Arun K. Somani

Arun K. Somani is Associate Dean for Research of College of Engineering, Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Philip and Virginia Sproul Professor at Iowa State University. Somani is Elected Fellow of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for “contributions to theory and applications of computer networks” from 1999 to 2017 and Life Fellow of IEEE since 2018. He is Distinguished Engineer of Association for Computing Machinery(ACM) and Elected Fellow of The American Association for the Advancement of Science(AAAS) Fellow.
Somani received a B.E. degree in Electronics Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani in 1973, an M.Tech in Computer Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology in 1979 and an MSEE in Electrical Engineering from McGill University in 1983. In 1985, after completing his Ph.D at McGill University, he joined the faulty of Electrical & Computer Engineering Department at University of Washington, serving as assistant professor from 1985 to 1990, associate professor from 1990 to 1995 and professor till 1997. 
In the same year, he joined the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Iowa State University. He serves as David C. Nicholas Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering from 1997 to 2002, Associate Chair for Resources from 1999 to 2003, Jerry R. Junkins Endowed Chair Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering from 2002 to 2014, Director of Information Infrastructure Institute from 2002 to 2015, Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering Department from 2003 to 2010, Chair of High Performance Steering Committee from 2012 to 2015, Anson Marston Distinguished Professor since 2007, Associate Dean for Research of College of Engineering since 2013 and Philip and Virginia Sproul Professor since 2014.
In 2010, Somani accepted a professional development assignment as Ram Rajindra Malhotra Professor at Indian Institute of Technology till 2011. He is also an honorary distinguished professor at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology(Taiwan Tech) since 2010 and a visiting professor at Gujarat Technological University since 2011. Somani is an Eminent Engineer at Tau Beta Pi since 2013. In 2017, Somani received Distinguish Alumnus Award from Prof. L. K. Maheshwari Foundation, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani(BITS, Pilani) and later in 2018, he received Honorary Distinguished Adjunct Professor and Distinguish Alumnus from the same institution. Professor Somani is and will be serving as a Fulbright Specialist from 2019 to 2024.
Professor Arun Somani’s contributions can be best described by the series of high profile and high impact projects that he conceived and led. With a timespan of nearly five decades since he started to work on building a dependable automated anti-submarine warfare system for the Indian Navy in 1974, he has made significant contributions to all facets of dependable computing and networking systems including their design, development, implementation, building, and deployment of experimental platforms. Specifically, he has contributed significantly and has been the chief architect and designer of:
*	an automated anti-submarine warfare system (Indian Navy, 1974-81).
*	newer models in system level diagnosis for multi-computer systems. 
*	methodologies, modeling tools, and frameworks to analyze highly reliable systems.
*	development of phased-mission and scheduled-maintained systems analysis techniques.
*	computer interconnection network topologies and design of the Proteus multi-computer system.
*	parallel computer system architecture and parallel algorithms.
*	optical fiber-based networks including design, operation, traffic routing and grooming, dependability algorithms, wavelength conversion and convertor placement, and network analysis.
*	different network architecture, design and operation methods.
*	aggressive designs for computing system design and soft error tolerance in memory systems.
*	image-vision processing algorithm and applications.
Somani characterized topological properties of multi-computer systems for larger fault-sets diagnosis using mutual tests. He developed system-level diagnosis methods, algorithms, and analyzed them.A. K. Somani, V. K. Agarwal and D. Avis, "A Generalized Theory for System-Level Diagnosis," IEEE Transactions on Computers, Vol. c-36, no. 5, May 1987, pp. 538-546.
A. K. Somani, V. K. Agarwal and D. Avis, "Complexity of Single Fault Diagnosability and Diagnosis Problems," IEEE Transactions on Computers, Vol. c-38, no. 2, February 1989, pp. 195-201.
A. K. Somani and M. Bagha, "Meshkin: A Fault Tolerant Computer Architecture with Distributed Fault Detection and Reconfiguration," in G. Gorke and H. Sorensen (eds.), Automation, systems, Methods, and Applications, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 214, (Proc. of 4th Intl. Conf. on Fault Tolerant Computing Systems Baden Baden, September 1989) Springer-Verlag, 1989, pp. 197-208. 
A. K. Somani, "Sequential Fault Occurrence and Reconfiguration in System-Level Diagnosis," IEEE Transactions on Computers, Vol 39, No. 12, Dec. 1990, pp. 1472-1475.
