Dr Paul Gardner-Stephen

Position/s:	Research Fellow (Rural, Remote and Humanitarian Telecommunications) School of Computer Science, Engineering and Mathematics
Phone:	work+61 8 82013730
Email:	paul.gardner-stephen@flinders.edu.au
Location:	SILC Building (3)
Postal address:	GPO Box 2100, Adelaide 5001, South Australia

Biography

Dr. Paul Gardner-Stephen views himself as the digital version of a blacksmith, crafting creative and skilled solutions to a wide range of problems. His research interests include, networking, scalable computing, mobile devices, mobile communication infrastructures, disaster and attack resilient technology, SPAM counter-measures and the application of these to make the world a better place.

Qualifications

PhD (Computer Systems Engineering / Bioinformatics), Flinders University (2007),
Bachelor of Science (Computer Science), Flinders University (2000).

Honours, awards and grants

Key responsibilities

Undertaking research in computer science and related fields, with a specific focus on the Serval Project, a humanitarian endeavour to make mobile telecommunications available to all people, regardless of income, location or disaster by allowing off-the-shelf cell phones to communicate directly without needing cell towers.
Contributing to the delivery of networking and communications topics within the School of Computer Science, Engineering & Mathematics.

Teaching

Topic Coordinator:

ENGR2782 Computer Networks
ENGR8782 Computer Networks GE

Research and consultancy

Research interests

Dr. Gardner-Stephen's research interests include SPAM, networking, scalable computing, mobile devices, mobile communication infrastructures, disaster and attack resilient technology, and the application of all these things to make the world a better place, and include:

The Serval Project: Telecommunications any where, any time.

Using OpenBTS as a basis for creating low-cost low-power GSM mobile telephone base stations
Using Village Telco's Mesh Potato wireless back-haul devices to create ad-hoc and infrastructure-free "land-line" telephone networks
Implementing the Mesh Potato feature-set on Android based smart phones to enable the creation of mixed mobile and land-line self-meshing ad-hoc telephone networks
Creating distributed infrastructure-free protocols that allow people to use their existing telephone numbers on ad-hoc telephone networks, both for temporary disaster-relief telephony and ad-hoc telephony for remote and emerging regions.
Creating Mesh-Potato compatible devices that operate on other unlicensed spectrum, such as the ISM UHF bands that promise much greater range, especially in remote and emerging regions.
Creating network services that scale to millions of simultaneous connections to handle demand surges, e.g., during disaster situations.
Creating innovative mesh-based networking solutions to meet specific industrial needs.

SPAM:

Investigating methods for filtering SPAM in languages other than English.

Postgraduate research supervision

Co-supervisor for doctoral candidate Hasan Alkahtani who is conducting research into the nature and possible defences against SPAM in the Arabic language.

Publications

Books

Gardner-Stephen, P.M. & Knowles, G.P., 2009. DASH: Searching Compressed DNA: Creating and Searching Compact Databases for The Genomic Era, Germany: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller.

Refereed journal articles

Gardner-Stephen, P.M. & Adeyey, M., 2011. The Village Telco project: a reliable and practical wireless mesh telephony infrastructure. EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking, 2011(78), 1-11.

Gardner-Stephen, P.M. & Knowles, G.P., 2007. NP3: Cooperative Compression Of Clustered DNA Databases And Their Indexes. WSEAS Transactions on Biology and Biomedicine, 3(7), 565-572.

Knowles, G.P. & Gardner-Stephen, P.M., 2006. DASH, DASH-H: Software and Hardware for Sequence Alignment. WSEAS Transactions on Biology and Biomedicine, 3(1), 37-42.

Refereed conference papers

Gardner-Stephen, P.M., Goodwin, R.D., & Alkatani, H., 2011. A Taxonomy of Email SPAM Filters. The 12th International Arab Conference on Information Technology, 12(Part II), 351-356.

Gardner-Stephen, P.M. & Palaniswamy, S., 2011. Serval mesh software-WiFi multi model management. Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Wireless Technologies for Humanitarian Relief, 71-77.

Alkatani, H., Goodwin, R.D., & Gardner-Stephen, P.M., 2011. Email spam related issues and methods of controlling used by ISPs in Saudi Arabia. The International Arab Conference on Information Technology (ACIT2011), 12(Part I), 344-351.

Alkahtani, H.S., Gardner-Stephen, P.M., & Goodwin, R.D., 2011. A Taxonomy of email SPAM filters. The 12th International Arab Conference on Information Technology, 12(Part 2), 351-356.

