Will's home page Prof William J. Knottenbelt Professor of Applied Quantitative Analysis Director of Industrial Liaison, Director of the Imperial College Centre for Cryptocurrency Research and Engineering and Director of Computer Science for the Brevan Howard Centre for Financial Analysis Department of Computing, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London, SW7 2AZ phone: +44 (0) 20 7594 8331, email: wjk@doc.ic.ac.uk “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail Better” - Samuel Beckett Background I did my BSc (Computer Science and Statistics), BSc (Hons) (Computer Science) and MSc (Computer Science) degrees in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Cape Town in South Africa. In February 2000 I finished my PhD in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London. Research I'm now a Professor of Applied Quantitative Analysis in the Department of Computing at Imperial. My broad area of research interest is the application of mathematical modelling techniques to real life systems. Specific areas of interest include, but are not limited to, modelling and optimisation in parallel queueing systems (especially split-merge and fork-join systems), modelling of storage systems, stochastic modelling of sport, stochastic modelling of healthcare systems, resource allocation and control in cloud-computing environments, numerical solution of (semi-)Markov models and specification techniques for SLA specification, compliance prediction and monitoring. On 27 June 2017, I presented my inaugural lecture Memoirs of the Memoryless: A Markovian Meander from Disk Drives to Digital Money. This presents an overview of the evolution of my research work over the last two decades. As Director of the Imperial College Centre for Cryptocurrency Research and Engineering, my research interests also encompass all aspects of cryptocurrencies, blockchains, distributed ledgers and smart contracts. I am especially interested in novel applications of these technologies. I also undertake expert witness work in the area of cryptocurrency and blockchain. For those new to blockchain I recommend the original Bitcoin whitepaper, and, for a deep technical dive Mastering Bitcoin (by Andreas Antonopoulos). For a more high-level introduction and a good history of the beginnings of the blockchain space, I recommend How the Money Got Free: Bitcoin and the Figure for the Future of Finance (by Brian Eha), and for those looking to understand the skeptic's viewpoint, Attack of the 50ft Blockchain (by David Gerard). My research grants have included the Digital Asset Research Lab (£400K, Blockchain (GB) Ltd, Principal Investigator with Cathy Mulligan), the Outlier Ventures Blockchain Programme (£500K, Outlier Ventures, Principal Investigator with Cathy Mulligan), Digital Asset Indices Research Programme (£600K, CoinShares, Principal Investigator), Gateway for funding and Impact Validation using Ethereum (GIVE) (£75K, Innovate UK, Principal Investigator with Cathy Mulligan), Film Acceleration via Innovative Revenue sharing (FAIR) (£75K, Innovate UK, Principal Investigator) and Smart Contract & Productivity Platform for Livestock (BREEDR) (£130K, Innovate UK, Principal Investigator), Intelligent Management of Big Data Storage (£368K, EPSRC responsive mode, Co-Investigator with P.G. Harrison and G. Casale), ModaCLOUDS (£482K, EU FP 7, Co-Investigator with G. Casale and P.G. Harrison), Development of Novel Computational Strategies to Store and Interpret Next Generation Sequencing Data and Their Application to Multi-Genomic Analyses (£99.9K, BBSRC, Co-Investigator with M. Sternberg, S. Butcher and C. Raczy), Analysis of Massively Parallel Stochastic Systems (AMPS) (£555K, EPSRC, Co-Investigator with J.T. Bradley), Intelligent Performance Optimisation of Virtualised Data Storage Systems (iPODS) (£471K, EPSRC, Principal Investigator with P.G. Harrison), Grid-Enabled Performance Analysis using Stochastic Logics (GRAIL) (£439K, EPSRC, Principal Investigator with J.T. Bradley and P.G. Harrison) and Passage Times in Large Markov and Semi-Markov Chains (PASTRAMI) (£262K, EPSRC, Principal Investigator with P.G. Harrison). My current PhD students include Christina Karakosta, Padma Srinivasan, Cristina Carata, Madalina Sas, Julianna Bor, Edward Pearce-Crump, Toshiko Matsui, Dragos Ilie, Sam Werner, Katerina Koutsouri, Lewis Gudgeon, Tony Yum, Yin Yee Kan, Alexei Zamyatin, Dominik Harz, Meshaal Al-Saffar, Zhipeng Wang and Sirvan Almasi. Past PhD students of mine include Shireen Seakhoa-King, Tommi Pesu, Silvia Vinyes, Jack Kelly, Nicholas Dingle, Aleksandar Trifunovic, Susanna Au-Yeung, Tamas Suto, Abigail Lebrecht, Felipe Franciosi, Timothy Leung, Nikolas Anastasiou, Tzu-Ching Horng, Edmund Noon, Iryna Tsimashenka, Polyvios Tsirimpas, Marily Nika, Demetris Spanias, Wei-Chih Huang and April Chen. Current 2nd supervisions include Rami Khalil, Leif Lundbaek and Xiaoping Fan. Past 2nd supervisions include Joshua Lind, Douglas de Jager, Richard Hayden, Chris Guenther, Daniel Wagner, David McBride, Ting Ting Lee, Anton Stefanek and Tib Chis. Potential PhD students are encouraged to apply. Selected publications (see also Google Scholar). Professional Service I am Programme Chair of IEEE ICBC 2022, General Co-Chair of BRAINS 2022, General Co-Chair of MARBLE 2022, Programme Co-Chair of BRAINS 2021, Programme Co-Chair of IEEE ICBC 2021 and Programme Committee member of numerous conferences and workshops including for example ACM/SPEC ICPE 2022, QEST 2022, ASTMA/EPEW 2021, VALUETOOLS 2021, IEEE FiCloud 2020 etc. I am an editor for Performance Evaluation Journal. I gave keynote talks at JNIC 2017, ASMTA 2017 and EPEW 2017. I serve on the editorial board of Ledger, the world's first academic journal dedicated to cryptocurrencies and distributed ledger technology. I also serve on the editorial board of the journals Frontiers in Blockchain and IET Blockchain. Teaching Introduction to C++ lecture notes for MSc (Computing Science) students (non objected-oriented parts). Also available is an Introduction to C++ for Java/C programmers (for second year students). MPI notes and OpenMP notes for the Parallel Algorithms Course (PDF). Hypergraph partitioning notes (PDF) are also available. Introduction to UNIX (Linux introduction and reference) for MSc (Computing Science) students I was honoured to receive an Engineering Teaching Prize from the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2007 and a President's Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Teaching Excellence from Imperial in 2014. Other Activities I am the Director of Industrial Liaison for the Department of Computing - an enjoyable role highlights of which have included meeting Vint Cerf and Scott McNealy. Currently I oversee the Corporate Partnership Programme, the Industrial Advisory Board and the Applications of Computing in Industry Seminar series. I was also an ICT Special Interest Group Leader in the London Technology Network, a DTI-funded organisation that aimed to promote technology transfer and other interaction between industry and academia. I am currently the Innovation Fellow for the Department of Computing and I serve on Imperial's Tier 1 Graduate Entrepreneur Visa Panel. I am Co-Convenor of the Imperial Blockchain Forum, a cross-College focal point for multidisciplinary activities related to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. I am a Fellow of the British Computer Society. From 2010 to 2014 I was an external MSc examiner in the School of Computing Science at Newcastle University. From 2018 to 2021 I was external MSc examiner at the University of Edinburgh. Send me an instant message (please include your email address for a reply) Message: see a web site i designed