A. K. Somani and O. Peleg, "New Approaches in System-Level Diagnosis," Frontiers of Computing Systems Research, Essays on Emerging Technologies, Architectures and Theories, Volume 2, Plenum Publishing Corp, New York, NY USA, 1991, pp. 251-305 (55 pages).
A. K. Somani and V. K. Agarwal, "Distributed Diagnosis Algorithms for Regular Interconnected Structures," IEEE transactions on Computers, Vol. 41, No. 7, July 1992, pp. 899-906.
A. K. Somani and O. Peleg, "On Diagnosability of Large fault Sets and Its Applications to Regular-Interconnected Computer Systems," in IEEE Transactions on Computers, Vol. 45, No. 8, August 1996, pp 892-903.
. He then designed and analyzed the fault tolerance performance of the Meshkin computer system, prototyped by the Boeing Company, incorporating chip-level redundancy. This system included on-line diagnosis and reconfiguration approaches to tolerate multiple faults while minimizing the hardware complexity and performance penalties.
Somani’s group developed reliability analysis methods 
A. K. Somani and T. Sarnaik, "Reliability Analysis Techniques for Complex Multiple Fault Tolerant Computer Architectures," IEEE Transactions on Reliability, Vol 39, No. 5, Dec. 1990, pp. 547-556.
A. K. Somani, "Reliability Estimates of Fault Tolerant Systems in User Application Environment," SAE Communications in Reliability, Maintainability, and Supportability, An International Journal, Vol. 1, no. 1, 1994, pp. 3-13.
A. K. Somani, "Reliability Modeling of Structured Systems: Exploring Symmetry in State Space Generation," in the Proc. of 1997 Pacific Rim International Symposium on Fault Tolerant Systems, Taipei, Taiwan, pp. 78-84, December 1997.
A. V. Ramesh, D. W. Twigg, U. R. Sandadi, T. C. Sharma, K. S. Trivedi, and A. K. Somani, "An Integrated Reliability Modeling Environment," in Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier Science Limited; UK, Volume 65, Issue 1, March 1999, pp. 65 - 75.
A. K. Somani, "Reliability of Redundant Fault Tolerant Systems," J. Webster (ed.), Wiley Encyclopedia of Electrical and Electronics Engineering. John Wiley \& Sons, Inc, 2019, 18 pages, doi: 10.1002/047134608X.W6413.pub2.
to analyze highly complex and reliable system. He developed analysis techniques and integrated them into analysis frameworks and developed Hierarchical Methods, Analysis, and Prediction (HIMAP) tool
A. K. Somani, S. Palnitkar, and T. Sharma, "Reliability Modeling of Scheduled Maintenance Systems with Latent Failures," in Intl. Journal of Reliability, Quality, and Safety Engineering, Vol. 5, No. 4, 1998.
A. Anand and A. K. Somani, "Hierarchical Analysis of Fault Trees with Dependencies, Using Decomposition," in the Proc. of RAMS-1998, Los Angeles, CA, January 1998.
M. Sridharan, S. Ramasubramanian, and A. K. Somani, "HIMAP: Architecture, Features and Hierarchical Model Specification Techniques," in Proc. of 10th Intl. Conf. on Modelling, Techniques, and Tools for Computer Performance Evaluation, held at Palma de Mallorca, Balearic Island, Spain, September 1998, pp. 348-351.
G. Krishnamurthi, A. Gupta, and A. K. Somani, "The HIMAP Modeling Environment," in Proc. of PDCS-96, Sept. 24-27, 1996, Dijon, France.
. HIMAP includes reliability evaluation of systems that go through multiple phases and use scheduled maintenance strategy 
A. K. Somani, J. Ritcey, and S. Au, "Phased-Mission Reliability Analysis," in IEEE Transactions on Reliability, December 1992, pp. 504-511.
A. K. Somani and K. S. Trivedi, "Phased-Mission System Analysis Using Boolean Algebraic Methods," in Performance Evaluation Review, vol. 22, no. 1., May 1994, pp. 98-107.
A. K. Somani, T. Sharma, and P. Nguyen, "Reliability Computation of Systems with Latent Failures and Monitoring Chains," in the Proc. of RAMS-1994, at Los Angeles, Jan. 1994, pp. 195-200. 
A. K. Somani, "Simplified Phased-Mission Systems Analysis for Systems with Independent Component Repairs," in Intl. Journal of Reliability, Quality, and Safety Engineering, Vol. 4, No. 2, 1997, pp. 167-189. 
