Home

Research Interests

  • Trust and Security in Cloud Computing
  • Cloud Data Provenance/ Data Tracking
  • Linked Data Analysis
  • Business Process Modeling
  • Services Computing
  • Artificial Intelligence Planning

Prospective Students

If you are interested in pursuing a PhD in the area of cloud computing and security, please feel free to contact me. Prospective PhD students must meet the minimum requirements of the Computer Science department and the University of Waikato.

Visiting Researchers

If you are interested in collaborating on research in cloud computing and security as a visiting researcher, please feel free to contact me with your CV, proposed research and the time period for your visit.

—————————————————————

Publications

(Updated 17 July 2012)

International Patents Awarded (World Intellectual Property Organization)

  1. “Tracing Operations in a Cloud System”, Ryan K L Ko, Peter Jagadpramana, Bu Sung Lee, Patent Cooperation Treaty PCT/US2011/043679, Filed US PTO 12 July 2011. Awarded 17 January 2013. Patent Number: WO/2013/009300
  2. “Tracing Data Block Operations”, Chun Hui Suen, Ryan K L Ko, Peter Jagadpramana, Bu Sung Lee, Patent Cooperation Treaty PCT/US2011/048105, Filed US PTO 17 August 2011. Awarded 21 February 2013. Patent Number: WO/2013/025211

International Patents Filed via the USA PTO

  1. ”Determining File Allocation Based on File Operations”, Patent Cooperation Treaty PCT/US2013/468823, Filed 10 May 2012.

