Distributed systems must be worthy of the trust we place in them, yet theory and practice often speak different languages. My research bridges this gap by using theoretical rigor to solve practical problems and real-world deployments to surface new theoretical questions.
In this talk, I will present work spanning theoretical and practical aspects of distributed systems. I developed the first sub-quadratic asynchronous Byzantine Agreement algorithm, showing that consensus can be achieved with near-linear communication even without timing assumptions - resolving a long-standing open question. I will also discuss recent work on building and analyzing distributed systems at scale. Together, these projects illustrate how theoretical insights and practical demands can inform each other in the design of reliable distributed infrastructures.
Short bio:
Shir Cohen is a researcher at Gen Labs working on scalable distributed systems. She completed her PhD in Computer Science at Technion under the supervision of Prof. Idit Keidar, where she focused on Byzantine fault tolerance and efficient consensus protocols, and was subsequently a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University with Prof. Lorenzo Alvisi in the Systems Lab. Her research bridges theory and practice in distributed systems.