. These methods and tools have become a tool of choice for many commercial avionics systems and industries use as they help avoid overdesign for highly reliable systems.
Somani’s group designed and analyzed a series of computer interconnection network topologies 
A. Menn and A. K. Somani, "An Efficient Sorting Algorithm for the Star Graph Interconnection Network," in the Proc. of ICPP-90, August 1990, pp. III/1-III/8.
S. B. Choi and A. K. Somani, "The Generalized Folding-Cube Network," NETWORKS, An International Journal, Vol. 21, March 1991, pp. 267-294.
S. B. Choi and A. K. Somani, "Rearrangeable Circuit-Switched Hypercube Architecture for Routing Permutations," JPDC, Vol. 19, 1993, pp. 125-133.
A. K. Somani and S. Thatte, "The Helical Cube Network," NETWORKS, An International Journal, Vol. 26 (1995), pp. 87-100.
S. B. Choi and A. K. Somani, "Design and Performance Analysis of Load-distributing Fault-tolerant Network," in IEEE Transactions on Computers, Vol. 45, No. 5, May 1996, pp. 540-551.
H. ElGindy, A. K. Somani, H. Schroder, H. Schmeck, and A. Spray, "RMB -- A Reconfigurable Multiple Bus Network," in Proc. of Second High Performance Computer Architecture Symposium, February 1996, pp. 108-117.
that facilitate specific high-performance and scalable communication methods. These topologies were utilized in the design, development, and implementation of a scalable multi-computer system architecture termed Proteus 
A. K. Somani, C. Wittenbrink, R. M. Haralick, L. G. Shapiro, J. N. Hwang, C. Chen, R. Johnson, and K. Cooper, "Proteus System Architecture and Organization," in the Proc. of 5th International Parallel Processing Symposium, June 1991, pp. 287-294.
R. M. Haralick, Y. H. Yao, L. G. Shapiro, I. T. Phillips, A. K. Somani, J. N. Hwang, M. Harrington, C. Wittenbrink, C. H. Chen, X. Liu, S. Chen, "Proteus Management and Control System," in Proc. of 1993 Computer Architecture and Machine Perception, New Orleans, LA, Dec. 1993, pp. 101-108.
R. M. Haralick, A. K. Somani, C. Wittenbrink, R. Johnson, K. Cooper, L. G. Shapiro, I. T. Phillips, J. N. Hwang, W. Cheung, Y. H. Yao, C.-H Chen, L. Yang, B. Daugherty, B. Lorbeski, K. Loving, T. Miller, L. Parkins, and S. Soos, "Proteus: A Reconfigurable Computational Network for Computer Vision," Machine Vision and Applications, 1995, Vol. 8 (no. 2), pp. 85-100, February 1995.
A. K. Somani, C. M. Wittenbrink, C. H. Chen, R. E. Johnson, K. H. Cooper, et.al, "Multiprocessor system with write generate method for updating cache," US Patent 5,524,212, 1996.
, for U.S. Coastal Navy. The innovation in hierarchical design was realized using only two large hardware modules, a shared memory cluster of processors and a specialized network board. It is worth noting that the IBM cell processor chip designed in 2001 uses almost the same architecture.
Proteus was optimized for large granularity computing tasks for scientific and computer vision applications. The cluster node power was balanced with the richness of the rearrangeable circuit-switched hypercube and generalized folding cube network architectures, and a fault-tolerant hardware synchronization chip 
M. Harrington and A. K. Somani, "Synchronizing Hypercube Networks in the Presence of Faults," IEEE Transactions on Computers, Oct. 1994, pp. 1175-1183.
. Each node included a large 1MB cache memory with innovative mechanisms. The architecture minimized time penalty by overlapping computation and communication, resulting in higher practical efficiency 
A. K. Somani and A. Sansano, "Achieving Robustness and Minimizing Overhead in Parallel Algorithms Through Overlapped Communication/Computation," The Journal of Supercomputing, Vol. 16, no. 1-2, pp. 27-52, May 2000.
. The system was utilized for performing various parallel image and vision processing algorithms developed by Somani’s research group 
C. M. Wittenbrink and A. K. Somani, "Cache Tiling for High-Performance Morphological Image Processing," in Machine Vision and Applications, special issue on vision processing architectures, Nov. 1993, pp. 12-22.
C. M. Wittenbrink and A. K. Somani, "2D and 3D Optimal Parallel Image Warping," Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, Vol. 25, No. 2, pages 197-208, March 1995.