International Refereed Publications

  1. (Tier 1) Ryan K. L. Ko, Elroy Chew, Markus Kirchberg, Bu Sung Lee, ”Overcoming Large Data Transfer Bottlenecks in ReSTful Service Orchestrations”, 19th IEEE International Conference on Web Services (IEEE ICWS 2012), 24-29 June 2012, Hawaii, USA.
  2. Nick Papanikolaou, Siani Pearson, Marco Casassa Mont, Ryan K. L. Ko, ”A Toolkit for Automating Compliance in Cloud Computing Services”, Journal of Cloud Computing (CloudSecGov Special Issue), Accepted 9 July 2012, to appear 2013.
  3. Olive Qing Zhang, Ryan K L Ko, Markus Kirchberg, Chun Hui Suen, Peter Jagadpramana, Bu Sung Lee, “How to Track Your Data: Rule-Based Data Provenance Tracing Algorithms”, 2012 International Symposium on Advances in Trusted and Secure Information Systems (TSIS-2012), in conjunction with 11th IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (TrustCom 2012), 25-27 June 2012, Liverpool, UK.
  4. (Tier 1) Yu Shyang Tan, Ryan K L Ko, Peter Jagadpramana, Chun Hui Suen, Markus Kirchberg, Teck Hooi Lim, Bu Sung Lee, Anurag Singla, Ken Mermoud, Doron Keller, Ha Duc, “Tracking of Data Leaving the Cloud”, 11th IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (TrustCom 2012), 25-27 June 2012, Liverpool, UK.
  5. M. Kirchberg, E. Leonardi, Y. S. Tan, S. Link, Ryan K L Ko, B. S. Lee, “Formal Concept Discovery in Semantic Web Data”, In F. Domenach, D. I. Ignatov, and J. Poelmans (Eds.): Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Formal Concept Analysis (ICFCA), LNAI, Volume 7278, Pages 164–179. Springer, 2012.
  6. Nick Papanikolaou, Siani Pearson, Marco Cassasa Mont, Ryan K L Ko, “Automating Compliance For Cloud Computing Services”, Security Governance and SLAs in Cloud Computing – CloudSecGov 2012, in conjunction with 2nd International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science (CLOSER 2012), 19 April 2012, Porto, Portugal.
  7. Ryan K. L. Ko, Peter Jagadpramana, Bu Sung Lee, ”Flogger: A File-centric Logger for Monitoring File Access and Transfers within Cloud Computing Environments”, 3rd IEEE International Workshop on Security in e-Science and e-Research (ISSR 2011), in conjunction with IEEE TrustCom, 16-18 November 2011, Changsha, China.
  8. Olive Qing Zhang, Markus Kirchberg, Ryan K. L. Ko, Bu Sung Lee, ”How To Track Your Data: The Case for Cloud Computing Provenance”, 3rd IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science (IEEE CloudCom 2011), 29 Nov – 1 Dec 2011, Athens, Greece.
  9. Ryan K. L. Ko, Markus Kirchberg, Bu Sung Lee, ”From System-Centric Logging to Data-Centric Logging – Accountability, Trust and Security in Cloud Computing”, Defence, Science and Research Conference 2011 – Symposium on Cyber Terrorism, IEEE Computer Society, 3-4 August 2011, Singapore.
  10. Ryan K. L. Ko, Bu Sung Lee, Siani Pearson, ”Towards Achieving Accountability, Auditability and Trust in Cloud Computing”, International Workshop on Cloud Computing- Architecture, Algorithms and Applications (Cloudcomp 2011), Springer Verlag, 22-24 July 2011, Kochi, India.
  11. Ryan K. L. Ko, Peter Jagadpramana, Miranda Mowbray, Siani Pearson, Markus Kirchberg, Qianhui Liang, Bu Sung Lee, ”TrustCloud – A Framework for Accountability and Trust in Cloud Computing”, IEEE 2nd Cloud Forum for Practitioners (IEEE ICFP 2011), IEEE Computer Society, 7-8 July 2011, Washing- ton DC, USA.
  12. (Best Paper) Markus Kirchberg, Ryan K. L. Ko, Bu Sung Lee, ”From Linked Data to Relevant Data – Time is the Essence”, 1st International Workshop on Usage Analysis and the Web of Data (USEWOD 2011), in conjunction with the 20th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2011), Hyderabad, India, March 28 2011.
  13. Ryan K. L. Ko, E.W. Lee, S.G. Lee, ”Business-OWL (BOWL) – A Hierarchical Task Network Ontology for Dynamic Business Process Decomposition and Formulation,” IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, Accepted 25 Dec 2010, Published 3 Aug 2011. IEEE Computer Society Digital Library. IEEE Computer Society.
  14. Ryan K. L. Ko, ”Cloud Computing in Plain English”, ACM Crossroads, Vol. 16 Issue 3, pp. 5-6, ACM Press, 2010.
  15. (106 Citations (to date)) Ryan K. L. Ko, Stephen S. G. Lee and E. W. Lee, ”Business Process Management (BPM) Standards: A Survey”, Business Process Management Journal, Emerald Publishing, Vol. 15 No. 5, Pp. 744-791, 2009.
  16. (Tier 1) Ryan K. L. Ko, Stephen S. G. Lee, E. W. Lee and Andre Jusuf, ”Dynamic Collaborative Business Process Formulation via Ontologised Hierarchical Task Network Planning”, Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference of Web Services (IEEE ICWS 2009), 6-10 July 2009, pp. 959-967, Los Angeles, California, IEEE Computer Society Press.(Acceptance rate = 15.8%)
  17. (1st Prize) Ryan K. L. Ko, Stephen S. G. Lee and Andre Jusuf, ”Genesis- Dynamic Collaborative Business Process Formulation Based on Business Goals and Criteria”, IEEE Services Cup 2009, 6-10 July 2009, Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE Congress on Services-I, pp. 123-129, Los Angeles, California, IEEE Computer Society Press.
  18. Ryan K. L. Ko, ”A Computer Scientist’s Introductory Guide to Business Process Management (BPM)”, ACM Crossroads, Vol. 15 Issue 4, pp. 11-18, ACM Press, 2009. (2nd highest download for XRDS on ACM Portal)
  19. D. N. Le, N. S. Nguyen, Karel Mous, Ryan K. L. Ko and Angela E. S. Goh, ”Generating Request Web Services from Annotated BPEL”, IEEE RIVF 2009 Conference, July 13-17, Da Nang City, Vietnam, IEEE Xplore Proceedings, 2009.
  20. K. Mous, Ryan K. L. Ko, S. G. Lee, P. S. Tan, and E. W. Lee, ”High-level Business Processes for Agile B2B Collaboration”, Proceedings of the 35th International MATADOR Conference, pp. 169-172, 2007, Taipei, Taiwan, Springer- Verlag.

—————————————————————

Previous Research Activities in HP Labs

I am a computer scientist passionate about solving hard problems. And in HP Labs, I am fortunate enough to be able to propose innovation which addresses the areas I view as three of the holy grails of computer science research: tracking of data provenance, big data analysis and large data transfers.

