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Jorge M. Soares

Technical Program Manager / ConsensusLab

Education

PhD in Robotics, Control, and Intelligent Systems (IST-EPFL JDI), 2016

École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)

PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering (IST-EPFL JDI), 2016

Instituto Superior Técnico - Universidade de Lisboa (IST-UL)

MSc in Communication Networks Engineering, 2009

Instituto Superior Técnico - Universidade de Lisboa (IST-UL)

BSc in Communication Networks Engineering, 2007

Instituto Superior Técnico - Universidade de Lisboa (IST-UL)

Jorge is a Technical Program Manager on the ConsensusLab team, where he helps steer and accelerate Protocol Labs’ research on blockchain scalability.

He holds BSc and MSc degrees in Communication Networks Engineering and received a joint PhD from EPFL (in Robotics, Control, and Intelligent Systems) and IST-UL (in Electrical and Computer Engineering) for his research in control theory and marine robotics. He’s a licensed engineer in Andorra and Portugal.

Prior to joining Protocol Labs, Jorge worked as a patent examiner with the European Patent Office, where he focused on human-computer interaction and the physical aspects of computing devices. He’s a Senior Member of IEEE and a long-time volunteer, currently serving as Vice-Chair of the European Public Policy Committee.

Talks

2023-03-29
A metaverse of walled gardens?
WIPO Conversation on Intellectual Property and the Metaverse / 2023.03.29 / Genève, Switzerland

