Robson E. De Grande

Associate Professor

Department of Computer Science

Brock University

Email

rdegrande@brocku.ca

Phone

+1 (905) 688-5550 ext. 3090

Address

1812 Sir Isaac Brock Way
St Catharines, Ontario, Canada L2S 3A1

About

Education

  • Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Ottawa, Canada
  • M.Sc. in Computer Science, Federal University of Sao Carlos, Brazil
  • B.Sc. in Computer Science, Federal University of Sao Carlos, Brazil

Publication Highlights

VRU Composition for Resource Management in VCC Networks. Binal Tejani and Robson E. De Grande. 26th IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications (ISCC), Accepted, 2021
An adaptive and Distributed Traffic Management System using Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks. Thiago S. Gomides, Robson E. De Grande, Allan M. de Souza, Fernanda S. H. Souza, Leandro A. Villas, Daniel L. Guidoni. Elsevier Computer Communications, 159: 317-330, 2020
Book Cover Book
Intelligent Transport System in Smart Cities: Aspects and Challenges of Vehicular Networks and Cloud.
Rodolfo I. Meneguette, Robson E. De Grande, Antonio A. F. Loureiro. in Series: Urban Computing. Publisher: Springer. ISBN 978-3-319-93332-0. DOI 10.1007/978-3-319- 93332-0. Pages 390. 2018

Research

Research Interests

  • IoT / IoV
    • Dissemination and applications
    • Performance
  • Mobile Cloud Computing / Vehicular Clouds
    • HPC and allocation
    • Offloading heuristics
    • Classification and ML
    • Applications (ITS)
  • Vehicular Networks
    • Connectivity stability / intermittency
  • Intelligent Transportation Systems
    • Path Recommendation, Traffic management, and Traffic analysis

Research Description

My research interests primarily involve algorithms and protocols for supporting and enabling large-scale distributed systems, which concern urban computing, intelligent transportation, and PDES (Parallel Discrete-event Simulations). Due to the focus on high performance, my projects make use of optimization strategies, [meta-]heuristics, and learning algorithms in a distributed setup.

My research work thus faces challenges on the complexity and scale of problems, fairness, unpredictability, and volatility. I have explored the MDP (Markov Decision Process) modelling to tackle uncertainty. Game Theory models enable fair allocation in a distributed fashion. Supported and Supported Learning tools, as well as meta-heuristics, allow classification and characterization of traffic in ITS, IoT, and urban computing.

My research experience and interests are ample and substantially revolves around distributed systems and wireless networks.

Due to their large-scale nature, my project makes used of simulators to validate and evaluate new designs. Vehicular network simulators support my current works on Intelligent Transportation and Vehicular Systems, particularly Veins framework, which runs OMNet++ and SUMO.

Please refer to my Publications and list of Projects for my past scientific works.

Prospective Students

Please contact me if you are a student interested in pursuing an MSc. degree or conducting an undergraduate research project, mainly if you share some of my above-listed, research interests. I am happy to discuss and encourage any potential interest or application.

Before you suggest any potential project, I strongly recommend you to take a close look at my past works and publications to identify relevant topics that fall in my field of expertise.

If you have any inquiries or concerns, contact me. Advice to students seeking graduate supervision:

  • There is no need to know exactly what project you want to do.
  • Students are expected to be motivated and independent, to evaluate problems critically, and to learn new things.
  • I am continually looking for motivated students. However, please refer to the deadlines and academic rules of Brock University.
  • There might be funding available:
    • Graduate students receive funding from a combination of sources: research funding, fellowships, and teaching assistantships.
    • Undergraduate students may receive funding from awards or research assistantships.
  • Advice and rules to applicants to the graduate program here.

