Pablo Rodriguez (; born 17 April) is a Spanish computer scientist and researcher, who is best known for his research in the mid-2000s on

peer-to-peer file sharing Peer-to-peer file sharing is the distribution and sharing of digital media using peer-to-peer (P2P) networking technology. P2P file sharing allows users to access media files such as books, music, movies, and games using a P2P software program th ...

and

user-generated content User-generated content (UGC), alternatively known as user-created content (UCC), is any form of content, such as images, videos, text, testimonials, and audio, that has been posted by users on online platforms such as social media, discussion f ...

. After working for technology and communications companies

AT&T AT&T Inc. is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the world's largest telecommunications company by revenue and the third largest provider of mobile te ...

and Microsoft Research, Rodriguez returned to Spain in 2006 to become the research director for telecommunications provider

Telefónica Telefónica, S.A. () is a Spanish multinational telecommunications company headquartered in Madrid, Spain. It is one of the largest telephone operators and mobile network providers in the world. It provides fixed and mobile telephony, broadba ...

. In 2010 took a position as an adjunct professor at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

in New York. Rodriguez has been a frequent guest speaker at technology conferences in Europe, such as the

International World Wide Web Conference The ACM Web Conference (formerly known as International World Wide Web Conference, abbreviated as WWW) is a yearly international academic conference on the topic of the future direction of the World Wide Web. The first conference of many was hel ...

, TEDx Barcelona and the Wired Conference in

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

. He has collaborated with chef

Ferran Adrià Ferran Adrià i Acosta (; born 14 May 1962) is a Spanish chef. He was the head chef of the ''El Bulli'' restaurant in Roses, Girona, Roses on the Costa Brava and is considered one of the best chefs in the world. He has often collaborated with h ...

of the restaurant

elBulli El Bulli () was a restaurant near the town of Roses, Catalonia, Spain , image_flag = Bandera de España.svg , image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg , national_motto = '' Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Fu ...

to develop Bullipedia, and in 2014 with football team

FC Barcelona Futbol Club Barcelona (), commonly referred to as Barcelona and colloquially known as Barça (), is a professional football club based in Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain, that competes in La Liga, the top flight of Spanish football. Found ...

to analyze their strategies.

Early life and education

Rodriguez was born in Oviedo, in the

Asturias Asturias (, ; ast, Asturies ), officially the Principality of Asturias ( es, Principado de Asturias; ast, Principáu d'Asturies; Galician-Asturian: ''Principao d'Asturias''), is an autonomous community in northwest Spain. It is coextensiv ...

region of Spain. After studying for his

Bachelor A bachelor is a man who is not and has never been married.Bachelors are, in Pitt & al.'s phrasing, "men who live independently, outside of their parents' home and other institutional settings, who are neither married nor cohabitating". (). Etymo ...

and

Master of Science A Master of Science ( la, Magisterii Scientiae; abbreviated MS, M.S., MSc, M.Sc., SM, S.M., ScM or Sc.M.) is a master's degree in the field of science awarded by universities in many countries or a person holding such a degree. In contrast t ...

Telecommunications Engineering Telecommunications Engineering is a subfield of electrical engineering which seeks to design and devise systems of communication at a distance. The work ranges from basic circuit design to strategic mass developments. A telecommunication enginee ...

at the

Universidad Pública de Navarra The Public University of Navarre ( eu, Nafarroako Unibertsitate Publikoa; es, Universidad Pública de Navarra) is a public university created in 1987 by the government of the Spanish autonomous region of Navarre ( es, Navarra, Basque: ''Nafarro ...

