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PR Alain TCHANA

ENS de Lyon LIP Laboratory Avalon Team

alain.tchana@ens-lyon.fr
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I studied in Cameroon (Africa) until 2008. I am graduated from University of Yaoundé I. Then I received my Ph.D. in computer science in 2011, at the IRIT laboratory, Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse, France. Since September 2019 I'm a Full Professor at “Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon”, France. I'm a member of the AVALON research group at LIP laboratory. My main research interests are in Virtualization, Operating Systems, and Cloud Computing in general. Currently, I am mainly interested in datacenter disaggregation, storage, virtualization of hardware features for virtualization (PML, SPP) and, in securing applications. Simply, I'm the Systems guy!

Systems Domain

Publications (in 2021)

  • Mitigating vulnerability windows with hypervisor transplant. EuroSys 2021.
    Dinh Ngoc Tu, Boris Teabe, Alain Tchana, Gilles Muller, and Daniel Hagimont

  • FaaSCache: an opportunistic free caching system for FaaS platforms. EuroSys 2021.
    Djob Mvondo, Mathieu Bacou, Kevin Nguetchouang, Lucien Ngale, Stephane Pouget, Josiane Kouam, Renaud Lachaize, Jinho Hwang, Tim Wood, Daniel Hagimont, Noël De Palma, Batchakui bernabé and Alain Tchana

  • Extending Intel PML for Hardware-Assisted Working Set Size Estimation of VMs. VEE 2021.
    Stella Bitchebe, Djob Mvondo, Alain Tchana, Laurent Réveillère, and Noel De Palma

  • (No)Compromis: Paging virtualization is not a fatality. VEE 2021.
    Boris Teabe, Peterson Yuhala, Alain Tchana, Fabien Hermenier, Daniel Hagimont, and Gilles Muller

  • Plinius: Secure and Persistent Machine Learning Model Training. DSN 2021.
    Peterson Yuhala, Pascal Felber, Valerio Schiavoni, and Alain Tchana

  • Find out the complete publications list on dblp

Current Ph.D. students

  • Direction of Kevin Nguetchouang's thesis
    Subject: Efficient storage virtualization.
    Period: Dec. 2020 - Dec. 2023
    Funding: Labex MiLyon
    Supervision: Alain Tchana 50% (co-director)
    Pierre Olivier 50% (co-director)

  • Direction of Josiane Kouam's thesis
    Subject: Simbox fraud mitigation.
    Period: Nov. 2019 - Nov. 2022
    Funding: INRIA CORDI-S
    Supervision: Alain Tchana 50% (co-director)
    Aline Carneiro 50% (co-director)

  • Direction of Stella Bitchebe's thesis
    Subject: Hardware features for virtualization.
    Period: Mar. 2019 - Mar. 2022
    Funding: ANR Scalevisor
    Supervision: Alain Tchana 100% (director)

  • Direction of Lavoisier Wapet's thesis
    Subject: Performance and resource management in nested virtualization systems.
    Period: Fev. 2017 - Mai 2020 (extended due to COVID'19)
    Funding: MESR
    To become: Post-Doc
    Supervision: Alain Tchana 50% (co-director)
    Daniel Hagimont 50% (co-director)

Former Ph.D. Students

  • Direction of Djob Mvondo's thesis
    Subject: Privileged VM management in virtualized systems.
    Period: Feb. 2018 - Dec. 2020
    Funding: FEDER
    Distinction: Younger african Ph.D. Doctor (22 years old)
    Currently: Post-Doc
    Supervision: Alain Tchana 50% (co-director)
    Noel De Palma 50% (co-director)

  • Direction of Bao Bui's thesis
    Subject: NUMA management in virtualized systems.
    Period: Oct. 2017 - Oct. 2020
    Funding: Scholarship 911 Vietnam
    Currently: Lecturer at Can Tho University
    Supervision: Alain Tchana 50% (co-director)
    Daniel Hagimont 50% (co-director)

  • Direction of Mathieu Bacou's thesis
    Subject: Performance and resource management in nested virtualization systems.
    Period: Feb. 2017 - May 2020
    Funding: CIFRE Atos
    Currently: Maître de Conférences
    Supervision: Alain Tchana 50% (co-director)
    Daniel Hagimont 50% (co-director)

  • Direction of Grégoire Todeschi's thesis
    Subject: Memory overcommitment in virtualized systems.
    Period: Oct. 2016 - June 2020
    Funding: MESR
    Currently: Industry
    Supervision: Alain Tchana 50% (co-director)
    Daniel Hagimont 50% (co-director)

