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Dr Vladimir Stankovic

Senior Lecturer

School of Mathematics, Computer Science and Engineering Department of Computer Science

Contact details

Address

Dr Vladimir Stankovic A304J, College Building
City, University of London
Northampton Square
London EC1V 0HB
United Kingdom

About

Overview

Vladimir holds PhD (2008) and BEng Honours (2003) degrees in Software Engineering and Computing, respectively, from the City University London.

Initially, he was employed as a Research Assistant in CSR working on the DOTS project and contributing to the DIRC project. Subsequently, he was appointed as a Research Associate, Security and Forensic Evaluation of ICT systems, and has been contributing since to the centre's ongoing initiative in dependability and security assessment of computer-based systems. During this appointment he obtained the Ph.D on the topic of design, and performance evaluation, of diverse database replication protocols. He was appointed to a permanent academic post in CSR in January 2009, first as a Research Fellow, then as a Lecturer in March 2013, and subsequently as a Senior Lecturer in August 2019.

Recently, he was the PI for the EPSRC-funded DIDERO-PC project, and contributed to the SESAMO and AFTER projects (sponsored by the ARTEMIS Embedded Computing Systems Initiative and EU FP7, respectively).

His research work, mostly on design and evaluation of (diverse) database replication protocols, as well as dependability and security assessment of software-based systems, contributes to the department's broad research areas of Software and Systems Engineering.

Enterprise

Vladimir has been contributing to the university's enterprise activities since 2009.

A patent on the topic of improvements to database replication was granted in the EU (patent number EP2470994), and in the USA (USPTO patent number 8793216). The patent was co-invented with Dr Peter Popov, a colleague from the CSR.

The university spin-off company – ResilSoft Ltd (registration number 08198880) – has been incorporated. Two CSR colleagues, Dr Peter Popov and Dr Ilir Gashi, and Vladimir are the executive directors in the company.

ResilSoft Ltd collaborate closely with the university’s Research and Enterprise team (e.g. a non-executive director of the company has been appointed by the university) to take this commercialisation initiative to next level.

Qualifications

  1. PhD Software Engineering, City, University of London, United Kingdom, 2008
  2. BEng Computing, City, University of London, United Kingdom, 2003

Employment

  1. Senior Lecturer, City, University of London, Aug 2019 – present
  2. Lecturer, City, University of London, Mar 2013 – Jul 2019
  3. Research Fellow, City, University of London, Jan 2009 – Feb 2013
  4. Research Associate, City, University of London, Aug 2005 – Dec 2008
  5. Visiting Lecturer/Tutor, City, University of London, Sep 2004 – May 2012
  6. Research Assistant, City, University of London, Jun 2003 – Jul 2005

Memberships of professional organisations

  1. Member, IEEE
  2. Member, ACM
  3. Fellow, Higher Education Academy

Teaching

Educational positions in the department

NSS and Employability Director

Modules Taught

Current:
Team Project (Undergraduate Year 2)
Advanced Databases (Undergraduate Year 3, and Postgraduate)

Previous:
Assisted in delivery of IT Security (Year 3)

CPDs

With colleagues from CSR, Vladimir co-designed and co-delivered a course on Digital Forensics.

Software tools for teaching


Visual Paradigm offers City University VP for educational use through the VP Academic Partner Program .

Research

Research interests

- Dependability and security assessment of computer-based systems
- Software fault tolerance and diverse redundancy
- Distributed systems algorithms and database replication protocols
- Concurrent and parallel computing

Projects

- AQUAS: Aggregated Quality Assurance for Systems
- DIDERO-PC: DIverse DatabasE ReplicatiOn - Performance Comparison - The project was funded by the EPSRC First Grant Scheme, and Vladimir was the PI.
- SESAMO: Security and Safety Modelling
- AFTER: A Framework for electrical power sysTems vulnerability identification, dEfence and Restoration
- PIA:FARA: Probabilistic Interdependency Analysis: Framework, data Analysis and on-line Risk Assessment
- AMBER: Assessing, Measuring, and BEnchmarking Resilience
- IRRIIS: Integrated Risk Reduction of Information-based Infrastructure Systems
- ReSIST: Resilience for Survivability in IST
- DIRC: Diversity - IRC
- DOTS: Diversity with Off-The-Shelf components