(1990–1995), Rodriguez continued his Master's in

computational physics Computational physics is the study and implementation of numerical analysis to solve problems in physics for which a quantitative theory already exists. Historically, computational physics was the first application of modern computers in science, ...

at King's College London, studying

electro-optical sensor Electro-optical sensors are electronic detectors that convert light, or a change in light, into an electronic signal. These sensors are able to detect electromagnetic radiation from the infrared up to the ultraviolet wavelengths. They are used in ...

s and collaborating on the research paper ''Advances in high-resolution distributed sensing using a time-resolved photon counting technique''. Travelling to Switzerland and France, Rodriguez studied

communication systems A communications system or communication system is a collection of individual telecommunications networks, transmission systems, relay stations, tributary stations, and terminal equipment usually capable of interconnection and interopera ...

at a

postgraduate Postgraduate or graduate education refers to academic or professional degrees, certificates, diplomas, or other qualifications pursued by post-secondary students who have earned an undergraduate ( bachelor's) degree. The organization and ...

level, and gained a PhD in

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includi ...

in 2000 from the

École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savoi ...

. During his doctorate studies, Rodriguez worked as an intern at

AT&T Labs AT&T Labs is the research & development division of AT&T, the telecommunications company. It employs some 1,800 people in various locations, including: Bedminster NJ; Middletown, NJ; Manhattan, NY; Warrenville, IL; Austin, TX; Dallas, TX; Atla ...

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

, and researched

scalability Scalability is the property of a system to handle a growing amount of work by adding resources to the system. In an economic context, a scalable business model implies that a company can increase sales given increased resources. For example, a ...

at the

Institut Eurécom EURECOM is a French Graduate school (''Grande École)'' and a research center in digital sciences. It is part of the Institut Mines-Télécom and it is a founding member of the SophiaTech Campus in Sophia Antipolis, the largest Science and Technol ...

. At AT&T, Rodriguez filed his first patents, TCP transparent proxies. His dissertation in 2002, ''Scalable content distribution in the Internet'', focused on scaling existing Internet architecture to perform content distribution to millions of users. As part of his doctorate, he designed parallel download algorithms to improve download times and resilience in

peer-to-peer Peer-to-peer (P2P) computing or networking is a distributed application architecture that partitions tasks or workloads between peers. Peers are equally privileged, equipotent participants in the network. They are said to form a peer-to-peer ...

file swarming systems.

Career

In the early 2000s, Rodriguez worked as a software architect for

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo Coun ...

companies such as search engine

Inktomi Inktomi Corporation was a company that provided software for Internet service providers (ISPs). It was incorporated in Delaware and headquartered in Foster City, California, United States. Customers included Microsoft, HotBot, Amazon.com, eBay, ...

, and network equipment company Tahoe Networks. In 2002, Rodriguez returned to AT&T to work at

Bell Labs Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial Research and development, research and scientific developm ...

, where he researched many of the early concepts of

networks and mobile computing. Following this, Rodriguez returned to England to begin working at

Microsoft Research Cambridge Microsoft Research (MSR) is the research subsidiary of Microsoft. It was created in 1991 by Richard Rashid, Bill Gates and Nathan Myhrvold with the intent to advance state-of-the-art computing and solve difficult world problems through technologi ...

in their systems and networking research group. By 2004, Rodriguez had already having ten patents. In 2005, Rodriguez co-designed

Avalanche An avalanche is a rapid flow of snow down a slope, such as a hill or mountain. Avalanches can be set off spontaneously, by such factors as increased precipitation or snowpack weakening, or by external means such as humans, animals, and eart ...

, a peer-to-peer client for legal files proposed to improve download efficiency and copy protection, which was released in 2007 as Microsoft Secure Content Distribution. In addition to Avalanche, Rodriguez researched content distribution, wireless systems, and complex networks, while conducting studies assessing

Windows Update Windows Update is a Microsoft service for the Windows 9x and Windows NT families of operating system, which automates downloading and installing Microsoft Windows software updates over the Internet. The service delivers software updates for Wind ...

, FolderShare and Xbox Live. Rodriguez further researched low-power

datacasting Datacasting (data broadcasting) is the broadcasting of data over a wide area via radio waves. It most often refers to supplemental information sent by television stations along with digital terrestrial television (DTT), but may also be applied ...

with Julian Chesterfield of the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a public collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209 and granted a royal charter by Henry III in 1231, Cambridge is the world's third oldest surviving university and one of its most pr ...

In November 2006, Rodriguez left the Avalanche project at Microsoft to work at Telefónica Catalunya in

Barcelona Barcelona ( , , ) is a city on the coast of northeastern Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within ci ...

