Inquiries:
Interested funding a research project? Would you like me to come give a talk? Contact me at lagessebj [at] ornl [dot] gov

Short Bio:

Brent completed his PhD at the University of Texas at Arlington in 2009. He graduated in 2004 from Illinois Institute of Technology with a BS in Computer Engineering and in 2006 from University of Texas at Arlington with an MS in Computer Science. He currently works as a Research Scientist at Oak Ridge National Lab in the CSIIR group. Prior to his job at ORNL, he worked as an intern for Lockheed Martin Missiles & Fire Control and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Current Affiliations:

Previous Affiliations:

Research Interests: Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing, Game Theory, Cyber Physical Systems, Security, Peer to Peer Systems, Complex Networks

Publications

ReSCo: A Middleware Component for Reliable Service Composition in Pervasive Systems
Service composition schemes create high-level application services by combining several basic services. Service composition schemes for dynamic, open systems, such as those found in pervasive environments, must be cognizant of the possibility of failures and attacks. In open systems, it is seldom feasible to guarantee the reliability of each node prior to access; however, there may be several possible ways to compose the same high-level service, each having a different (though possibly overlapping) set of nodes that can satisfy the composition. We approach this problem with a Reliable Service Composition middleware component, ReSCo, to determine trustworthy compositions and nodes for service composition in dynamic, open systems. ReSCo is a modular, adaptive middleware component that selects from possible composition paths and nodes to enhance reliability of service compositions. ReSCo can work with a broad range of both service composition algorithms and trust establishment mechanisms.
To be published in the proceedings of the Middleware Support for Pervasive Computing Workshop, 2010 -- pdf

DTT: A Distributed Trust Toolkit for Pervasive Systems
Effective security mechanisms are essential to the widespread deployment of pervasive systems. Much of the research focus on security in pervasive computing has revolved around distributed trust management. While such mechanisms are effective in specific environments, there is no generic framework for deploying and extending these mechanisms over a variety of pervasive systems. We present the design and implementation of a novel framework called Distributed Trust Toolkit (DTT), for implementing and evaluating trust mechanisms in pervasive systems. The DTT facilitates the extension and adaptation of trust mechanisms by abstracting trust mechanisms into interchangeable components. Furthermore, the DTT provides a set of tools and interfaces to ease implementation of trust mechanisms and facilitate their execution on a variety of platforms and networks. In addition to the adaptability and extensibility provided by this design, we demonstrate through simulation that use of DTT improves utilization of resources and enhances performance of existing trust mechanisms in pervasive systems. We are currently developing an implementation of the DTT that can be easily deployed in pervasive environments.
Published in the proceedings of the IEEE Pervasive Computing and Communications Conference, 2009 -- pdf -- software will be available soon

AREX: An Adaptive System for Secure Resource Access
In this paper, we present AREX, a mechanism designed to provide security for peers in hostile and uncertain environments, which are common in mobile P2P systems. AREX features an adaptive exploration strategy that increases the system's utility for benign peers and decreases the system.s utility for malicious peers. AREX reduces vulnerabilities and energy costs by operating without communication between peers. Through simulation, we demonstrate AREX's ability to reduce energy costs, protect benign peers, and diminish malicious peers. motivation to attack in a variety of hostile environments. To be published in the proceedings of IEEE P2P 2008 -- pdf
Note: there is a typo in this document. Equation 5 should have a minus sign between the fraction and the term (1 - Pexp) x Patt x Cvic

A Novel Utility and Game-Theoretic Based Security Mechanism for Mobile P2P Systems
Presented at IEEE PerCom 2008 MP2P Workshop -- pdf

Dynamic Formation of Software Agent Communities
Utility-based architecture for forming communities designed for the mutual benefit of software agents in a distributed environment. Master's Thesis -- abstract

UBCA: Utility-based Clustering Architecture for Peer to Peer Networks.
Presented at the Mobile and Distributed Computing Workshop(MDC) at the International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS2007) -- pdf

Game-Theoretic Strategies for Assigning Tasks in Project Management
Design of a game theoretic algorithm for assigning tasks to employees based on preference, ability, and resource availability. In the Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Management of Innovation and Technology (ICMIT2006) -- pdf

Demos

Just-In-Time Service Composition in Pervasive Environments
Development of a prototype using event oriented middleware called Pervasive Information Communities Organization (PICO) built on top of JXTA. Services are modeled and by dynamically discovering and utilizing the available services essential support for application task completion is provided. Presented at IEEE PerCom 2006

Poster Presentations

Accessing Resources in Hostile Environments
DIMACS/DyDAn Workshop on Mathematical & Computational Methods for Information Security

Awards
Teaching

Instructor Teaching Assistant Trinity River Mission
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