  • Direction of Vlad Nitu's thesis
    Subject: Memory management in virtualized systems.
    Period: Oct. 2015 - Oct. 2018
    Funding: MESR
    Distinction: 2e prix de thèse GDR RSD
    Currently: CR CNRS
    Supervision: Alain Tchana 50% (co-director)
    Daniel Hagimont 50% (co-director)

  • Direction of Boris Teabe's thesis
    Subject: Performance optimization in virtualized systems.
    Period: Oct. 2014 - Oct. 2017
    Funding: INRIA CORDI-S
    Distinction: Prix de thèse GDR RSD et prix Leopold Escande
    Currently: Maître de Conférences
    Supervision: Alain Tchana 50% (co-director)
    Daniel Hagimont 50% (co-director)

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News

May, 2021. The PhD thesis of my former PhD student, Djob Mvondo, that I co-supervised with Noel De Palma received the best PhD thesis award from CNRS GDR RSD . You can find his thesis here.

June 1rst, 2021. I am invited by Outscale 3DS (a cloud provider) to give a talk during their cloud days.

June 22th, 2021. I am invited by Telecom SudParis to give review their computer science department training program.

June 8th, 2021, at 3pm (Paris time). I have the pleasure to invite David A. Patterson for a talk to the french research community.

May 29th, 2021. I will present our associated Inria research team MLNS2 during the scientific days of Inria.

May 25th, 2021. I will present our associated Inria research team MLNS2 during the scientific days of LIRIMA.

May 10th, 2021. I am invited by ENS-IISER workshop organizers to present my feedback about the e-learning platforms that I setup for african schools during the covid-19 pandemic.

My student Stella Bitchebe and I are the winners of the "Concours Inria d'Idées innovantes 2021".

Our two papers get accepted at EuroSys 2021.

  • OFC: an opportunistic free caching system for FaaS platforms.
  • Mitigating vulnerability windows with hypervisor transplant.

My student Stella Bitchebe obtained the NEC Ph.D. fellowship grants 2021 (49k €).

Since 2021, Head of the Inria associated team Machine Learning, Network, System and Security (MLNS2) with Polytechnique Yaoundé (Cameroon).

MOOC on Operating Systems for the CAPES.

Deputy of the Computer Science Department of ENS de Lyon. (I will be the director of this department from the next academic year 2021/2022)

Reviewer of Pierre-Evariste Dagand's HDR.

Examiner Quentin Dufour's Ph.D. (Université de Rennes I).

On April 5, my student Lavoisier Wapet will defend his Ph.D.

Teaching

Since 2019

Virtualisation avancée

ENS de Lyon, M1

This teaching focuses on the internal architecture of operating systems: how the process, memory, file system, networks, etc. are virtualised. I also present hardware solutions that facilitate virtualisation.

Since 2019

Evaluation de performance et réseaux

ENS de Lyon, L3

This teaching focuses on the internal architecture of operating systems (process, memory, file system, IPC, Syscalls, etc.). I describe how its basic services are implemented (concepts, abstractions, mechanisms and policies), how they interact with each other, with hardware and applications.

2020

Réseaux

ENS de Lyon, L3

I introduce the basic concepts of the network (IP address, OSI layers, protocol, services, etc.). This course has been introduced temporarily (as part of the Architecture course) in L3 which does not yet have a Network course. A whole course unit will be dedicated to the latter in L3 from September 2021 as part of the computing training reform that I am currently leading at ENS Lyon.

2018 - 2019

Bases de l'informatique

IUT de Nice, L3

This course deals with the basic notions of computing: the hardware part of a computer (processor, memory, disk, network card), the software part of a computer (operating system, server application), networks, the Internet, installation of an operating system, etc.

2018 - 2019

Outils collaboratifs

IUT de Nice, L2

This course deals with IT tools for collaborative work. I introduced the platforms: Slack, Trello, AppearIn, Zed (secure communication).

2018 - 2019

Informatique Décisionnelle

IUT de Nice, L2

This subject deals with computer technologies useful for decision support, for an audience of non-computer specialists. I have taught the use of the Microsoft Office suite (Access database, creation of forms, reports, graphs, VBA programming, and SQL).

2018 - 2019

Programmation avancée

N7 (ENSEEIHT), M1

This course deals with the following concepts: processing XML documents by programming, implementation of compilers (notion of grammar, lexical analysis, syntactic analysis and semantic analysis), UML modeling, some design patterns (MVC, visitor and decorator), unit tests and introspection.