TrustCloud – Transparency and Accountability for Cloud Computing

I lead this HP Labs (Cloud and Security Lab) research, in enabling end-users, cloud service providers and regulators to have the ability to track data and file life-cycles and file transfers within clouds. This has several implications – with TrustCloud, we are now able to detect and reconcile all Physical Machine activities with their Virtual Machine activities, thus giving full transparency for the cloud. At the same time, current systems are systems-centric in terms of logging. We have proposed a novel approach, and are the leaders in data-centric logging for cloud computing infrastructures. This is an ongoing cross-business unit project led by and started by HP Labs Singapore in Dec 2010, in collaboration with HPLB and HP ArcSight.
TrustCloud Team Publications:

  • Olive Qing Zhang, Ryan K L Ko, Markus Kirchberg, Chun Hui Suen, Peter Jagadpramana, Bu Sung Lee, “How to Track Your Data: Rule-Based Data Provenance Tracing Algorithms”, 2012 International Symposium on Advances in Trusted and Secure Information Systems (TSIS-2012), in conjunction with 11th IEEE International Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communications (TrustCom 2012), , 25-27 June 2012, Liverpool, UK.
  • (Tier 1) Yu Shyang Tan, Ryan K L Ko, Peter Jagadpramana, Chun Hui Suen, Markus Kirchberg, Teck Hooi Lim, Bu Sung Lee, Anurag Singla, Ken Mermoud, Doron Keller, Ha Duc, “Tracking of Data Leaving the Cloud“, 11th IEEE Inter- national Conference on Trust, Security and Privacy in Computing and Communica- tions (TrustCom 2012), 25-27 June 2012, Liverpool, UK.
  • Ryan K L Ko, Peter Jagadpramana, Bu Sung Lee, ‘Flogger: A File-Centric Logger for Monitoring File Access and Transfers within Cloud Computing Environments‘, 3rd IEEE International Workshop on Security in e-Science and e-Research (IEEE ISSR 2011), in conjunction with IEEE TrustCom 2011, Changsha, China.
  • Olive Qing Zhang, Markus Kirchberg, Ryan K L Ko, Bu Sung Lee, ‘How To Track Your Data: The Case for Cloud Computing Provenance‘, 3rd IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science (IEEE CloudCom 2011), 29 Nov – 1 Dec 2011, Athens, Greece.
  • Ryan K L Ko, Markus Kirchberg, Bu Sung Lee, ‘From System-Centric Logging to Data-Centric Logging – Accountability, Trust and Security in Cloud Computing‘, Defence, Science and Research Conference 2011 – Symposium on Cyber Terrorism, IEEE Computer Society, 3-4 August 2011, Singapore. [PDF]
  • Ryan K L Ko, Bu Sung Lee, Siani Pearson, ‘Towards Achieving Accountability, Auditability and Trust in Cloud Computing‘, International Workshop on Cloud Computing- Architecture, Algorithms and Applications (Cloudcomp 2011), Springer Verlag, 22-24 July 2011, Kochi, India.
  • Ryan K L Ko, Peter Jagadpramana, Miranda Mowbray, Siani Pearson, Markus Kirchberg, Qianhui Liang, Bu Sung Lee, ‘TrustCloud – A Framework for Accountability and Trust in Cloud Computing‘, IEEE 2nd Cloud Forum for Practitioners (IEEE ICFP 2011), IEEE Computer Society, 7-8 July 2011, Washington DC, USA.

Linked Data Visualization – Kandinsky Graphs

Can usage logs recorded in Web Servers tell us relevancy to real-world events? Our initial findings say yes – if we apply time windows into our novel visualisation technique known as Kandinsky Graphs (named due to its shapes looking very much like Kandinsky’s painting style).

This project was awarded the Best Paper Award in a WWW 2011 workshop. We were also privileged to have Tim Berners-Lee as an audience.

  • (Best paper) Markus Kirchberg, Ryan K L Ko, Bu Sung Lee, ‘From Linked Data to Relevant Data – Time is the Essence‘, 1st International Workshop on Usage Analysis and the Web of Data (USEWOD 2011), in conjunction with the 20th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2011), Hyderabad, India, March 28 2011.

