Venkatanathan Varadarajan (Venkat)

Picture of Venkatanathan Varadarajan


I started working at Oracle Labs from Feburary 2016. I graduated with my Ph.D. from University of Wisconsin-Madison in December 2015 by defending my dissertation titled, "Isolation in Public Clouds: Threats, Challenges, and Defense." (PDF) It was possible with the excellent guidance of Prof. Michael Swift and Prof. Thomas Ristenpart. I did my undergrad at College of Engineering Guindy, Anna University. I am was also part of Wisconsin Institute on Software-defined Datacenters in Madison (WISDoM). I am working on understanding vulnerabilities in CPU and cluster schedulers used in public cloud environment and design robust systems that improve overall security in public clouds.

Wordle of Venkat's Dissertation's Introduction
Professional Activities:
  • Shadow PC: Eurosys 2015
  • Journal: IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing 2014
  • External Reviewer: NDSS 2015, 2016
  • VMware Student Ambassador 2013-14
Internship:
  • VMware, Palo Alto: Worked with DRS Team on productizing a research prototype that automatically (and horizontally) scales VMs of a multi-tier application. [May - August 2013]
  • Microsoft, Redmond: Worked in WinC/C++ Compilers team on C++ AMP backend code generation. [May - August 2011]
  • Research Internship at IITM: A two months Summer Fellowship Programme under Prof. C. Pandu Rangan. [May - July 2009]
Education:

Ph.D. in Computer Science, August 2010 – Present
Department of Computer Sciences,
University of Wisconsin-Madison.

M.S. in Computer Science, August 2010 – December 2012
Department of Computer Sciences,
University of Wisconsin-Madison.

B.E. in Computer Science & Engineering, June 2006 – 2010
College Of Engineering Guindy (CEG),
Anna University, Chennai.

Biography:

I am a research assistant and a fifth year Ph.D student at University of Wisconsin-Madison working under the excellent guidance of Prof. Thomas Ristenpart and Prof. Michael Swift. I am also a member of the security team in the Wisconsin Institute on Software-defined Datacenters Of Madison (WISDOM). My Ph.D. thesis focuses on systematic evaluation of isolation in the presence of malicious users in public clouds and building operating systems with improved isolation without compromising on efficiency. In Fall 2012, I received my Masters at UW-Madison and completed my undergraduate studies at College of Engineering Guindy (CEG), Anna University, Chennai, India, in Summer 2010.

I interned at VMware, in Summer 2013, in prototyping an autoscaling system for horizontally scaling virtual machines of a multi-tier cloud application based on load experienced by the application. I am also a recipient of an Academic Achievement Award, Special CS Alumni scholarship at UW-Madison and a number of travel awards, during the course of my graduate studies. My work was also recognized as one of the top ten Best Applied Security Research at CSAW NYU-Poly 2014. I also volunteered to teach scratch (a visual programming language) for 4-5th graders in nearby schools and community centers in Madison.

And, if you have been looking for a human who could withstand temperatures as high as 113 F and as cold as -30 F, your search ends with me. He also used google to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit.



 
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