Alkahtani, H.S., Goodwin, R.D., & Gardner-Stephen, P.M., 2011. Email SPAM related issues and methods of controlling used by ISPs in Saudi Arabia. The 12th International Arab Conference on Information Technology, 12(Part 1), 344-351.

Gardner-Stephen, P.M., 2009. A Biologically Inspired Method of SPAM Detection. Proceedings of the 20th International Workshop on Database and Expert Systems Application, 53-56.

Show all publications

Books

Gardner-Stephen, P.M. & Knowles, G.P., 2009. DASH: Searching Compressed DNA: Creating and Searching Compact Databases for The Genomic Era, Germany: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller.

Refereed journal articles

Gardner-Stephen, P.M. & Knowles, G.P., 2007. NP3: Cooperative Compression Of Clustered DNA Databases And Their Indexes. WSEAS Transactions on Biology and Biomedicine, 3(7), 565-572.

Knowles, G.P. & Gardner-Stephen, P.M., 2006. DASH, DASH-H: Software and Hardware for Sequence Alignment. WSEAS Transactions on Biology and Biomedicine, 3(1), 37-42.

Refereed conference papers

Gardner-Stephen, P.M., Goodwin, R.D., & Alkatani, H., 2011. A Taxonomy of Email SPAM Filters. The 12th International Arab Conference on Information Technology, 12(Part II), 351-356.

Alkahtani, H.S., Gardner-Stephen, P.M., & Goodwin, R.D., 2011. A Taxonomy of email SPAM filters. The 12th International Arab Conference on Information Technology, 12(Part 2), 351-356.

Gardner-Stephen, P.M., 2009. A Biologically Inspired Method of SPAM Detection. Proceedings of the 20th International Workshop on Database and Expert Systems Application, 53-56.

Gardner-Stephen, P.M., 2007. Escalating the war on SPAM through practical PoW exchange. ICON 2007: 15th IEEE International Conference on Networks, (4444132), 473-476.

Gardner-Stephen, P.M. & Knowles, G.P., 2007. NP3: A New DNA Compression Algorithm. Proceedings of the 3rd WSEAS International Conference on Mathematical Biology and Ecology (MABE'07).

Gardner-Stephen, P.M. & Knowles, G.P., 2004. DASH: a new high speed genomic sequence search and alignment tool. WSEAS Transactions on Computers: Proceedings of the 4th WSEAS International Conference on Mathematics and Computers in Biology and Chemistry, 1, 59-64.

Knowles, G.P. & Gardner-Stephen, P.M., 2004. A new hardware architecture for genomic and proteomic sequence alignment. Proceedings of the IEEE Computational Systems Bioinformatics Conference, 730-731.

Knowles, G.P. & Gardner-Stephen, P.M., 2004. DASH: localising dynamic programming for order of magnitude faster, accurate sequence alignment. Proceedings of the IEEE Computational Systems Bioinformatics Conference, 732-735.

Knowles, G.P. & Gardner-Stephen, P.M., 2003. A novel architecture for genomic sequence searching and alignment. Advances in Computer Systems Architecture: Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2823, 180-192.

Conference publications

Gardner-Stephen, P.M., 2011. Sustaining Telecommunications Capability and Capacity during Acute Phase of Disasters and Disaster Responses. Prehospital and Disaster Medicine, 26(Supplement 1), s101-s102.

Gardner-Stephen, P.M., 2011. The Serval Project: Creating a Robust Infrastructure-Independent Communications Safety Net. The Engineering and Physical Sciences in Medicine and the Australian Biomedical Engineering Conference, 84-85.

Show selected publications

Professional and community engagement

Dr. Gardner-Stephen

contributes to the promotion of science by conducting a science experiment or exploration on ABC 891 South Australia's Drive program with Sonya Feldhoff between 4pm and 5pm alternate Wednesday afternoons.
is the founder of the humanitarian organisation the Serval Project, whose vision is Empowering all humanity through communication.
provides pro bono IT services to charitable and not-for-profit organisations.

Expertise for media contact

Computer Science and related fields Dr. Gardner-Stephen has a history of media experience including print, radio and television appearances in Australia and around the world, and is enthusiastic about communicating both his own research interests and science matters of general interest.
Shoe Phone (and its medical applications) Dr. Gardner-Stephen invented the world's first working shoe phone in the style of the Get Smart franchise, and is always willing to demonstrate it or be interviewed by shoe-phone.
Serval Project and mesh networking Dr. Gardner-Stephen is the founder of the Serval Project, which has created software that allows normal cell phones to communicate without using towers, supporting communications in disaster zones, remote locations and among people who cannot afford access to traditional telecommunications services.

Subject/s

Computers
Engineering - Computer Systems
Science
Technology

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