C. M. Wittenbrink, A. K. Somani, and C.-H. Chen, "Cache Write Generate for Parallel Image Processing on Shared Memory Architectures," in IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, Vol. 5, No. 7, July 1996, pp. 1204-1208. 
C. M. Wittenbrink and A. K. Somani, "Time and Space Optimal Data Parallel Volume Rendering Using Permutation Warping," in Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, Volume 46, Number 2, November 1, 1997, pp. 148-164..
Proteus system development also led to the development of other innovative parallel computing system architectural concepts 
A. K. Somani and V. K. Agarwal, "An Efficient Unsorted VLSI Dictionary Machine," IEEE Transactions on Computers, Vol. c-34, no. 9, September 1985, pp. 841-852.
C. Chen and A. K. Somani, "Architectural Techniques Tradeoff Using Mean Memory Delay Time," in IEEE Transactions on Computers, Vol. 45, No. 10, October 1996, PP. 1089-1100.
H. Kim, A. K. Somani, and A. Tyagi, "A Reconfigurable Multi-Function Computing Cache Architecture," in IEEE Transactions on Very Large-Scale Integration Systems, Vol. 9, No. 4, August 2001, pp. 509-523.
R. Sangireddy, H. Kim and A. K. Somani, "Low Power High Performance Reconfigurable Computing Cache Architectures", IEEE Transactions on Computers, Vol. 53, No.10, October 2004, pp. 1274-1290. 
R. Gupta, V. Sekhri, and A. K. Somani, "CompuP2P: An Architecture for Internet Computing Using Peer-to-Peer Networks," in IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, Vol. 17, No. 11, Nov 2006, pp. 1306-1320.
and parallel computing frameworks 
R. Gupta, and A. K. Somani, "Reputation Management Framework and its Use as Currency in Large-Scale Peer-to-Peer Networks," In Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Peer-to-Peer Computing, August 2004 pp. 124-130.-55
R. Al-Omari, A. K. Somani, and G. Manimaran, "Efficient overloading techniques for primary-backup scheduling in real-time systems," in Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, Vol. 64, Issue 5, May 2004, pp. 629-648.
R. Gupta, and A. K. Somani, "Game Theory as a Tool to Strategize as well as Predict Nodes Behavior in Peer-to-Peer Networks," in the proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems Volume 1, 20-22 July 2005, Vol. 1, pp. 244-249, doi: 10.1109/ICPADS.2005.157.
R. A. Omari, A. K. Somani, and G. Manimaran, "An adaptive scheme for fault-tolerant scheduling of soft real-time tasks in multiprocessor systems," Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, Vol. 65, no. 5, pp. 595-608, May 2005.
C. J. Kleinheksel and A. K. Somani, "Efficient Distributed All-Pairs Algorithms: Management using Optimal Cyclic Quorums," in IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 2017, Volume 29, Issue 2, pp. 391-404, DOI10.1109/TPDS.2017.2707417.
by his research group to manage operation, high performance, and fault tolerance scheduling of various tasks meeting the real time requirements.
After Proteus, Somani focused on three significant challenges in optical network design 
M. Sridharan and A.K. Somani, "Design for Upgradability in Mesh-Restorable Optical Networks," in Special Issue on Protection/Restoration Meets the Reliability Challenge for the Optical Internet, Optical Networks Magazine, May/June 2002, pp. 77-87.
J. Fang, W. He and A. K. Somani, "Optimal Light Trail Design in WDM Optical Networks," in proceedings of ICC 2004, Vol. 3, June 2004, pp. 1699-1703, doi: 10.1109/ICC.2004.1312799.
A. K. Somani, M. Mina, and L. Li, "On Trading Wavelengths with Fibers: A Cost-Performance Based Study," in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, Vol. 12, Issue. 5, October 2004, pp. 944 - 951.
A. Gumaste, T. Das, R. Vaishampayan, J. Wang, and A. K. Somani, "Extending Light-Trails to Regional Networks: Multi-hop Light-Trails (MLT)-System Design and Performance," in Journal of Optical Communications and Networking, Vol. 4, Issue 12, 2012, pp. 1046-1061.
C. J. Kleinheksel and A. K. Somani, "Optical quorum cycles for efficient communication," in The Photonic Network Communications, April 2016, Volume 31, Issue 2, pp 196-205.
and operation 
A. K. Somani and M. Azizoglu, "Wavelength Assignment Issues in Wavelength-Routed Networks," IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technologies 2001, Vol. 18, No. 12, December 2000, pp. 1807-1817.
