Information

About Me

I am an Associate Professor/Reader in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh. I am also a Co-founder and the CEO of Net AI, a university spin-out whose mission is to revolutionise network management via AI-driven analytics.

I lead the Mobile Intelligence Lab and the Informatics Internet of Things research programme. I am a member of the Institute for Computing Systems Architecture (ICSA) and I am also affiliated to the Security & Privacy group.

Before joining Edinburgh, I was a research fellow at the Hamilton Institute of the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. Between 2007–2011 I was a research assistant at IMDEA Networks (Madrid Institute for Advanced Studies in Networks). I held visiting research positions at the University of Brescia (2017, 2015), Northeastern University (2016), Technical University Darmstadt (2016), and Rice University (2010).

I hold a Ph.D. and an M.Sc. in Telematics Engineering from University Carlos III of Madrid, and a Dipl.Eng. degree from the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania.

My research seeks to bridge the gap between fundamental mathematical models and real-world applications of networked systems. I focus on problems related to artificial intelligence in mobile networks, traffic analytics, performance optimisation, security and privacy, prototyping and test beds.

Latest

News

22 February, 2024 – I also featured in the UKTIN Telecom Trailblazers series.

20 February, 2024 – AI Future Capability Paper published, which is the result of work with the AI Expert Working Group.

19 February, 2024 – Guest lecture at the University of Helsinki, Networked AI Systems course.

7 February, 2024 – Spoke with Wireless Watch about how AI can fuel network slicing.

1 February, 2024 – Panel on R&D&I at the UKTIN 'Unleashing the power of AI in telecoms' conference.

23 January, 2024 – Stable-Sketch: A Versatile Sketch for Accurate, Fast, Web-Scale Data Stream Processing, work with my student Weihe Li, accepted for publication at The Web Conference 2024.

3 December, 2023 – Cluster and Conquer: Malicious Traffic Classification at the Edge, work with Alec Diallo (now a postdoc in my group), will appear in IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management.

19 September, 2023 – Amoeba: Circumventing ML-supported Network Censorship via Adversarial Reinforcement Learning, work with my students Haoyu Liu and Alec Diallo, accepted at ACM CoNEXT.

14 August, 2023 – Sabre: Cutting through Adversarial Noise with Adaptive Spectral Filtering and Input Reconstruction, work with my student Alec Diallo, will appear at IEEE S&P Spring 2024.

5 August, 2023 – Work with Weihe Li documenting our Tight-Sketch: A High-Performance Sketch for Heavy Item-Oriented Data Stream Mining with Limited Memory Size accepted at ACM CIKM.

4 August, 2023 – Work with my student Weihe Li on a Fast and Accurate Sketch for Persistent Item Lookup accepted for publication in ACM/IEEE Transactions on Networking.

3 August, 2023 – Work with my student Alec Diallo on Deciphering Clusters With a Deterministic Measure of Clustering Tendencyaccepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering.

Coverage in the

Media

Android OS Privacy

Research with Doug Leith (Trinity College Dublin) and my student Haoyu Liu on the privacy of different Android distributions was featured in EuroNews, Hacker News, The Register, Yahoo News, Fox News, Voice of America, Help Net Security, The Irish Times, Belfast Telegraph, Irish Examiner, IT World Canada, Asia Financial, DIGIT, Science X, Techdirt, RT, Newsmax, Texplore, India Education Daily, Hypertext, 91mobiles, BGR, Techstory, Heise (DE), Tarnkappe.info (DE), Clubic (FR), ICTjournal (FR), OK Diario (ES), Gigazine (JP), CityPortal (GR), Fastweb (IT), IlCitadinoOnline (IT), TuttoAndroid (IT), Tiroler Tageszeitung (AT), Evenimentul Zilei (RO), GRYOnline (PL), Kallxo (XK), Diario Libre (RD), Droidsans (Th).

 

Monitoring Covid-19 Incidence via Open Surveys

Work with the CoronaSurveys team on monitoring and forecasting the incidence of Covid-19 using open surveys was featured in Business Wire, Bloomberg, BioSpace, Science X, Datanami, La Razon, Republica, Tele Madrid, Madri+d, Cope, Ambientum, Catalunya Vanguardista, Leganes Activo, Globo Rural, Publico Surgiu, RedibInforma, and Liverpool Noise.

 

Deep learning in mobile networks

Our survey of deep learning in mobile and wireless networks has been picked up by Chinese media and was covered in The Heart of the Machine, Tencent, NetEase, SINA, and Sohu.com.

 

Smart-home security

Our security and privacy investigation of the Belkin WeMo ecosystem featured in The National, The Herald, Phys.org, Technology.org, ECN Mag, tekk.tv, qianjia.com, The Edinburgh Reporter, Edinburgh Live, Scottish Construction Now, Scottish Housing News. Forth Radio also ran a short interview with me about this work.

Wearable IoT security

Our research on the vulnerabilities of fitness trackers featured in The Times, The Telegraph, International Business Times, Huffington Post, New York Post, The Scotsman, STV News, Yorkshire Post, The Northern Echo, Channel News, Market Watch, SC Magazine, The Inquirer, CORDIS News, Homeland Security News Wire, China Press, Xinhua News, China Industrial Control Network, Shenzhen News Network, Photoelectric News Network, Hong Kong News, Indo-Asian News Service, The Economic Times, The Hindu, Businessworld India, The New Indian Express, The Pioneer, domain-b.com, HackRead, Techworm, V3, texnologia.net, Gears of Biz, Infosecurity Magazine, Third Age, Phys.org, ECN Mag, Digtial Journal, Gadgets & Wearables, DIGIT, EurekAlert!

