Dr. Christian Berger
About me
I am currently working at the Chair of Reliable Distributed Systems and previously worked at the Junior Professorship for Security in Information Systems.
Dr. rer. nat. Christian Berger
Innstr. 43
94032 Passau
Room: ITZ/IH 135a
Phone: +49(0)851/509-3230
Email: cb[AT]sec.uni-passau.de
Appointments by prior arrangement
My research focuses on:
- Byzantine Fault Tolerance
- State Machine Replication
- Consensus Algorithms
- Blockchain Systems & Distributed Ledger Technology
Bio
I obtained my Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Computer Science in 2014 and 2017, respectively, from the University of Passau, Germany. In 2018, I began working as a research assistant and PhD candidate under Prof. Dr. Hans Reiser at the Chair of Security in Information Systems at the University of Passau. My research interests include Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus and state machine replication algorithms, as well as distributed ledger technologies. In November 2024, I graduated as a Dr. rer. nat. at the Faculty of Computer Science and Mathematics at the University of Passau.
Memberships:
- Member of the IEEE Computer Society, ACM, and GI (Gesellschaft für Informatik)
Open-Source Activity:
- Maintainer of the BFT-SMaRt project on GitHub (a modern replication library for BFT)
- Owner of the Delphi-BFT project on GitHub (a tool for automating large-scale simulations)
Review Activities:
- Reviewer for the following journals:
- IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing
- ACM Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing
- Science of Computer Programming
- Blockchain: Research and Applications
- Computer Communications
Awards:
- Best Paper Candidate @ SRDS’19
- Prof. C.V. Ramamoorthy Best Paper Award @ SRDS'21
- EDCC’22 Distinguished Paper Award
Interests:
- Reliable distributed systems
- Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus and replication
- Distributed ledger technologies, blockchain systems, and DeFi
Recent Publications
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2024
(new) Christian Berger. Towards Fast and Adaptive Byzantine State Machine Replication for Planetary-Scale Systems. PhD Thesis. Accepted by the Faculty of Computer Science and Mathematics at the University of Passau. November 2024. |
(new) Christian Berger, Sadok Ben Toumia, Hans P. Reiser. Exploring Scalability of BFT Blockchain Protocols through Network Simulations. ACM Formal Aspects of Computing. Accepted in July 2024. |
(new) Christian Berger, Hans P. Reiser. Poster: Optimizing Tree-based Quorum Certification for BFT Systems at Planetary-Scale. 54th Annual IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks-Supplemental Volume (DSN-S). June 2024. |
(new) Christian Berger, Lívio Rodrigues, Hans P. Reiser, Vinícius Cogo, Alysson Bessani. Chasing Lightspeed Consensus: Fast Wide-Area Byzantine Replication with Mercury. The 25th ACM/IFIP International Middleware Conference (MIDDLEWARE'24). December 2024. |
2023
Christian Berger, Signe Schwarz-Rüsch, Arne Vogel, Kai Bleeke, Leander Jehl, Hans P. Reiser, Rüdiger Kapitza. SoK: Scalability Techniques for BFT Consensus. The 5th IEEE International Conference on Blockchain and Cryptocurrency. May 2023. |
| (Talk) Christian Berger, Sadok Ben Toumia, Hans P. Reiser. Skalierbare Performance-Simulation von fehlertoleranten verteilten Systemen. Frühjahrstreffen der GI-Fachgruppen "Betriebssysteme" (FGBS) und "Fehlertolerierende Rechensysteme" (FERS). Dresden, März 2023. |
Christian Berger, Sadok Ben Toumia, Hans P. Reiser. Scalable Performance Evaluation of Byzantine Fault-Tolerant Systems Using Network Simulation. The 28th IEEE Pacific Rim International Symposium on Dependable Computing (PRDC 2023) . October 2023. |
2022
Christian Berger, Hans P. Reiser, Franz J. Hauck, Florian Held, Jörg Domaschka. Automatic Integration of BFT State-Machine Replication into IoT Systems. The 18th European Dependable Computing Conference (EDCC'22). September 2022. |
Sadok Ben Toumia, Christian Berger, Hans P. Reiser. Evaluating Blockchain Application Requirements and their Satisfaction in Hyperledger Fabric. The 22th IFIP International Conference on Distributed Applications and Interoperable Systems (DAIS). June 2022. |
