I am studying toward my PhD in the Department of Computing Science at the University of Glasgow, Scotland. I am currently in my second year of study, and am a member of the embedded, networked and distributed systems (ENDS) research group, studying under the supervision of (primarily) Colin Perkins, (secondarily) Joe Sventek, and (formerly) Peter Dickman. The research is currently straddling a future network architecture, study of the existing Internet architecture, and support mechanisms for group communication (such as peer-to-peer conferencing applications, DHTs, IP Multicast).

Between July and December 2008, I was a research engineer with Nokia Research in Espoo, Finland, looking at real-life NAT deployment, and the protocol suite favoured by the IETF for achieving NAT traversal between peers (ICE, TURN, STUN). The work involved setting up a platform to interrogate point-to-point network connections, in cooperation with software deployed on Symbian handsets, using an existing cross-platform implementation of ICE.

Previously, I was a research associate in the ENDS research group, working on the AMUSe (Autonomic Management of Ubiquitous Systems for e-Health) project, in collaboration with Imperial College London. My work on AMUSe focussed mainly on the implementation and integration of some of the core services supporting autonomous management in varying scenarios: from wireless environments with a central processor no more powerful than a PDA, to national wide-area networks. More information on my AMUSe work can be found here.

I have also worked on some science communication projects aiming to bridge the gap between Computing Science at university, and the computing courses offered in primary/secondary education.

Research Interests

My current research focusses on network architectures, looking at the current IP model, historic models and speculative models, with a view to designing and evaluating an architecture catering primarily for group communication. I am interested in routing algorithms and their scaling properties (e.g., memory required per node, bandwidth between nodes), and multicast transport-layer protocols offering congestion control, reliable transmission of data, etc. I am also interested in IP Multicast and overlay multicast solutions for group communication and content dissemination.

My previous work has looked at autonomous management of systems in ubiquitous environments, and the software services required to facilitate said management; my primary focus was on event distribution and discovery services.

Ancillary Duties

Currently, I also perform the following tasks:

  • Undergraduate lab demonstrating: This year, I'll be demonstrating on two modules: OS3 (Operating Systems) and NS3 (Networked Systems).
  • Student Recruitment: I run campus tours during the regular applicant information sessions scheduled by the University.

Previously, I have also done:

  • Undergraduate lab demonstrating in the following modules: C3 (C programming); the Unix crash course; NSA3 (Network Systems Architecture); OS3 (Operating Systems).
  • ENDS Seminar coordination: I organised and led the weekly departmental Embedded, Networked, and Distributed Systems group seminars.
  • Exam marking: I marked the final exam for one advanced undergraduate module.

Education

  • 2007 -- current: PhD in Computing Science, University of Glasgow
    Working thesis title: "A Group-centric Internet Architecture"
  • 2000 -- 2005: M.Sci. in Computing Science, University of Glasgow
    I graduated 1st class from the 5-year M.Sci. programme at the University of Glasgow in 2005. My Master's thesis title was simply "Peer-to-Peer Audio Conferencing," and presents Orta, a network overlay protocol intended to allow group conferencing with real-time applications. (e.g., VoIP).

Contact Details

The best way to contact me is via email.

  • Email: sds -at- dcs.gla.ac.uk
  • Jabber: sds@sdstrowes.co.uk
  • Office: Room 421, Sir Alwyn Williams Building
  • Mail:
    Department of Computing Science
    Sir Alwyn Williams Building
    18 Lilybank Gardens
    Glasgow G12 8RZ
    Scotland, UK
  • Phone: +441413301643
  • And you can probably find me on facebook and twitter, too.

Other Interests

Aside from technology and computing, my interests are fairly varied.

I appreciate music in its various guises. While I'm rooted in the bluesy spectrum of rock ranging from classic rock to metal, I slowly broaden my tastes from this starting point into many other areas. In this sense, I'm musically agnostic: I'll give anything a try. But yeah, your favourite band sucks. I highly recommend The Mars Volta and Oceansize for your listening pleasure.

I have toyed with playing various instruments over the years: keyboards, guitar (of which I own two: one electric, and one acoustic from when I was much younger), and even the harmonica. Give me a few years of slowly picking up new stuff, and I might even be half-way decent at them.

I read a bit. Often non-fiction: popular science, travel, or anything related to Scottish/British history, particularly post-Union. It's in this light that I watch with interest the status of the devolved Scottish Parliament within the framework of the UK; in this sense, I follow the important politics of the moment. Brian Taylor's BBC blog is quite good for following this sort of stuff, and remains refreshingly objective. In fiction, I've recently found myself reading the likes of Irvine Welsh and Ian Pattison.

I take an interest in photography, and sometimes carry my camera with me to see what I can capture.

I have a healthy appetite for the various beers and whiskies from around the world. I'm slowly but surely acquainting myself with some of the nicer malt whiskies Scotland has to offer. A purely academic exercise, you understand.

About This Site

I have owned stween.co.uk since 1999, and used it as my playground for simple HTML/CSS/PHP toys, and for a time ran a blog management system of my own devising; currently it's a photoblog-of-sorts pointing into my Flickr photostream. I've owned sdstrowes.co.uk since 2004. I use it to hold various infos about me, in particular information on the various projects I've worked on in the past, big or small.

Both these sites are hosted on Dreamhost; Dreamhost are apparently carbon neutral; read more here. If you're going to buy hosting from Dreamhost, do consider using this rewards link, which congratulates me for pointing somebody their way.