Research students

Kaleem Peeroo

Attendance: Oct 2020 – present, full-time

Thesis title: Experimental and Model-based Evaluation of Data Distribution Service (DDS) Performance and Security

Role: 1st Supervisor

Konstantin Pozdniakov

Attendance: Feb 2013 – Mar 2018, full-time

Thesis title: Computer Security Penetration Testing Based on Machine Learning Techniques

Role: 2nd Supervisor

Further information: The PhD was co-supervised with Dr Eduardo Alonso.

Publications

Publications by category

Chapter

  1. Gashi, I., Popov, P.T., Stankovic, V. and Strigini, L. (2003). On Designing Dependable Services with Diverse Off-the-Shelf SQL Servers. In Lemos, R.D., Gacek, C. and Romanovsky, A.B. (Eds.), Architecting Dependable Systems II - [the book is a result of the ICSE 2003 Workshop on Software Architectures for Dependable Systems] (pp. 191–214). Springer. ISBN 3-540-23168-4.

Conference papers and proceedings (17)

  1. Pozdniakov, K., Alonso, E., Stankovic, V., Tam, K. and Jones, K. (2020). Smart Security Audit: Reinforcement Learning with a Deep Neural Network Approximator.
  2. Fujdiak, R., Misurec, J., Pokorny, J., Zobal, L., Popov, P., Stankovic, V. … Musil, P. (2019). Security and Performance Trade-offs for Data Distribution Service in Flying Ad-Hoc Networks.
  3. Popov, P., Salako, K.O. and Stankovic, V. (2015). Stochastic modeling for performance evaluation of database replication protocols. 12th International Conference on Quantitative Evaluation of Systems 1-3 September, Madrid, Spain.
  4. Popov, P., Povyakalo, A., Stankovic, V. and Strigini, L. (2014). Software diversity as a measure for reducing development risk.
  5. Gashi, I., Sobesto, B., Mason, S., Stankovic, V. and Cukier, M. (2013). A Study of the Relationship Between Antivirus Regressions and Label Changes. IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering 4-7 November, Pasadena, CA, US.
  6. Cukier, M., Gashi, I., Sobesto, B. and Stankovic, V. (2013). Does Malware Detection Improve With Diverse AntiVirus Products? An Empirical Study. 32nd International Conference on Computer Safety, Reliability and Security (SAFECOMP) 24-27 September, Toulouse, France.
  7. Popov, P., Stankovic, V. and Strigini, L. (2012). An Empirical Study of the Effectiveness of 'Forcing Diversity' Based on a Large Population of Diverse Programs. ISSRE 2012, International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering 27-30 November, Dallas, Texas, USA.
  8. Gashi, I., Stankovic, V., Cukier, M. and Sobesto, B. (2012). Diversity with AntiVirus Products: Additional Empirical Studies. 42nd IEEE International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN) 2012 25-28 June, Boston, USA.
  9. Bishop, P., Bloomfield, R., Gashi, I. and Stankovic, V. (2012). Diverse protection systems for improving
    security: a study with AntiVirus engines.
  10. Stankovic, V., Bloomfield, R., Bishop, P. and Gashi, I. (2011). Diversity for Security: a Study with Off-The-Shelf AntiVirus Engines. 21st International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE 2011) Hiroshima, Japan.
  11. Gashi, I., Stankovic, V., Leita, C. and Thonnard, O. (2009). An Experimental Study of Diversity with Off-The-Shelf AntiVirus Engines. Eighth IEEE International Symposium on Network Computing and Applications (NCA 2009) 9-11 July.
  12. Stankovic, V., Bessani, A., Daidone, A., Gashi, I., Obelheiro, R. and Sousa, P. (2009). Enhancing Fault / Intrusion Tolerance through Design and Configuration Diversity. 3rd Workshop on Recent Advances on Intrusion-Tolerant Systems (WRAITS 2009) Estoril, Lisbon, Portugal.
  13. Bloomfield, R.E., Gashi, I., Povyakalo, A. and Stankovic, V. (2008). Comparison of Empirical Data from Two Honeynets and a Distributed Honeypot Network. 19th International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE 2008) 10-14 November, Seattle, USA.
  14. Bessani, A.N., Reiser, H.P., Sousa, P., Gashi, I., Stankovic, V., Distler, T. … Obelheiro, R.R. (2008). FOREVER: Fault/intrusiOn REmoVal through Evolution & Recovery.
  15. Stankovic, V., Lin, S., Pareaud, T., Robert, T. and Zutautaite-Seputiene, I. (2008). Toward Adaptable Software Architecture for Dependability: ASAP. 7th European Dependable Computing Conference (EDCC 2008).
  16. Stankovic, V., Alata, E., Leita, C., Serafini, M., Thonnard, O., Viniikka, J. … Zurutuza, U. (2008). Malicious Fault Characterization Exploiting Honeypot Data. 7th European Dependable Computing Conference (EDCC 2008).
  17. Stankovic, V. and Popov, P. (2006). Improving DBMS performance through diverse redundancy. 25th IEEE Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems (SRDS 2006).