Christian Berger, Sadok Ben Toumia, Hans P. Reiser. Does my BFT protocol implementation scale?. The 3rd International Workshop on Distributed Infrastructure for Common Good (DICG). November 2022. |
Christian Berger. Fast and adaptive BFT state machine replication. The 23rd International Middleware Conference Doctoral Symposium. November 2022. |
2021
Christian Berger, Hans P. Reiser and Alysson Bessani. Making Reads in BFT State Machine Replication Fast, Linearizable, and Live. The 40th IEEE International Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems (SRDS). September 2021. (received the SRDS'21 Prof. C.V. Ramamoorthy Best Paper Award) |
Christian Berger, Philipp Eichhammer, Hans P. Reiser, Jörg Domaschka, Franz J. Hauck, and Gerhard Habiger. A Survey on Resilience in the IoT: Taxonomy, Classification and Discussion of Resilience Mechanisms. ACM Computing Surveys. 54, 7, Article 147 (September 2021), 39 pages. |
2020
Christian Berger, Hans P. Reiser, João Sousa, and Alysson Bessani. AWARE: Adaptive Wide-Area Replication for Fast and Resilient Byzantine Consensus. IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC). Accepted in October 2020. |
Christian Berger. Towards Environmental-Adaptive and Performance-Resilient Consensus in Distributed Ledger Technology. The 21st International Middleware Conference Doctoral Symposium (Middleware ’20 Doctoral Symposium). Accepted in October 2020. |
2019
Philipp Eichhammer, Christian Berger, Hans P. Reiser, Jörg Domaschka, Franz J. Hauck, Gerhard Habiger, Frank Griesinger, Jakob Pietron. Towards a Robust, Self-Organizing IoT Platform for Secure and Dependable Service Execution. Tagungsband des FB-SYS Herbsttreffens 2019. Bonn: Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V.. 2019. |
Jörg Domaschka, Christian Berger, Hans P. Reiser, Philipp Eichhammer, Frank Griesinger, Jakob Pietron, Matthias Tichy, Franz J. Hauck, Gerhard Habiger. SORRIR: A Resilient Self-organizing Middleware for IoT Applications [Position Paper]. The 6th International Workshop on Middleware and Applications for the Internet of Things (M4IoT) (co-located with the the 2019 ACM/IFIP/USENIX International Middleware Conference). December 2019. |
Christian Berger, Hans P. Reiser, João Sousa, Alysson Bessani. Resilient Wide-Area Byzantine Consensus Using Adaptive Weighted Replication. The 38th IEEE International Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems (SRDS). October 2019. (selected as one of the three best paper candidates on SRDS'19) |
2018
Christian Berger, Hans P. Reiser. Scaling Byzantine Consensus: A Broad Analysis. The 2nd Workshop on Scalable and Resilient Infrastructures for Distributed Ledgers (SERIAL) (co-located with the the 2018 ACM/IFIP/USENIX International Middleware Conference). December 2018. |
Christian Berger, Hans P. Reiser. WebBFT: Byzantine Fault Tolerance for Resilient Interactive Web Applications. The 18th IFIP International Conference on Distributed Applications and Interoperable Systems (DAIS). June 2018. |
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Thesis Topics
Finished
| Performance Stabilization for Byzantine Fault-Tolerant Protocols in Uncivil Execution |
| Optimizing Communication Flow for Scalable Byzantine Consensus |
| Resilient Edge Computing by the Example of a Smart Garden Application |
| Incorporating Replication Techniques for Resilient Service Execution in Edge-Cloud Environments |
| Vertical Fault Tolerance for Edge-Cloud Environments using Conflict-Free Replicated Data Types |
| Specifying Faultloads in Hyperledger Caliper |
| Simulating BFT State Machine Replication Protocols at Scale |
| Adaptive Pipelining of BFT-SMaRt's Consensus Protocol |
| Improving Scalability of Byzantine State Machine Replication for DLT on the Example of BFT-SMaRt |
Ongoing
Open
Currently none. But if you are interested in a topic in the field of fault-tolerant consensus, replication mechanisms or distributed ledger technology, then contact christian.berger@uni-passau.de. You can present an own idea, or we may be able to find a topic that is fitting for you. A requirement is usually that you have either participated in the Cloud Computing seminar or Dependable Distributed Systems lecture.
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