- email
- cv-public@ashok.org.uk
Technical strengths
- Web coding
- Passionate about applying Web standards and producing accessible sites. Experienced in HTML and XHTML, CSS and applying Javascript that degrades gracefully.
- Adept at swiftly developing database-backed dynamic Web sites, with a strong eye on security and privacy.
- Most experience using PHP and Python to build Web apps, but I have also developed Web systems using various Java frameworks and a variety of scripting languages.
- Security
- My experience working with the web, peer-to-peer systems and other network technologies gives me good insight into potential security problems.
- I use the skills and tools from performance and behavioural modelling to describe and detect security flaws, including side-channel attacks through timing.
- At FreshBooks, I have exercised my ability to find flaws - both theoretical and practical - and closed those holes before they are exploited.
- Performance
- Practical and academic experience of performance modelling, measurement and improvement.
- I apply my academic knowledge of stochastic modelling to real-world systems. At McKinsey, I developed both the back-end tools and the visual formats to calculate and show important performance information from the whole British defence supply chain for the Ministry of Defence.
- Databases
- Skilled at handling large data-sets, both for the financial sector while at ArsDigita and through consulting work for the government at McKinsey. Most experience working with Oracle, PostgreSQL and MySQL but able to quickly adapt skills to other systems. My performance work helps me measure and improve the speed of critical queries.
Work
- FreshBooks
- Security Developer: January 2010—present
- Identifying and fixing denial-of-service attacks, privilege escalation and other security flaws.
- Improving identity management and authentication procedures for a popular SaaS application.
- Developing team capabilities to deliver robust and secure code.
- Using performance analysis techniques to improve the user experience and to minimize information leakage through timing side-channels.
- Imperial College London, Department of Computing
- Teaching Associate: May 2008—August 2009
- Lecturing and supporting the advanced software engineering courses.
- Co-ordinating third-year group projects; overseeing 25 groups working on distinct, substantial assignments to an intense schedule.
- Made a shift towards practical application of software engineering techniques, with a focus on successfully delivering the group projects. Introduced segments on version control, tools for automated testing and publishing project progress on the Web.
- Research Associate: May 2006—May 2008
- Developing PerformDB, an EPSRC-funded project to build a collaborative database of
performance models and results, and publish them all with formal semantic meaning on
the Web.
- PerformDB uses the REST style of Web publishing, enabling clients to interact with the service using basic HTTP calls. Our API supports JSON, basic XML and several RDF formats, allowing the developer to use the most convenient format.
- Custom Developer: February 2006—April 2006
- Very quickly designed and built an open publication repository for the department, improving the visibility of the whole department's research output.
- Several other departmental sites use publication data directly from the site using RSS feeds, a simple REST/JSON API and via BibTeX entries.
- URIplay
- Technical Advisor: 2007—2009
- Building an open metadata framework for audio and video content, describing the different cuts and encodings of a programme using Semantic Web technologies. Initial work on URIplay was funded by the BBC.
- URIplay's ontology makes it easier to describe the show or episode you are interested in, and to find just the right version of a programme that will work on your device.
- McKinsey & Co.
- Bespoke Technical Consultant: 2004—2005
- Built a data-warehouse to measure performance in the UK defence supply chain. I used parts of my PhD work in stochastic systems to define appropriate measures and display formats to represent the essential complexity in the system.
- Largest data-set came from active RFID tags tracking the location of individual consignments, from which we inferred a model of the consignments' movements and found where significant delays were introduced.
- ArsDigita
- Full-time Intern: April 2000—October 2000
- Part-time Intern: October 2000—June 2001
- Full-time Developer: June 2001—November 2001
- Developing community-driven Web sites for clients, building custom extensions on ArsDigita's database-backed toolkit. Involved in whole process from
requirements gathering and writing specifications, through to
development, testing and maintenance.
- Taught Web development on several intensive courses to help
clients and the general public to use ArsDigita's open source toolkit.
- Future i Ltd.
- 1998—2004
- Co-founded this small Internet consultancy. We developed a number of client sites, often backed by our own simple content management system, targeted at non-technical users.
Education
- Imperial College, Department of Computing
- 2002—2006
- PhD in performance modelling under Professor Pete Harrison. Thesis: 'A compositional, collaborative performance pipeline'.
- Developed and maintain our research group's Web presence.
- Imperial College, Department of Computing
- 1997—2001
- First Class MEng (Hons.) in Computing.
Organisation
- PASTA Workshop, July 2007
- Organised the sixth PASTA workshop bringing over thirty colleagues from England, Scotland, France, Italy and Germany together for a two-day workshop in London.
- Created a Web site, pastaworkshop.org, preserving all the past sites for posterity, at long-term Web addresses.
- SemanticCamp, February 2008
- The local organizer for the first SemanticCamp London, with over fifty attendees from around the UK, Ireland, Europe and the USA.
- UK Performance Engineering Workshop, July 2008
- Co-organised this long-running national conference, attracting a record number of attendees. Again, developed a long-term Web site to support the future evolution of the workshop.
Academic publications
- Performance Engineering
- Ashok Argent-Katwala, Jeremy T. Bradley, Nicholas J. Dingle, Uli Harder, William J. Knottenbelt
- Journal Special Issue Edited
- December 2009
- Safety and Response-Time Analysis of an Automotive Accident Assistance Service
- Ashok Argent-Katwala, A Clark, Howard Foster, Stephen T. Gilmore, Philip Mayer, Mirco Tribastone
- ISOLA'08, 3rd International Symposium on Leveraging Applications of Formal Methods, Verification and Validation
- September 2008
- Proceedings of UKPEW 2008, 24th Annual UK Performance Engineering Workshop
- Ashok Argent-Katwala, Nicholas J. Dingle, Uli Harder (Eds.)
- Proceedings Edited
- June 2008
- Continuous PEPA Queues: Individual behaviour in continuous queueing networks
- Ashok Argent-Katwala, Jeremy T. Bradley
- VALUETOOLS'07, 2nd International Conference on Performance Evaluation Methodologies and Tools, Nantes, 23-25 October 2007
- November 2007
- Location-Aware Quality of Service Measurements for Service-Level Agreements
- Ashok Argent-Katwala, Jeremy T. Bradley, A Clark, Stephen T. Gilmore
- TGC'07, Trustworthy Global Computing
- November 2007
- Modelling tools and techniques for the performance analysis of wireless protocols
- Ashok Argent-Katwala, Jeremy T. Bradley, Nil Geisweiller, Stephen T. Gilmore, Nigel Thomas
- Book Chapter
- September 2007
- More publications
References and postal address on request. The most up-to-date version of this CV will always be at http://ashok.org.uk/cv