Research Seminars

  • Vehicular Edge Computing: Leveraging ITS and Urban Computing.
    Fall, 2020 (Lakehead University, Canada)

Research Team

Ongoing MSc

K M Nafiul Hassan
Mohaimin Ehsan
Mubashir Murshed
Penghan Yan
Tahmid Hossain
Binal Tejani
Thiago Gomides (visiting)

Concluded MSc

Rickson Simioni (visiting)
Abubakar Saad
Mae Leong (project)
Rahul Kumar (project)

4F90

Paramvir Singh
LuKas Rossi (finished)

3P99

Aaron Ayub (finished)
Brian Jenkins (finished)
Ege Kaya (finished)
Jeremy Blanchard (finished)
Yansan Han (finished)
Jesse Masciarelli (finished)
Jensen Hung (finished)
Andrew Folkerson (finished)
Thaibinh Nguyen (finished)
Ryan Hristovski (finished)

Projects

Dwell Time in VFC

Resource Estimation in Vehicular Fogs

Cloudlet Dwell Time Model and Resource Availability for Vehicular Fog Computing.
VRU composition

Resource Allocation in Vehicular Clouds

Composition of vehicular resource units as a relaxed, dynamic method for assigning VCC services.
MDP-based Connectivity Model

Vehicular Network Connectivity Modelling for VCC Management

Modelling intermittent connectivity in vehicular networks for more precisely supporting VCC services.
ITS Symbiotic Simulation

Distributed Simulation of Intelligent Transportation Systems

The design and implementation of a simulation platform and application totally oriented for analysis of vehicular area networks.
ITS Symbiotic Simulation

Traffic and load characterization for Vehicular Clouds

Characterization of the vehicular traffic as an enabler for a series of applications in mobile cloud and Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS).
ITS Symbiotic Simulation

Distributed Simulations in Cloud Environments

The development of an architecture for facilitating the design, deployment, execution, and monitoring/management of large-scale simulations on private, public, or hybrid Clouds.
ITS Symbiotic Simulation

High Performance Computing in the Cloud

Scheduling and dynamic load balancing of computational and communication load of Cloud applications.
ITS Symbiotic Simulation

Load Management for Large-scale Distributed Simulations

Load balancing algorithms for the proper load re-distribution of large-scale [HLA-based] distributed simulations.

Teaching

Current Offerings

Fall 2021

COSC 4P14

Computer Networks

Winter 2022

COSC 3P91

Advanced Object Oriented Programming

COSC 2P13

Computer Systems

Recent Offerings

  • COSC 3P91 - Winter, 2021
    Advanced Object Oriented Programming
  • COSC 4P14 - Fall, 2020
    Computer Networks
  • COSC 3P93 - Fall, 2020
    Parallel Computing
  • COSC 2P13 - Spring, 2020
    Computer Systems
  • COSC 3P91 - Winter, 2020
    Advanced Object Oriented Programming
  • COSC 3P93 - Fall, 2019
    Parallel Computing
  • COSC 5P06 - Fall, 2019
    Principles of Mobile Cloud Computing
  • COSC 2P13 - Spring, 2019
    Computer Systems
  • COSC 3P91 - Winter, 2019
    Advanced Object-Oriented Programming
  • COSC 2P13 - Winter, 2019
    Computer Systems
  • COSC 3P93 - Fall, 2018
    Parallel Computing
  • COSC 5P06 - Fall, 2018
    Principles of Mobile Cloud Computing
  • COSC 2P13 - Spring, 2018
    Computer Systems
  • COSC 3P91 - Winter, 2018
    Advanced Object-Oriented Programming
  • COSC 2P13 - Winter, 2018
    Computer Systems

Invited Lectures

  • Vehicular Edge Computing: Leveraging ITS and Urban Computing.
    Fall, 2020 (Lakehead University, Canada)
  • Intelligent Transportation Systems: Advance Topics and Computer Applications.
    Fall, 2016 (University of Ottawa, Canada)
  • Principles of Distributed Simulations.
    Winter, 2016 (University of Ottawa, Canada)
  • Principles of Distributed Simulations.
    Fall, 2013 (University of Ottawa, Canada).

Publications