Important Note: Read the "How to Apply" section before applying.

Ph.D. Student Open Positions

Content Centric Networks (CCN)

• Subject: How the Internet will change with a content centric networking (CCN) architecture?
• Supervisor: Arnaud Legout (INRIA)
• Summary : The Internet has fundamentally changed since its beginning in the 70s. Whereas the Internet has been designed to access hardware ressources (server, printers, etc.), it is now used to access contents. However, the IP protocol (the protocol that defines the Internet) can only address hardware ressources, not contents. This is the reason why DNS and URLs have been designed. However, this is just a hack to the Internet that does not solve the fundamental question: how to access a content irrespectively of its location?
  
  The Content Centric Networking (CCN) concept (invented by Van Jacobson the inventor of the congestion control in TCP) has been introduced to solve this question. However, CCN is new and has many fundamental implications on how the Interent is working and on how it is used. The goal of this Ph.D. thesis is to explore the impact of CCN on the Internet and its usage. Many possible paths of exploration exist. Two possibles (but not restrictive) paths are the following.
  
  First, it is cumbersome to guarantee that users data are in sync among all user's potential terminals (laptop, desktop, smartphone, etc.), or just that your data are available when you need them. This issue is currently solved at the application layer using adhoc techniques (most often a dedicated infrastructure that is used to synchronize compatible terminals). This management of personal data must be part of the functionality offered by the network, as it is (in the current data centric era) the minimum functionality that is needed by every user. CCN defines fundamental concepts into that direction, thus a Personal Content Management layer might be built on top of CCN. A possible path of exploration is to evaluate the impact of CCN on personal content management.
  
  Second, a fundamental issue with the Internet is its lack of built-in privacy functionality. However, as shown in the Bluebear project privacy is an overlooked, but critical issue in the Internet. CCN provides some core functionalities to improve security, however, its impact on end-users privacy is not yet understood. One possible path of exploration is to evaluate the impact of CCN on privacy.
• Required skills: High creativity, very strong commitment, hard worker, deep Internet protocol understanding, software programming, experimental skills.
• Possible Starting Date: Always opened

Privacy in the Internet

• Subject: Improving privacy in the Internet
• Supervisor: Arnaud Legout (INRIA)
• Summary: P2P is ubiquitous today. Indeed, P2P communication is not limited to file replication, e.g., BitTorrent, but also includes all direct communication between any two end-users (e.g., VoIP). Moreover, the P2P architecture is highly scalable and efficient for end-users and content providers. However, it fundamentally changes the trust relationship between end-users and content providers. Indeed, with a client-server architecture, the end-user trust the content provider to do not disclose personal information like the downloaded contents. However, with the P2P architecture, each peer cannot trust any other peer that it will not disclose personal information. Moreover, by its architecture, the P2P architecture makes massive crawling and monitoring of peers (see the Bluebear project) possible at a low cost. The goal of this Ph.D. thesis is to assess how harmful attacks on the P2P architecture can be to the privacy of end-users, and which solution can be designed to mitigate those issues so that, for instance, a commercial and large scale system can be designed for multimedia content distribution using the P2P architecture.
• Required skills: High creativity, very strong commitment, hard worker, deep Internet protocol understanding, software programming, experimental skills.
• Possible Starting Date: Always opened

Ph.D. Student Positions Application

General Information

At Plančte, INRIA Sophia Antipolis, France, we always welcome applications from highly talented and motivated students. We ask from our Ph.D. students an international visibility with publications is the best international journals and conferences.

Making a Ph.D. thesis is not a minor decision that one can take when one does not know what to do else. Making an average Ph.D. thesis will be a waste of time for you and your advisor, but making a good Ph.D. thesis will be one of the most intellectually rewarding experience. For this reason, before applying for a Ph.D. student position, you need to ask yourself the right questions. To help you during this process, we urge you to read the two following excellent articles:

• Useful Things to Know about Ph.D. Thesis Research, by H. T. Kung. (original URL) This is a must read before starting your Ph.D. thesis. If you don't like the description of the Ph.D. student work that is made in this document, making a Ph.D. thesis is probably not for you.
• Everything I wanted to know about C.S. graduate school at the beginning but didn't learn until later, by Ronald T. Azuma (original URL) Another must read before starting a Ph.D. thesis. A small excerpt from this document:

  The most basic question every Ph.D. student must know the answer to is: "Why the hell am I doing this?"
  [...]
  If you do not have an acceptable answer to this question, then don't get a Ph.D. I repeat: if you do not have a rock-solid reason for getting the Ph.D., then it is better that you leave with a Master's.

How to Apply

In order to apply for a Ph.D. position, we ask you to send us by email the following information.

• The subject you would like to work on.
• Two recommendation letters explaining why you are an excellent candidate for a Ph.D. thesis.
• Your marks for the last three years.
• A list of selected publications.
• A Curriculum Vitae.
• A motivation letter.

If you do not provide this information, your application will not be considered. Recommendation letters are very important. However, the reputation of the person who writes the recommendation letter is as important as what is in the letter (if I don't know the person who wrote the letter, then the impact of this letter will be much lower). Poor recommendation letters are usually from someone who don't know what is the academic research (thus his qualification to judge whether a candidate can be a good Ph.D. student is low). I give in the following examples of a good person to write a recommendation letter.

• Someone who already published in one of those (non exhaustive) list of well known international conferences or workshops: SIGCOMM, IMC, SIGMETRICS, INFOCOM, NDSI, OSDI, IPTPS, Usenix Security, IEEE S&P, LEET, ICNP, CoNEXT, Usenix, PAM.
• Someone who already worked at INRIA, but publishes in conferences that are not exactly in my field.

As an illustration the only two students (out of hundreds) who sent me recommendation letters following those advices got one of my Ph.D. student position (success rate of 100%). No other student got a position (failure rate of 100%). It is always possible to have an exception, but something in your application must shine.

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