Marko Vukolić

Email: vukolic (a t) acm ( d0t ) org

[ Highlights ] [ Short bio ] [ Research Interests] [ Activities ] [ Publications ]

Highlights

Why Bitcoin actually does not waste energy? How do we define decentralization? What is Inclusiveness and why is Proof-of-Work more decentralized than Proof-of-Stake? How could we go about building secure and scalable decentralized cloud computing?

Read about my view on these intriguing questions in my invited position paper which appeared in the October 2021 issue of the Bulletin of the EATCS.

Short bio

Since mid-2021, I am an independent computer scientist, offering expertise, consulting and R&D services in the broad domain of decentralized systems. Prior to this I was a Principal Research Staff Member in IBM Research Zurich, where I worked from 2015-2021 and earlier as a PostDoc (2008-2010). In the meantime, I was a tenured faculty at EURECOM (2010-2014), and a visiting professor at Systems Group @ ETH Zurich (2014).

I obtained a Doctor of Science (PhD) degree in Distributed Systems from EPFL in the Distributed Programming Laboratory (LPD) in 2008, with my PhD thesis being on Byzantine fault-tolerant (BFT) consensus, state-machine replication and data storage. Before PhD, I graduated from EPFL Doctoral School in Computer and Communication Sciences in 2003 and obtained a dipl.ing. degree in Electrical Engineering (Telecommunications) from School of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade, in 2001.

Research interests

My main research interest is in decentralized systems, that is in distributed systems that span multiple administrative and trust domains (e.g., permissionless and permissioned blockchain systems). This fascinating area of computer and communication sciences blends (Byzantine) fault-tolerant distributed systems, planet-scale computer networking, security, data privacy, applied cryptography, game theory and economics.

I am basically interested in ``decentralizing everything'', including payment and financial systems, cloud computing and machine learning/AI.

My motivation for doing research in decentralized systems, beyond pure intelectual and engineering challenges, is that I believe this technology can help bring more good to life on planet Earth. The link might not be immediately evident, but it is enlightening to realize.