Since 2013

Big Data

Université de Nice M1 & Polytechnique Yaoundé M2

This course focuses on the infrastructure aspect of big data. To this end, the following notions are addressed: motivation of the bigdata, positioning with traditional data processing (limits of old technologies), the definition of the bigdata, presentation of its disciplines (visualization, analysis, platform, systems, hardware), focus on infrastructure-related disciplines (platform, systems, and hardware), presentation of the two main modes of processing of data (batch processing and streaming processing), presentation of approaches to solving these problems, presentation of the corresponding bigdata platforms.

Since 2013

Cloud Computing

Université de Nice M1 & Polytechnique Yaoundé M2

This course covers all the basics related to Cloud Computing: principles of the cloud, benefits of the cloud for users and providers, models of the cloud, challenges of the cloud, the most famous public clouds, management systems of a private cloud, virtualisation and its role in the cloud, consolidation of virtual machines, containers, and legal aspects of the cloud.

2013 - 2018

Programmation Web

N7 M1 & Formation Fullstack L2

This course introduces technologies that ease the programming of web applications, namely: the MVC (Model View Controler) design pattern, ORM (Object Relational Mapping), AngularJS, Bootstrap, JQuery, JEE, Django, and relational databases. This teaching is accompanied by a project consisting in developing a realistic web application.

2013 - 2018

Programmation distribuée et intergiciels

N7 M1

This course covers the following concepts: distributed programming using sockets, RMI or JMS, and programming the integration of legacy applications using Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) technology. This teaching is generally completed with a project carried out in groups of 4.

2013 - 2018

Systèmes d’exploitation

N7 M1 & Formation Fullstack L2

The concepts addressed in this course are of two types: internal constitution of an operating system (scheduler, memory manager, etc.), and use of an operating system (shell, system programming, etc.). The Linux operating system is used as a basis for work. This teaching is supplemented by a fil rouge project carried out by each student.

Projects

2020 - 2024

PicNic (ANR)

Data transfering among datacenters.

2019 - 2020

SprinkledOS (Attractivity ENS Lyon)

Distributed virtual machines.

2019 - 2020

ScalevisorFT (Impulsion labex MiLyon)

Fault tolerance in disaggregated environments.

2019 - 2022

Scalevisor (ANR)

Distributed hypervisors.

2019 - 2021

IMAD (Toulouse Tech Transfer)

Malicious mobile App detection.

2017 - 2019

BlablaMem (Région Occitanie)

Memory distribution within a rack.

2016 - 2017

KelCloud (Toulouse Tech Transfer)

How to choose your cloud.

2015 - 2017

Zombie (Toulouse Tech Transfer)

Memory disaggregation.

Conferences Organization

Responsabilities

  • Since 2021, Head of the associated team Inria Machine Learning, Network, System and Security (MLNS2) with Polytechnique Yaoundé (Cameroon).

  • Since 2020, Elected member of the ASF's Bureau (chapter FRANCE of the ACM Sigops).

  • Since 2020, Co-leader of the Systems, Networks and Telecommunications theme of the FIL (Fédération Informatique Lyonnaise).

  • Since 2020, Co-founder and moderator of the French Computer Science Research forum (+150 researchers).

  • Since 2020, Member of the ASDS (African Society in Digital Sciences) Bureau.

  • Since 2020, Member of the United Nation Roundtable 3C on AI.

  • Since 2019, Member of the GDR RSD steering committee: I'm co-leading the Cloud and Virtualization theme.

  • Since 2019, Co-responsible of the LIP's Gender Equality Committee.

  • Since 2019, Member of the ComPas steering committee.

  • Since 2018, Member appointed to the IRIT Laboratory Council.

Medias and Others

  • My Ph.D. student Stella Bitchebe, who obtained the NEC Student fellowship grants 2021 was interviewed by Cameroon National Television on the occasion of the celebration of the International Women's Rights Day (8 March 2021). Listen to her interview here.

  • My former Ph.D. student Djob Mvondo, who defended at the age of 22 in December 2020, was cited as an example for the youth by the president of the republic of Cameroon. Read more about in cameroon-info.

  • Private deployment of a distance learning platform during covid for African institutions and universities. Find out more here (click on Cameroon): used by +100 institutions.

  • Development of a website and mobile application to track the progress of covid in Cameroon. Find out more on youtube and linkedin.

  • In 2008, when I was a master's student, a friend and I pulled off a technological feat to solve the problem of changing the telephone numbering system in Cameroon. Find out more explanation on it here.

2021 Rejected papers

  • CCGRID

Where to find me

46 Allée d'Italie
ENS Site Monod
69007 Lyon

Email Me At

alain.tchana@ens-lyon.fr