DeCenter Seminar Series: "The Data Socket - A Canonical Construct for Web 3 and the Coding to Enable It"

Abstract: The success of Web 2 has relied on powerful abstractions and their realization. That of Web 3 requires the same. In Web 2, TCP/IP mimics a virtual dedicated link between nodes, while operating over a heterogeneous, meshed network. For Web 3, the Optimum Data Socket (ODS) provides data access over a virtual dedicated memory instantiated over a permissionless, decentralized, possibly unreliable set of nodes. ODS gives atomic, consistent and durable data access. Realizing ODS requires deploying new erasure coding techniques, that are infinitely composable, stateless, and optimum in permissionless systems. Bio: Muriel Médard is the co-founder of Optimum, on leave from MIT, where she holds the NEC Chair of Software Science and Engineering for the School of Engineering at MIT, and is a Professor in EECS. She obtained three Bachelors degrees, her M.S. and Sc.D, all from MIT. Muriel is a Member of the US National Academy of Engineering (elected 2020), a Member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (elected 2022), a Fellow of the US National Academy of Inventors (elected 2018), American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected 2021), and a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (elected 2008). She holds Honorary Doctorates from the Technical University of Munich (2020), the University of Aalborg (2022) and the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (2023). Muriel was awarded the 2022 IEEE Kobayashi Computers and Communications Award. She received the 2019 Best Paper award for IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering, the 2018 ACM SIGCOMM Test of Time Paper Award, as well as nine conference paper awards.Muriel served as the Editor-in-Chief (EIC) of IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, and was EiC of IEEE JSAC. She was president of the IEEE Information Theory Society. Muriel received the inaugural MIT Postdoctoral Association Mentoring Award in 2022, the inaugural MIT EECS Graduate Student Association Mentor Award, voted by the students, in 2013. She set up the Women in the Information Theory Society (WithITS) and Information Theory Society Mentoring Program. She was recognized with the 2017 IEEE Aaron Wyner Distinguished Service Award. Muriel has over seventy US and international patents awarded, the vast majority of which have been licensed or acquired. Muriel has supervised over 40 master students, over 20 doctoral students and over 25 postdoctoral fellows.