John Ancorn

Background

I started to work at NRC Cambridge in November 2005. Prior to this, I worked in research positions at HP Labs and at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), proceeded by 20 years of founding and being technical lead for multiple startups in Boston (compilers) and Tokyo (communications protocol stacks).

I am interested in the difficulties of building "systems of systems". Current systems, constructed of many independently developed components, often behave poorly if exposed to conditions not anticipated during design or because of subtle interactions between components. Through statistical and modeling techniques, I hope to get systems to behave more predictably and not fail catastrophically.

All time for hobbies has been taken up by working on projects around the house and activities described in the previous two paragraphs.

Research Interests

• Personal mobile appliances to provide access to infrastructure services.
• High performance communications servers.
• Thoughtful construction of complex systems involving both software and hardware components.

I like building things that address fundamental user needs, have a long-term competitive advantage and lead to stable, energetic organizations.

Currently, I'm doing research associated with the MyNet/UIA project.

Publications

Proceedings

A Lightweight UI Software Infrastructure for Wrist-based Displays,

Peter Hutterer, Mark Smith, John Ankcorn, Wayne Piekarski, Bruce Thomas. Accepted for publication at the Third International Conference on Information Technology and Applications, 2005, Sydney, Australia

Lightweight User Interfaces for Watch Based Displays,

Peter Hutterer, Mark Smith, Bruce Thomas, Wayne Piekarski, John Ankcorn. Accepted for publication at the Sixth Australasian User Interface Conference, 2005, Newcastle, Australia

Heterogeneous wireless network management,

Wajahat Quadeer, Tajana Simunic, John Ankcorn, Venky Krishnan, Givanni De Micheli. Third International Workshop, Power-Aware Computer Systems (PACS), 2003

Architecture of a Modular Streaming Media Server for Content Delivery Networks,

Sumit Roy, John Ankcorn, and Susie Wee. Proc. of IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo, Baltimore, Maryland, July, 2003

A System Architecture for Managing Mobile Streaming Media Services,

Sumit Roy, Michele Covell, John Ankcorn, Susie Wee, and Takeshi Yoshimura. Proc. of Workshop on Mobile Distributed Computing (ICDCSW'03), Providence, Rhode Island, May, 2003

Waveform Synthesis for Transmission of Complex Waveforms,

Matthew Welborn and John Ankcorn. Radio and Wireless Conference, Denver, Colorado, August 1999, Internal Technical Reports

Internal Technical Reports

Infrastructure for Interactive Streaming of Video to your Phone.

Sumit Roy, Michele Covell, John Ankcorn, Bo Shen, Wai-Tian Tan, John Apostolopoulos, Mitch Trott Frederic Huve, Scott McGlashan, Simon Morlat, Yann Stephan, Philippe Wieczorek. HP Tech Con, June, 2005

Fingertips of the Network: Featherweight Communicators and Sensors,

Andrew Christian, Jamey Hicks, Brian Avery, Ben Kuris, Don Denning, Steven Ayer, John Ankcorn. HPL-2005-114

Sensor-Enhanced Authentication Token.

Mat Hans, Mark Smith, John Ankcorn, HP Tech Con, June, 2004.

Content Exchange Appliances.

Dejan Milojicic, John Ankcorn, Rich Gossweiler, Jim Rowson, Larry Rudolph, Sonia Garg, Franklin Reynolds, Rajnish Kumar, Himanshu Raj. HPL-2003-139

A proxy-based architecture for secure networked wearable devices.

Todd Mills, Matthew Burnside, John Ankcorn, and Srinivas Devadas, Technical report, MIT Laboratory for Computer Science, May 2001.

Patent Applications

1. Method for managing a streaming media service. M. Harville, M. Covell, S. Wee, S. Roy, J. Ankcorn, B. Shen, 7/4/2003
2. Service management using multiple service location managers. M. Harville, M. Covell, J. Ankcorn, J. Apostolopoulos, S. Roy, B. Shen, W. Tan, S. Wee, 10/30/2003
3. System for doing service location management taking into account the node and network characteristics. M. Covell, S. Roy, J. Ankcorn, J. Apostolopoulos, M. Harville, B. Shen, W. Tan, S. Wee, 10/30/2003
4. Managing handoffs of media sessions among service providers. S. Roy, B. Shen, J. Ankcorn, J. Apostolopoulos, M. Covell, M. Harville, W. Tan, S. Wee, 10/30/2003
5. Systems and methods in which a provider is selected to service content requested by a client device. S. Roy, M. Covell, B. Shen, J. Ankcorn, J. Apostolopoulos, M. Harville, W. Tan, S. Wee, 10/30/2003
6. Systems and methods for performing a service on content requested by a client device. S. Roy, B. Shen, J. Ankcorn, J. Apostolopoulos, M. Covell, M. Harville, W. Tan, S. Wee, 10/30/2003
7. Method and system for managing a streaming media service / Combination case for service location management of media services. M. Harville, M. Covell, J. Ankcorn, J. Apostolopoulos, S. Roy, B. Shen, W. Tan, S. Wee, 10/30/2003
8. System and methods for selecting a provider to service content requested by a client device. S. Roy, M. Covell, J. Ankcorn, J. Apostolopoulos, M. Harville, B. Shen, W. Tan, S. Wee, 10/30/2003
9. Method for adapting service location placement based on recent data received from service nodes and actions of the service location manager. M. Covell, S. Roy, J. Ankcorn, J. Apostolopoulos, M. Harville, B. Shen, W. Tan, S. Wee, 10/30/2003
10. Two more not yet public