Dr. Nathalie Mitton is the scientific head of the FUN research group, focused on small computing devices like electronic tags and sensor networks, at Inria Lille-Nord Europe. Her research interests are mainly focused on Communications in Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks, Self-Stabilization, Self-Organization, RFID Middleware and Internet of Things. She will be the General Chair at AdHocNets, the 7th International Conference on Ad Hoc Networks, that will take place in San Remo, Italy on September 1-2, 2015. Dr. Mitton talked with us about the Conference and the IOT world.
AdHocNets has come to its 7th edition. What do we have to expect from this year’s edition?
AdHocNets is a small and friendly conference. From my point of view, beyond the obvious traditional scientific presentations of new solutions, it is before all an opportunity to people working on similar topics to meet, discuss, share new and interesting ideas and, why not, start new collaborations.
The Internet of Things spreads widely, and more things around the world are going to be connected to the internet in the next decade. What is the impact of IoT on consumer’s privacy?
Of course this impacts the consumers privacy since by checking data, one can learn from the habits of another one. But most of the time, no need to be a great hacker to get this information, people publish their personal data in a volunteer and aware fashion like for instance on social networks. There is obviously a shift in privacy design solution and we all need to have it on mind, from the designer to the user going through the manufacturer.
In your opinion, in what should researchers invest their time, in order to accelerate progresses in Ad Hoc Networks?
Difficult question. I think there is not a single answer. There are so many issues to solve. Some examples concern the energy issue (all these devices mostly rely on batteries), network issues (how to collect and route all data generated and sensed everywhere), big data issues (how to store and process all this heterogeneous data and what for?), privacy, etc.