About me

I’m a Ph.D. student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, working under the supervision of Prof. Arpit Gupta in the Systems and Networking Lab.

My current research lies at the intersection of networking, security, and machine learning. Specifically, I am interested in developing credible ML-based artifacts for different networking and security problems, and democratizing network research by creating public measurement infrastructures and tools.

I’m leading netUnicorn and PINOT projects aimed to simplify developing trustworthy ML solutions in networking and make real-world data available for everyone (see PINOT and netunicorn).

I also researched a Machine Learning models credibility in the Networking area, exploring vulnerabilities and problems in published existing solutions and how to fix them using Explainable AI methods (see TrusteeML).

Currently, I’m also working on public speedtest measurements (e.g., MLab-based) to inference and predict measurement context.

Interests

• Machine Learning in Networking
  • + ML-based performance inference
  • + Explainability and robustness
  • + Model generalizability and credibility
  • + Datasets collection and curation
• Network measurement tools and infrastructures
• Hobby research interests: Deep Space Network and extra-terrestrial issues in networking

Selected Publications

For detailed information on publications see: Publications

1. In Search of netUnicorn: A Data-Collection Platform to Develop Generalizable ML Models for Network Security Problems
   Roman Beltiukov, Wenbo Guo, Arpit Gupta, Walter Willinger
   Proceedings of the 2023 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS ’23) (Nov 2023)
   Project Website
2. PINOT: Programmable Infrastructure for Networking
   Roman Beltiukov, Sanjay Chandrasekaran, Arpit Gupta, Walter Willinger
   ANRW 23: Proceedings of the Applied Networking Research Workshop (Jul 2023)
   Project Website
3. AI/ML and Network Security: The Emperor has no Clothes
   A. S. Jacobs, R. Beltiukov, W. Willinger, R. A. Ferreira, A. Gupta, L. Z. Granville
   CCS '22: Proceedings of the 2022 ACM SIGSAC Conference on Computer and Communications Security (Nov 2022)
   Project Website

Invited Talks and Tutorials

• ACM SIGCOMM 2023 Tutorial: Closed-Loop “ML for Networks” Pipelines
  ACM SIGCOMM 2023, New York, NY (09/23)
• netUnicorn: A Unified and Modular Data-Collection Platform for Developing Credible ML Models for Networking
  • UC Santa Barbara (05/22)
  • The University of Chicago (10/22)
  • ACM SIGMETRICS Workshop on Measurements for Self-Driving Networks (06/23)

Awards

• UCSB CS Department Summer Fellowship Award, 2023

Education

• Ph.D. in Computer Science – University of California, Santa Barbara 2021 - now, with Prof. Arpit Gupta
• M.S. in Computer Science – Peter the Great Saint-Petersburg Polytechnical University
  (Thesis: applying natural gradient descent to reinforcement learning algorithm)
• B.S. in Computer Science – Peter the Great Saint-Petersburg Polytechnical University
  (Thesis: creating music with generative adversarial networks)

Working experience

• On-Device ML Model Researcher at Huawei Russia (Mar. 2020 - Sep. 2021)
• Junior Reinforcement Learning Researcher at JetBrains Research (Oct. 2019 - Jun. 2020)
• Python tutor at Higher School of Engineering (Sep. 2018 - Sep. 2020)

Hackathons & Challenges

• Junction 2018 – runner-up (in-team) in QOCO challenge
  (PlanPlanner – redirecting air traffic with graph algorithms)
• World-IT-Planet 2018 – winner (solo) of the international stage in Cloud Systems track
• BioHack 2018 – Special award (in-team) by Institute of Bioinformatics
  (predicting 3D cell structure with ML)
• Junction 2017 – winners (in-team) of track “Robots, Learning machines”
  (Mirror – applied ML to Pepper robot to make him copy all our movements)
• World-IT-Planet 2017 – winner (solo) of the international stage in Cloud Systems track
• Make your university 20.35 – winners (in-team)
  (recommender system for people looking for a job)

Certifications

• Microsoft Certified: Azure AI Engineer Associate, Microsoft
• Certified Associate at Python programming, OpenEDG
• Microsoft Certified Solutions Expert: Cloud Platform and Infrastructure, Microsoft
• Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate: Windows Server 2016, Microsoft
• Microsoft Certified Professional, Microsoft
• Cisco CCNA Instructor, Cisco
• Cisco Certified Network Associate Routing and Switching, Cisco
• Huawei Certified Network Associate Storage, Huawei

Thanks for your attention

Have any questions? Feel free to contact me in any way convenient for you.