Bianca Schroeder
Faculty
Hailing from Germany originally, and Carnegie Mellon University more recently, Bianca has joined the Systems Group as the newest member of the team this year. With a main focus in computer system reliability, the goal of Bianca‚s work is to use data to develop a deeper understanding (and better models) of real-world
failures and on this basis design more reliable systems. She explains, Much research, in industry as well as academia, is based on hypothetical and often simplistic assumptions. The reason for that is that
there is virtually no data publicly available on failures in real large-scale
systems. In my recent work, I have convinced a number of large-scale sites,
including commercial sites and supercomputing labs, to collect and share detailed data on failures in their systems. This provides a very unique and exciting research opportunity, because this data can be used to derive more realistic models, and to design and build more reliable systems.
Bianca couples her enthusiasm for computer science with her appreciation of DCS: Computer science has such a large scope, from the very theoretical and mathematical areas, to the very applied work. I like that the department is large and very broad in its range of research it's great that we have very strong research groups in other areas of computer science, including, for example, Theory and AI.
Asked about some of the perks of being in cosmopolitan Toronto, Bianca remarks, "I enjoy exploring the different neighborhoods here. There's an amazing diversity of people and cultures - you walk a few blocks and the neighborhood completely changes. She laughs and adds, And it also has great food ˆ out of all of the places I interviewed last year, I definitely had the best food during my interview in Toronto!"