M. Sridharan, A. K. Somani, and M. Salapaka, "Approaches for Capacity and Revenue Optimization in Survivable WDM Network," in Special issue on Survival Network, Journal of High Speed Network, vol. 10, no. 2, August 2001, pp. 109-125. -47 
M. Sridharan, M. V. Salapaka, A. K. Somani, "A Practical Approach to Operating Survivable WDM Networks," in the Journal of Selected Areas in Communications: Special Issue on WDM-based Network Architectures, January 2002, Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 34-46.
N. Jose and A. K. Somani, "Connection Rerouting/Network Reconfiguration," in 4th International Workshop on the Design of Reliable Communication Networks (DRCN 2003), Banff, Alberta, Canada, October 2003, pp. 23-30.
A. M. Hamad, T. Wu, A. E. Kamal and A. K. Somani, "Multicasting Protocols for Wavelength-Routing Networks," Elsevier Computer Networks, Volume 50, Issue 16, 14 November 2006, Pages 3105 – 3164.: efficient utilization of high-capacity wavelength channels 
L. Li and A. K. Somani, "Dynamic Wavelength Routing Using Congestion and Neighborhood Information," IEEE/ACM Trans. On Networking, Volume 7, No. 5, October 1999, pp. 779-786.
G. Mohan, A. K. Somani, and C. S. R. Murthy, "Efficient Algorithms for Routing Dependable Connections in WDM Optical Networks," in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, Vol. 9, Issue 5, October 2001, pp.553 -566.
R. Srinivasan and A. K. Somani, "Request-specific routing in WDM grooming networks" 2002 IEEE International Conference on Communications, ICC 2002 (Cat. New York, NY, USA, 2002, pp. 2876-2880 vol.5, doi: 10.1109/ICC.2002.997366.
R. Srinivasan and A. K. Somani, "Dynamic Routing in WDM Grooming Networks," in Journal of Photonic Network Communications, 5(2), March 2003, pp. 123-135.
P. Datta and A. K. Somani, "Diverse routing for shared risk resource groups (SRRG) failures in WDM optical networks," First International Conference on Broadband Networks, San Jose, CA, USA, 2004, pp. 120-129, doi: 10.1109/BROADNETS.2004.34.
, routing small granularity traffic on high-capacity channels or traffic grooming 
S. Thiagarajan and A. K. Somani, "Capacity Fairness of WDM Networks with Grooming Capabilities," in the Optical Network Magazine, Kluwer Academic Publishers, May/June 2001, pp. 24-32.
S. Thiagarajan and A.K. Somani, "Traffic Grooming for Survivable WDM Mesh Networks," in Special Issue on Protection/Restoration Meets the Reliability Challenge for the Optical Internet, Optical Networks Magazine, May/June 2002, pp.88-98. 
S. Thiagarajan and A. K. Somani, "A Capacity Correlation Model for WDM Networks with Grooming Capabilities," in Proc. IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC) 2001, June 2001, Helsinki, Finland, pp. 1592-1596. doi: 10.1109/ICC.2001.937188.-52 
R. Srinivasan and A. K. Somani, "On achieving fairness and efficiency in high-speed shared medium networks," in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, Vol. 11, No. 1, February 2003, pp. 111-124.
, and efficient management of fiber failures 
G. Mohan and A. K. Somani, "Routing dependable connections with specified failure restoration guarantees in WDM networks," Proceedings IEEE INFOCOM 2000, Tel Aviv, Israel, 2000, pp. 1761-1770 vol.3, doi: 10.1109/INFCOM.2000.832576.
M. Fredrick and A. K. Somani, "A single-fault recovery strategy for optical networks using subgraph routing," in the Proc. of the 7th IFIP Working Conference on Optical Network Design & Modeling, ONDM-2003, Budapest Hungary, February 2003.
W. He and A. K. Somani, "Path-based protection for surviving double-link failures in mesh-restorable optical networks," IEEE GLOBECOM, 2003, pp. 2558-2563 vol.5, doi: 10.1109/GLOCOM.2003.1258699.
M. T. Frederick, P. Datta and A. K. Somani, "Sub-Graph Routing: A generalized fault-tolerant strategy for link failures in WDM Optical Networks," in Computer Networks 50 (2006), pp. 181-199.
. Somani made significant contributions on all three topics in collaboration with his students.