The BBC Radio 4 Extra's Newsjack show mentioned us in their satire on fitness tracking (season 17, episode 2).

I also gave an interview about our research to BBC Radio Scotland for the Newsdrive show (12/04/2019).

Recent

Publications

W. Li and P. Patras, "Stable-Sketch: A Versatile Sketch for Accurate, Fast, Web-Scale Data Stream Processing", The Web Conference, 2024.

A. Diallo and P. Patras, "Cluster and Conquer: Malicious Traffic Classification at the Edge", IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, 2023.

H. Liu, A. Diallo, and P. Patras, "Amoeba: Circumventing ML-supported Network Censorship via Adversarial Reinforcement Learning", ACM CoNEXT 2023.

A. Diallo and P. Patras, "Sabre: Cutting through Adversarial Noise with Adaptive Spectral Filtering and Input Reconstruction" IEEE S&P Spring 2024.

W. Li and P. Patras, "Tight-Sketch: A High-Performance Sketch for Heavy Item-Oriented Data Stream Mining with Limited Memory Size", ACM CIKM 2023.

A. Diallo and P. Patras, "Deciphering Clusters With a Deterministic Measure of Clustering Tendency", IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, 2023.

W. Li and P. Patras "P-Sketch: A Fast and Accurate Sketch for Persistent Item Lookup", ACM/IEEE Transactions on Networking, 2023.

H. Liu, D.J. Leith, and P. Patras "Android OS Privacy Under the Loupe – A Tale from the East", ACM WiSec, 2023.

H. Liu, P. Patras, and D.J. Leith, "On The Data Privacy Practices Of Android OEMs", PLOS ONE, 2023.

L. Xu, H. Liu, J. Song, R. Li, Y. Hu, X. Zhou, and P. Patras, "TransMUSE: Transferable Traffic Prediction in MUlti-Service Edge Networks", Computer Networks, 2023.

H. Liu and P. Patras, "NetSentry: A Deep Learning Approach to Detecting Incipient Large-scale Network Attacks", Computer Communications, 2022.

I am currently involved with the following

Conferences/Workshops

(I am currently on leave of absence from the University and will not be taking new scholarly activity commitments.)

RESEARCH

TEAM

Alec Diallo (Postdoctoral Research Associated)

Alec is working on active intelligence in networked systems, including adversarial robustness, neural network explainability, and clustering analysis

Weihe Li (PhD student, 2021–2024)

Weihe's research focuses on developing new techniques for accurate detection of specific types of traffic flows in high-speed networks. He is partially funded by Cisco.

Prospective Students

Students interested in undertaking a PhD under my supervision may find this advice helpful.

Previous Post-doctoral Research Associates

Alexis Duque, 2020– 2021. (now at Net AI)

Previous Students

Haoyu Liu (PhD), The University of Edinburgh, 2023. (now at Net AI)

Rupen Mitra (MPhil), The University of Edinburgh, 2023 (now at Net Reply).

Yini Fang (MPhil), The University of Edinburgh, 2022 (now at Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Chaoyun Zhang (PhD), The University of Edinburgh, 2020. (now at Microsoft Research Asia)

Rui Li (PhD), The University of Edinburgh, 2019. (now at Samsung AI Centre Cambridge)

Interns

Luyang Xu, Computer Network Information Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Nov. 2020 –Oct. 2021.
Stephen Waddell, University of Edinburgh, June–Aug. 2019.
Marco Cominelli, University of Brescia, July–Dec. 2018
Adela Rotar, University of Edinburgh, May–July 2018.
Haoyu Liu, University of Edinburgh, June–Sept. 2018.
Ayush Bhardwaj, IIT Roorkee, June–Aug. 2018.
Daniel Licciardello, University of Catania, Mar. 2016–May 2016.
Chiara Capretti, University of Brescia, Sept. 2015–Dec. 2015.
Nicolo Facchi, University of Brescia, Sept. 2014–Feb. 2015.

I am/have been teaching the following

COURSES

Internet of Things Systems, Security, and the Cloud (IoTSSC, 2018–2021)

The course gives students theoretical and practical grounding in IoT, covering systems architecture, hardware platforms, embedded programming and debugging, networking paradigms for IoT, secure operation, cloud integration, and simple data analytics.

Computing in the Classroom (CiC, 2019–20)

The course offers an in-depth, sustained experience in the classroom to fourth-year students contemplating a career in education.

Computer Science Large Practical (CSLP, 2014–16)

The course exposed students to the problems that arise with the design and implementation of large scale computer systems, and to methods of coping with such problems.

Undergraduate Research Practical (URP, 2015)

This course allowed undergraduate students to participate in a research project in collaboration with a member of staff or a research group.

Computer & Communications Networks (CCN, 2013)

This course introduced the principles of computer networking using a top down approach, from the application layer and working down toward the physical layer (delivered at Maynooth University).

Network Infrastructure (NI, 2008–09)

This course covered advanced concepts, principles and theory related to network-centred computing (delivered at University Carlos III of Madrid).

How to

Contact Me

EMAIL: paul [dot] patras [at] ed.ac.uk

ADDRESS: Room 1.22A, Informatics Forum, 10 Crichton Street, Edinburgh, EH8 9AB, UK.