Journal articles (2)

  1. Bloomfield, R.E., Popov, P., Salako, K., Stankovic, V. and Wright, D. (2017). Preliminary interdependency analysis: An approach to support critical-infrastructure risk-assessment. Reliability Engineering and System Safety, 167, pp. 198–217. doi:10.1016/j.ress.2017.05.030.
  2. Gashi, I., Popov, P.T. and Stankovic, V. (2009). Uncertainty explicit assessment of off-the-shelf software: A Bayesian approach. Information & Software Technology, 51, pp. 497–511.

Patents (2)

  1. Stankovic, V. and Popov, P. (2012). Improvements Relating to Database Replication Protocols. Patent no. EP2470994
  2. Popov, P. and Stankovic, V. (2012). Database replication. Patent no. 8793216

Reports (2)

  1. Stankovic, V., Chozos, N., Popov, P.T., Bloomfield, R.E., Wright, D. and Howell-Morris, R. (2010). Preliminary Interdependency Analysis (PIA): Method and tool support. London: Adelard LLP and City University London.
  2. Stankovic, V. and Strigini, L. (2009). A survey on online monitoring approaches of computer-based systems..

Software (2)

  1. Stankovic, V. and Popov, P. (2016). TPC-C Client - Java-based implementation of the industry standard benchmark for database performance evaluation. London.
  2. Salako, K., Stankovic, V. and Popov, P. (2015). Stochastic model for performance evaluation of database replication protocols..

Professional activities

Editorial activity

  1. Vladimir has served as a Program Committee member for the following reputable conferences and workshops:
    - IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE) 2016.
    - IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE) 2015.
    - IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE) - Fast Abstract stream in 2011, 2013 and 2014, and Student stream in 2010.
    - European Dependable Computing Conference (EDCC): Fast Abstract stream in 2015, and Student papers forum in 2012.
    - International Workshop in Recent Advances in the Dependability AssessmeNt of Complex systEms (RADIANCE) in 2016

    Vladimir has served as a Reviewer for the following premier journals and conferences:

    - IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC) journal
    - IEEE Security & Privacy journal
    - International Journal of Neural Systems
    - International Journal of High Performance Computing and Networking (IJHPCN).

    - IEEE/ACM International Conference on Automated Software Engineering (ASE)
    - IEEE International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE)
    - IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Distributed Systems and Networks (DSN)
    - European Dependable Computing Conference (EDCC)
    - International Conference on Computer Safety, Reliability and Security (SAFECOMP),
    - International Workshop on Quantitative Aspects in Security Assurance (QASA) workshop.
    - ACM SIGCHI Symposium on Engineering Interactive Computing Systems (EICS 2015)    , Program Committee (PC) member and Reviewer.

Keynote lecture/speech

  1. Stochastic modeling for performance evaluation of database replication. Madrid, Spain (2015). The talk described the research behind the publication at the 12th International Conference on Quantitative Evaluation of SysTems (QEST 2015).