In a series of highly cited work, he studied the impact of topological connectivity and showed that wavelength converters do not impact routing performance in both dense and sparse networks yet are useful only for mesh topologies 
S. Subramaniam, M. Azizoglu and A. K. Somani, "Connectivity and sparse wavelength conversion in wavelength-routing networks," Proceedings of IEEE INFOCOM '96. Conference on Computer Communications, San Francisco, CA, 1996, pp. 148-155 vol.1, doi: 10.1109/INFCOM.1996.497888.
S. Subramaniam, M. Azizoglu, and A. K. Somani, "All-optical networks with sparse-wavelength conversion," in IEEE Transactions on Networking, Volume 4, Issue 4, August 1996, pp. 544-557.
S. Thiagarajan and A. K. Somani, "An efficient algorithm for optimal wavelength converter placement on wavelength-routed networks with arbitrary topologies," IEEE INFOCOM '99. 1999, pp. 916-923 vol.2, doi: 10.1109/INFCOM.1999.751481.
S. Subramaniam, M. Azizoglu, and A. K. Somani, "On Optimal Converter Placement in Wavelength-Routed Networks," IEEE/ACM Journal of Networking, Volume 7, No. 5, October 1999, pp. 754-766.
S. Thiagarajan and A. K. Somani, "Optimal Wavelength Converter Placement in Arbitrary Topology Wavelength-Routed Networks," in Elsevier Computer Communications, Vol. 26, Issue 9, June 2003, pp. 975-985..
Because wavelength conversion is expensive, this work is extremely important for practical designs. Somani also developed optimal strategies and computationally efficient algorithms to place a given set of wavelength converters, to route dependable connections, to achieve fairness and efficiency, to design with no converters, to monitor and locate cross-talk attacks, and to manage connections. His group’s analysis work 
S. Subramaniam, A. K. Somani, M. Azizoglu, and R. A. Barry, "A performance model for wavelength conversion with non-Poisson traffic" in Proc. IEEE INFOCOM'97, pp. 499-506, April 1997.
L. Li and A. Somani, "A New Analytical Model for Multifiber WDM Networks," in IEEE Journal of Selected Areas in Communications, Vol. 18, Issue 10, Oct. 2000, pp. 2138-2145.
R. Srinivasan and A. K. Somani, "A Generalized Framework for Analyzing Time-Space Switched Optical Networks," in the Journal of Selected Areas in Communications: Special Issue on WDM-based Network Architectures, January 2002, Vol. 20, No. 1, pp. 202-215.
S. Ramasubramanian and A. K. Somani, "Analysis of optical networks with heterogeneous grooming architectures," in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, vol. 12, no. 5, October 2004, pp. 931-943.
influenced the research and practice in this field. Based on his research, Somani published a sole-author book, Survivability and Traffic Grooming in Optical Networks, for graduate education
A. K. Somani, "Survivability and Traffic Grooming in Optical Networks," Cambridge Press Book, 436 pages, 2006..
Besides his research in optical fiber-based networking work, he made significant contributions in high-speed IP network routing 
R. Sangireddy and A. K. Somani, "High-Speed IP Routing with Binary Decision Diagrams Based Hardware Address Lookup Engine", in IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, IEEE J-SAC, June 2003, pp. 513-521.
R. Sangireddy, N. Futamura, Srinivas Aluru, and Arun K. Somani, "Scalable, Memory Efficient, High-Speed Algorithms for IP Lookups," in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, Vol.13, Issue 4, August 2005, pp. 802-812.,
fault diagnosis in sensor network 
J. Chen, S. Kher, A. K. Somani, "Distributed Fault Detection of Wireless Sensor Networks," in Proc. of DIWANS-06 (Dependability issues in wireless ad-hoc sensor networks, Sept. 2006, Los Angeles, CA, pp. 65.72, https://doi.org/10.1145/1160972.1160985., attack management in optical fiber networks 
T. Wu and A. K. Somani, "Crosstalk Attack Monitoring and Localization in All-Optical Networks," in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, December 2005, pp. 1390-1401. doi: 10.1109/TNET.2005.860103., energy infrastructure network 
J. Ding and A. K. Somani, "A long-term investment planning model for mixed energy infrastructure integrated with renewable energy," in Proc. of IEEE 2nd Annual IEEE Green Technologies, April 2010, Dallas Forth Worth, TX, pp. 1-10., and general network design and operation A. K. Somani, "Network Design: Algorithms and Examples," In Wiley Encyclopedia of Electrical and Electronics Engineering (John Webster, ed.) Hoboken: John Wiley \& Sons, Inc., March 2016, 31 pages.
