Presenting at the FAST’23 conference

ECpE PhD student Tabassum Mahmud, studying computer engineering, and undergrad Carson Love, in cyber security engineering, are two co-authors of a paper “ConfD: Analyzing Configuration Dependencies of File Systems for Fun and Profit”  that was accepted to appear at the 2023 USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies (FAST’23).

They attended the conference at the end of February to present their work. FAST is the flagship venue on storage system research, with the program committee selecting Mahmud to receive the Diversity Grant and Love to receive the Student Grant.

“I am very excited about going to the conference,” Mahmud said before attending. “Although I have attended FAST in the previous years, but this is first time I will be presenting my full paper there. It feels great.”

The paper analyzes the configuration dependencies of file systems which are responsible for many subtle issues in file systems. They use ConfD, a tool they built to find parameters and dependencies, trace how they are used and strategically test them.

“I feel honored not only to have the opportunity to attend the FAST conference, but also to have received a grant help cover the cost of attending in-person,” Love said. “As an undergraduate, I have found working with the Data Storage Lag (DSL) at Iowa State to be a fascinating glimpse into the world or research. Seeing the paper that I helped put together be presented at the FAST conference is a truly great capstone moment in this journey.”