, a center separate from Telefónica's main Madrid offices that was created in March 2006. There, he worked as the head of Telefónica's Barcelona research and development team, leading research on highly scalable distributed systems, next generation social networks and advanced wireless systems. In 2008, the team began working on BeWifi, a technology that employs ideas from peer-to-peer networks to gather additional bandwidth for Wi-Fi connections, using additional routers in the user's area. Initially employed as the Internet scientific director, in 2013 he became the center's director of research and innovation, focusing on big data concepts, until Telefónica Digital was merged into the company's Global Corporate Centre. Rodriguez has been collaborating with chef

of the former Michelin 3-star restaurant

to develop Bullipedia: a

Wiki A wiki ( ) is an online hypertext publication collaboratively edited and managed by its own audience, using a web browser. A typical wiki contains multiple pages for the subjects or scope of the project, and could be either open to the pub ...

format culinary repository of information about Spanish cuisine, which was first announced in early 2012. In 2014, Rodriguez collaborated with football team

to develop new strategies for football, by analyzing the team using network theory techniques. Rodriguez is a member of several advisory boards for companies and associations, including the scientific journal

IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking ''IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking'' is a bimonthly peer-reviewed scientific journal covering communication networks. It is published by the IEEE Communications Society, the IEEE Computer Society, and the ACM Special Interest Group on Data C ...

, the IMDEA Networks Institute since 2010, and the art and science exhibition centre

LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial LABoral Centro de Arte y Creación Industrial (Art and Industrial Creation Centre) is an exhibition centre in Gijón, Spain, for art, science, technology and advanced visual industries. It is also a venue for artistic and technological productio ...

Gijón Gijón () or () is a city and municipality in north-western Spain. It is the largest city and municipality by population in the autonomous community of Asturias. It is located on the coast of the Cantabrian Sea in the Bay of Biscay, in the cent ...

since 2013, and serves as a trustee board member of the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies since 2014.

University and educating

In the mid-2000s, Rodriguez collaborated on research papers dealing mainly with peer-to-peer content distribution. Two of these were highly influential in computer science: ''Network coding for large scale content distribution'' (2005) and ''Should internet service providers fear peer-assisted content distribution?'' (2005), which became highly cited papers for researchers. ''Network coding for large scale content distribution'', as well as a paper analyzing

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

networks, ''I tube, you tube, everybody tubes: analyzing the world's largest user generated content video system'' (2007), have been cited by thousands of papers and studies. In 2010 he joined the computer science department of

as an adjunct professor, where he taught about social networks and next generation system architectures. He held this position until 2012. In 2009, Rodriguez was one of four keynote speakers at the

, held in Madrid. Rodriguez has spoken at TEDx Barcelona in 2011 and 2014, discussing distributed programming and later

net neutrality Network neutrality, often referred to as net neutrality, is the principle that Internet service providers (ISPs) must treat all Internet communications equally, offering users and online content providers consistent rates irrespective of co ...

. At the 2013 Internet Measurement Conference, Rodriguez delivered the keynote speech, while receiving an award for a paper he collaborated on, entitled ''Follow the Money: Understanding Economics of Online Aggregation and Advertising''. In 2013 he was a part of a panel on Re-architecting the Internet for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' conference Infocom 2013, and in 2014 attended the Wired Conference as a guest speaker, discussing his research on FC Barcelona's strategies.

Awards and honors

In 2015 he was named a

fellow A fellow is a concept whose exact meaning depends on context. In learned or professional societies, it refers to a privileged member who is specially elected in recognition of their work and achievements. Within the context of higher education ...

of the Association for Computing Machinery "for contributions to content distribution architectures in peer-to-peer networks.".

References

Papers

* *

External links

Official website

Columbia University Course Page

TEDx Talk: My Data Soul
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rodriguez, Pablo 1972 births Alumni of King's College London AT&T people Computer systems researchers École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne alumni Information systems researchers Living people People from Oviedo Researchers in distributed computing Spanish academics Spanish computer scientists Telefónica Columbia University faculty Public University of Navarre alumni