C. J. Kleinheksel and A. K. Somani, "Enhancing Fault Tolerance and Resource Utilization in Unidirectional Quorum-based Cycle Routing," in IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, 2018, DOI: 10.1109/TNET.2018.2811386, 14 pages, March 2018..
Computer system design is becoming very aggressive and as a result transient errors are becoming a major concern in future processor and memory system designs 
A. K. Somani and S. Kim, "Transient Fault Detection in Cache Memories by Employing a Small Shadow Cache," in Proc. of DCCA-6, March 1997, pp. 21-46.
A. K. Somani and K. S. Trivedi, "A Cache Error Propagation Model," in the Proc. of 1997 Pacific Rim International Symposium on Fault Tolerant Systems, Teipei, Taiwan, pp. 15-21, December 1997.
S. Kim and A. K. Somani, "An Adaptive Write Error Detection Technique in On-Chip Caches of Multi-Level Caching Systems," Microprocessors and Microsystems Journal, Vol. 22, No. 9, March 1999.
C. Chen and A. K. Somani, "Fault Containment in Cache Memories for TMR Redundant Processor Systems," in IEEE Transactions on Computers, Vol. 48, No. 4, March 1999, PP. 386-397.
S. Kim and A. K. Somani, "Area Efficient Architectures for Information Integrity Checking in Cache Memories," in the Proceedings of International Symposium on Computer Architecture, May 1999, pp. 246-256.
R. Yelaswarapu and A. K. Somani, ``Addressing multiple bit/symbol errors in DRAM Peer J Computer Science, Jan 2021.
Somani was among the first to study error propagation characteristics due to transient faults in processor registers, logic, and cache memories. His earlier work in reliable caching architecture was extended for the dual purpose of performance and reliability improvement. More recently, he designed and patented low-level fault-tolerant techniques and aggressive overclocking to balance the performance and power consumption in computer systems 
A. K. Somani and N. H. Vaidya, "Understanding Fault Tolerance and Reliability," IEEE Computer, Vol. 30, No. 4, April 1997, pp. 45-50.
S. Kim and A. K. Somani, "Soft error sensitivity characterization for microprocessor dependability enhancement strategy," Proceedings International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks, Washington, DC, USA, 2002, pp. 416-425, doi: 10.1109/DSN.2002.1028927.
N. D. P. Avirneni and A. K. Somani, "Low Overhead Soft Error Mitigation Techniques for High-Performance and Aggressive Designs," IEEE Transactions on Computers, April 2012, Vol 61(04), pp. 488-501. .N. Pavan Kumar Gorti and A. K. Somani, "Reliability aware dynamic voltage and frequency scaling for improved microprocessor lifetime," ACM SIGOPS Operating Systems Review, Vol. 47, No. 3, December 2013, pp. 10-17. DOI>10.1145/2553070.2553073.
N. D. P. Avirneni and A. K. Somani, "Countering power analysis attacks using Reliable and Aggressive Designs," IEEE Transactions on Computers, Vol. 63(6), 2014, pp. 1408-1420, DOI: 10.1109/TC.2013.9.
N. D. P. Avirneni, Prem Kumar, and A. K. Somani, "Managing contamination delay to improve Timing Speculation architectures," PeerJ Computer Science 2:e79, 2016, https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj-cs.79. 
N. D. P. Avirneni, P. K. Ramesh, and A. K. Somani, "Utilization aware Power Management in Reliable and Aggressive Chip Multi Processors," in IEEE Transactions on Computers, Vol. 65(3), 2016, pp. 979-991. DOI: 10.1109/TC.2015.2439277..
GPS (global positioning system)-denied navigation and augmentation is emerging as an interesting challenge in using GPS services. Future of intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions involve GPS-denied environments. GPS spoofing and jamming are immediate threats. Somani's research goal in this area is to develop a self-calibrating image navigation system 
K. Celik, S. J. Chung, A. K. Somani, "Mono-Vision Corner SLAM for Indoor Navigation," in Proc. of IEEE Electronics and Information Technology, May 2008, pp. 343-348.
K. Celik, S. J. Chung, and A. K. Somani, "MVCSLAM: Mono-Vision Corner SLAM for Autonomous Micro-Helicopters in GPS Denied Environments," in Proc. of GNC'08, AIAA, 2008, pp. 1-14.
