost. Developed the DR. DIALUP product. This was Bellcore's first product for the consumer market. Funded by Bellcore, 1997.

- Alarm-Correlation for SONET/ATM networks. Developed a method of doing alarm correlation across protocol-layers. Funded by Bellcore, 1995.

- Fiber-Optic Network Interoperability Analysis. Developed a system to test compliance of SONET equipment to automatic protection switching protocol. Funded by Bellcore,1993. This was used by Telcordia Professional Services for several years

- Discrete-Event Simulation. Developed DMOD, a discrete-event simulation system that allowed formal reasoning about models. Funded by RAND Corporation, 1988.

- Efficient Demand-Driven Computation. Developed an optimal method for demand-driven computation in logic for UCLA doctoral thesis in 1988.

Selected Talks & Publications

- Declarative Infrastructure Configuration Synthesis and Debugging. Journal of Network Systems and Management, Special Issue on Security Configuration, eds. Ehab Al-Shaer, Charles Kalmanek, Felix Wu. To appear in 2008.

- Automated Vulnerability Analysis & Mitigation in Networks. Invited talk, Computer Science Department, Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA, December 6, 2007

- Invited participant, Future Internet Design Meeting, National Science Foundation, Washington, D.C., November 27-28, 2007

- Network Single Point of Failure Analysis via Model Finding. Proceedings of First Alloy Workshop, Portland, OR, November 2006.

- Network Configuration Management Via Model Finding. Proceedings of USENIX Large Installation System Administration (LISA) Conference, San Diego, CA, 2005. Earlier presentation in Proceedings of ACM Workshop on Self-Managing Systems, Newport Beach, CA, 2004. Full report.

- Web Services Security Configuration Challenges. Invited paper. Workshop on Autonomic Web Computing. 47th IFIP WG 10.4 Meeting, Rincon, PR, 2005. Related invited paper at DIMACS Workshop on Web Security and E-Commerce, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 2005.

- Using Service Grammar to Diagnose Configuration Errors in BGP-4. Proceedings of Usenix Systems Administrators Conference, San Diego, CA, 2003.

- Building Autonomic Systems via Configuration. Proceedings of AMS Autonomic Computing Workshop, Seattle, WA, 2003.

- Diagnosing Configuration Errors in Virtual Private Networks. Proceedings of IEEE International Communications Conference, Helsinki, Finland, 2001.

- Temporal logic. Invited article, Encyclopedia of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, ed. John Webster, John Wiley, New York, NY, 1998

- Fault-Isolation in dial-up connections. Proceedings of Fifth Hybrid Systems Conference, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, NY, 1997

- Proofs from temporal hypotheses via symbolic simulation. Proceedings of Hybrid Systems III, Verification and Control, eds. R. Alur, T. Henzinger, E. Sontag, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Verlag, 1996

- Proactive Network Software Maintenance. Center for Advanced Research in Networking, Bellcore, December 1995

- Alarm correlation in communication networks. Center for Advanced Research in Networking, Bellcore, December 1995

- Reasoning about hybrid systems via symbolic simulation. Proceedings of International Conference on Analysis and Optimization of Systems, INRIA, Sophia-Antipolis, France, 1994

- Symbolic discrete-event simulation. Discrete-Event Systems, Manufacturing Systems and Communication Networks, eds. P. Kumar, P. Varaiya, Mathematics and its Applications, IMA volume 73, Springer Verlag, 1995

- A formal model of SONET alarm-surveillance procedures and their simulation. Proceedings of FORTE: Formal Description Techniques, Boston, MA, 1993

- Linear automatic protection switching test methodology. Proceedings of National Fiber Optics Engineering Conference, Boston, MA, 1995

- Lazy evaluation in logic programming. Proceedings of International Conference on Computer Languages, New Orleans, LA, 1990.

- Optimization by non-deterministic, lazy rewriting. Proceedings of International Conference on Rewriting Techniques & Applications, ed. N. Dershowitz, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Springer Verlag, 1989

- A technique for doing lazy evaluation in logic. Journal of Logic Programming, Elsevier North Holland, October 1986. Also in Proceedings of IEEE Symposium on Logic Programming, Boston, MA, 1985

- Large-scale systems development in several Lisp environments. Proceedings of International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Karlsruhe, Germany, 1982

Natural Languages

- Fluent in English, Hindi, German

Community Service

- Member, Board of Directors, YMCA, Madison, NJ, 200-2008

- Mentor for First Lego League team for elementary school students in Madison, NJ, 2007

- Active in Pratham, an innovative educational organization in India. Check out a behind-the-scenes narrative of life in New Delhi slums and what Pratham does there: Hope Amidst Despair.

Hobby

- Photography, particularly portraits. Equipment: Canon 10D with 70-200/2.8L lens. For a great photography site, check out Photo.net.

Contact

- +1 732 699 2806 (W)

- +1 908 337 3636 (M)

- last_name at research dot telcordia dot com