Overcoming Large Data Transfer Bottlenecks in Web Service Orchestrations

 The increasing dependence on Web Services methodologies such as REST, is proliferating the adoption of services. At the same time, REST faces bottleneck issues when one transfers data between two RESTful web services. This is especially obvious in data intensive workflows or service orchestrations. We have invented a technique which sliced the transfer times significantly, without the compromise of data integrity and data transfer quality. A paper is now in submission.

____________________________________________________

Completed Projects

CollaGen – A new language for goal-oriented business process formulation.

CollaGen is an extension of my PhD Work, Genesis.

Genesis – Automating Synthesis of Cross-Enterprise Business Processes

Brief Overview

Genesis is an award-winning prototype (Champion, IEEE Service Cup 2009) which allows business users to dynamically formulate business processes based on business goals and criteria (e.g. item cost, leadtime, etc).

It decomposes goals into processes of primitive tasks with appropriate control flows, ready for execution. It also demonstrates the capabilities of the underlying Business-OWL (BOWL) and the Genesis Algorithm.

Research Contribution/ Impact

It addresses the much-neglected planning phase of business process modeling. Currently, many business process models are designed manually and defined in graphical notations such as Business Process Management Notation or orchestration standards such as Business Process Execution Language (WS-BPEL). Such manual configurations are not adaptive to supply chain realities, time-consuming and sometimes defined in ways that are not directly addressing a business user’s innate goal and desire. If we are able to automate the synthesis of such models, we would be able to empower users with the capabilities to formulate their desired business processes. By doing this, we have also bridged high-level business goals with low-level tasks, which is currently a much discussed topic in the domain of business process modeling.

Project Date:

Jan 2007- Feb 2010

Research Project:

Thematic Singapore A*STAR Integrated Manufacturing Services and Systems (IMSS) Project – Collaboration between NTU, NUS, SIMTech and MIT Sloan.

Publications

  • Ryan K L Ko, E W Lee and Stephen S. G. Lee, “Business-OWL (BOWL) – A Hierarchical Task Network Ontology for Dynamic Business Process Decomposition and Formulation”, IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, To Appear, Accepted 25 Dec 2010. [pdf]
  • Ryan K. L. Ko, Stephen S. G. Lee, E. W. Lee and Andre Jusuf, “Dynamic Collaborative Business Process Formulation via Ontologised Hierarchical Task Network Planning“, Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference of Web Services (IEEE ICWS 2009), 6-10 July 2009, pp. 959-967, Los Angeles, California, IEEE Computer Society Press.(Acceptance rate = 15.8%) [pdf]
  • Ryan K. L. Ko, Stephen S. G. Lee and Andre Jusuf, “Genesis – Dynamic Collaborative Business Process Formulation Based on Business Goals and Criteria“, IEEE Services Cup 2009, 6-10 July 2009, Proceedings of the 2009 IEEE Congress on Services-I, pp. 123-129, Los Angeles, California, IEEE Computer Society Press. [pdf]
  • Ryan K L Ko, E W Lee and Stephen S. G. Lee, “Business-OWL (BOWL) – A Hierarchical Task Network Ontology for Dynamic Business Process Decomposition and Formulation”, Submitted 19 March 2010. Undergoing revisions.

FastApps – Dynamic Program Generator

Brief Overview

FastApps is a core program which was built mainly using the RTTI (Runtime Type Information) classes in C++. FastApps enables a user to create C++ programs during runtime, without the need for compilation (FastApps is otherwise known as an application generator).

Project Date: July 2004 -May 2005

 

 

Some personal views: Programming vs Learning vs Planning

In the past, applications have traditionally been built for end-users from the programmer’s perspective and understanding.

Many examples include complex business systems, to the simple word processor. This approach, otherwise known as the programming approach, automates repetitive processes efficiently but is not natural, and creates the eventual problems of user rejection, training difficulties, setup costs, and precious time (think along the line of asking your grandma to use the latest Microsoft Office). There is a need for the end-users to be in charge. Users should be given applications which help them generate and use programs which works best for their goals, as-is processes and context. From the point of view of AI researchers, such applications can be achieved by two methods: Planning (generation of a guideline of steps given some goal) and/or learning (from past data, user experiences and habits). Hence, I am very keen to be a part of the planning and learning movement in making computer applications more semantic and human-centric tool in my future research.