K. Celik, S. Chung, M. Clausman and A. K. Somani, "Monocular vision SLAM for indoor aerial vehicles," 2009 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, St. Louis, MO, 2009, pp. 1566-1573, doi: 10.1109/IROS.2009.5354050.
K. Celik, S. J. Chung, and A. K. Somani, "Biologically Inspired Monocular Vision Based Navigation and Mapping in GPS-Denied Environments," in Proc. of AIAA Infotech@Aerospace, Unmanned-Unlimited, Apr 6-9, 2009, Seattle WA.
A. K. Somani and K. Celik, "Autonomous Aero-Visual and Sensor Based Inspection Network for Asset Monitoring (invited Paper)," in Proc. of the 7th International Workshop on the Design of Reliable Communication Networks (DRCN 2009), Washington DC, October 25-28, 2009..
His group has developed methods to establish and verify current location based on manmade and natural landmarks characteristics from available databases and available imagery from camera systems. In particular, he has developed a characterization of mountain signature. This extends the GPS-denied missions in mountain areas, with no assumption of human-made geographic objects 
T. Wang, K. \c{C}elik, and A. K. Somani, "Characterization of mountain drainage patterns for GPS-denied UAS navigation augmentation," Machine Vision and Applications, January 2016, Volume 27, Issue 1, pp 87-101, DOI: 10.1007/s00138-015-0723-9.
T. Wang and A.K. Somani, "Aerial-DEM Geo-localization for GPS-Denied UAS Navigation," Machine Vision and Applications, 2019, 31, 3 (2020) doi:10.1007/s00138-019-01052-6.
More recently he has also ventured in storage system design issues 
P. Mishra, M. Mishra, A. K. Somani, "Bulk IO Storage Management for Big Data Applications," in the IEEE Computer Society Modeling, Analysis, and Simulation of Computer and Telecommunication Systems (MASCOTS, 2016), London, UK, September 19-21, 2016, DOI: 10.1109/MASCOTS.2016.61.
P. Mishra and A. K. Somani, "Host Managed Contention Avoidance Storage Solutions for Big Data," in Journal of Big Data Systems, Springer Nature, 2017, 4:18. DOI 10.1186/s40537-017-0080-9.
M. Mishra and A. K. Somani, "On-Disk Data Processing: Issues and Future Directions," 2018, arXiv preprint arXiv:1709.02718., which is becoming very important in today's big-data world.
Somani has published more than 400 technical papers in leading journals and conferences. He holds 12 patents related to technology development. His work is cited over 9,500 times with an h-index of 50 as per Google Scholar.
As for professional society service, he is activity engaged in a very high level in ACM and IEEE Computer Society, the two large societies exclusively devoted to research in information, computing and communication. Somani regularly serves on 5-6 conferences every year in various capacities. He is a member of ACM Special Interest Group on Architecture and has served on editorial boards of influential journals such as IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (2003-2009), IEEE Transactions on Computers (1997-2002), and Elsevier Computer Networks (2003-present), among others. 
He has delivered 60 talks as keynote, tutorial, dinner, and invited speaker; and has served as IEEE Computer Society and Communication Society Distinguished Lecturer. He is a Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of AAAS, and an ACM Distinguished Engineer. 
He has served as department chairperson of a large department for over 7 years during which time he deserves credit for hiring many successful young faculty members and managing the department to leapfrog its research productivity.
Somani has been a leading participant in developing curricula at two major universities: a computer engineering degree at the University of Washington, Seattle and software engineering degrees at Iowa State University. 
He introduced the use of hardware description languages in computer architecture and design classes. Inspired by Somani, one of his students, Samir Palnitkar, wrote a widely used book on Verilog for design classes. 
In 2004-06, Somani developed and taught a 12-credit sequence for a Vertical Integration of Engineering Education program, integrating digital logic design, computer system architecture, and application of microcontrollers courses in the curriculum. Controlled experiments indicated that students believed they had a better conceptual understanding and curricular experience when compared with students in the traditional curriculum. 
Somani also has taught several short courses at Boeing, Guidant, Rockwell Collins, Lockheed Corporation, and AlliedSignal. 
He is an ABET program evaluator for computer engineering, electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and communication and telecommunication engineering programs. Somani has mentored more than 40 Ph.D. and 85 M.S. students.
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Category:Dean College
Category:College and university professors
Category:Professorships