Publications

2024-02-01 / Report
A finality calculator for Filecoin’s Expected Consensus
We propose a finality calculator for Filecoin’s Expected consensus that considers what takes place during epochs and can attain, under normal operating conditions, an error probability of 2^(−30) in 30 epochs (15 minutes) - a 30x improvement over the current 900-epoch threshold.
2022-11-07 / Journal article
To the InterPlanetary File System – and beyond!: Peer-to-peer file sharing would make the Internet far more efficient
When the COVID-19 pandemic erupted in early 2020, the world made an unprecedented shift to remote work. As a precaution, some Internet providers scaled back service levels temporarily, although that probably wasn’t necessary for countries in Asia, Europe, and North America, which were generally able to cope with the surge in demand caused by people teleworking (and binge-watching Netflix).
IEEE Spectrum / 2022.11.07
2022-03-11 / Conference paper
Hierarchical consensus: A horizontal scaling framework for blockchains
We present the Filecoin Hierarchical Consensus framework, which aims to overcome the throughput challenges of blockchain consensus by horizontally scaling the network. Unlike traditional sharding designs, based on partitioning the state of the network, our solution centers on the concept of subnets –which are organized hierarchically– and can be spawned on-demand to manage new state.
DINPS 22 / 2022.07.10 / Bologna, Italy
Alfonso de la Rocha , Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias, Jorge M. Soares , Marko Vukolić
2016-10-09 / Conference paper
Towards 3-D distributed odor source localization: An extended graph-based formation control algorithm for plume tracking
The large number of potential applications for robotic odor source localization has motivated the development of a variety of plume tracking algorithms, the majority of which work in restricted two-dimensional scenarios.
2016 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) / 2016.10.09 / Daejeon, South Korea
Jorge M. Soares , Ali Marjovi, Jonathan Giezendanner, Anil Kodiyan, A. Pedro Aguiar, António M. Pascoal, Alcherio Martinoli
2016-09-19 / Conference paper
An algorithm for formation-based chemical plume tracing using robotic marine vehicles
Robotic chemical plume tracing is a growing area of research, with envisioned real-world applications including pollution tracking, search and rescue, and ecosystem identification. However, following a chemical signal in the water is not an easy task due to the nature of chemical transport and to limitations in sensing and communication.
OCEANS 2016 MTS/IEEE Monterey / 2016.09.19 / Monterey, CA, USA
Jorge M. Soares , A. Pedro Aguiar, António M. Pascoal, Alcherio Martinoli
2016-04-15 / Thesis
Formation-based odour source localisation using distributed terrestrial and marine robotic systems
This thesis tackles the problem of robotic odour source localisation, that is, the use of robots to find the source of a chemical release. As the odour travels away from the source, in the form of a plume carried by the wind or current, small scale turbulence causes it to separate into intermittent patches, suppressing any gradients and making this a particularly challenging search problem.
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and Instituto Superior Técnico / 2016.04.15
2015-11-19 / Conference paper
The Khepera IV mobile robot: Performance evaluation, sensory data, and software toolbox
Taking distributed robotic system research from simulation to the real world often requires the use of small robots that can be deployed and managed in large numbers. This has led to the development of a multitude of these devices, deployed in the thousands by researchers worldwide.
Robot 2015: Second Iberian Robotics Conference / 2015.11.19 / Lisbon, Portugal
Jorge M. Soares , Iñaki Navarro, Alcherio Martinoli
2015-05-26 / Conference paper
A distributed formation-based odor source localization algorithm – design, implementation, and wind tunnel evaluation
Robotic odor source localization is a promising tool with numerous applications in safety, search and rescue, and environmental science. In this paper, we present an algorithm for odor source localization using multiple cooperating robots equipped with chemical sensors.
2015 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) / 2015.05.26 / Seattle, WA, USA
Jorge M. Soares , A. Pedro Aguiar, António M. Pascoal, Alcherio Martinoli
2014-11-02 / Conference paper
A graph-based formation algorithm for odor plume tracing
Odor plume tracing is a challenging robotics application, made difficult by the combination of the patchy characteristics of odor distribution and the slow response of the available sensors. This work proposes a graph-based formation control algorithm to coordinate a group of small robots equipped with odor sensors, with the goal of tracing an odor plume to its source.
Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS 2014) / 2014.11.02 / Daejeon, South Korea
Jorge M. Soares , A. Pedro Aguiar, António M. Pascoal, Alcherio Martinoli
2014-08-24 / Conference paper
Flexible triangular formation keeping of marine robotic vehicles using range measurements
This paper addresses the problem of keeping an autonomous marine vehicle in a moving triangular formation by regulating its position with respect to two leader vehicles. The follower vehicle has no prior knowledge of the path described by the leaders but has access to their heading angle and is able to measure inter-vehicle ranges.
19th IFAC World Congress (IFAC WC 2014) / 2014.08.24 / Cape Town, South Africa
Francisco Rego, Jorge M. Soares , António M. Pascoal, A. Pedro Aguiar, Colin Jones
2013-11-28 / Conference paper
Design and implementation of a range-based formation controller for marine robots
There is considerable worldwide interest in the use of groups of autonomous marine vehicles to carry our challenging mission scenarios, of which marine habitat mapping of complex, non-structured environments is a representative example.
ROBOT2013: First Iberian Robotics Conference / 2013.11.28 / Madrid, Spain
Jorge M. Soares , A. Pedro Aguiar, António M. Pascoal, Alcherio Martinoli
2013-05-06 / Conference paper
Joint ASV/AUV range-based formation control: Theory and experimental results
The use of groups of autonomous marine vehicles has enormous potential in numerous marine applications, perhaps the most relevant of which is the surveying and exploration of the oceans, still widely unknown and misunderstood.
2013 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation / 2013.05.06 / Karlsruhe, Germany
Jorge M. Soares , A. Pedro Aguiar, António M. Pascoal, Alcherio Martinoli
2012-04-10 / Conference paper
Triangular formation control using range measurements: An application to marine robotic vehicles
This paper addresses the problem of maintaining an autonomous robotic vehicle in a moving triangular formation by regulating its position with respect to two leader vehicles. The robotic vehicle has no a priori knowledge of the path described by the leaders and its goal is to follow them by constantly regulating the inter-vehicle distances to a desired fixed value, using range-only measurements.
3rd IFAC Workshop on Navigation, Guidance and Control of Underwater Vehicles (NGCUV’2012) / 2012.04.10 / Porto, Portugal
Jorge M. Soares , A. Pedro Aguiar, António M. Pascoal, Marco Gallieri
2010-10-27 / Journal article
Practical issues in the development of a minimalistic power management solution for WSNs
A flexible Wireless Sensor Network platform for implementation of diverse applications has been developed and deployed at Instituto Superior Tecnico – Technical University of Lisbon (IST-TUL). Since its initial deployment in 2007, this testbed has grown steadily, supporting new nodes, applications and experiments.
International Journal of Sensor Networks (IJSNet) / 2010.10.27
Jorge M. Soares , Bruno J. Gonçalves, Rui M. Rocha
2010-09-14 / Journal article
Opportunistic data collection in sparse wireless sensor networks
Opportunistic wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have recently been proposed as solutions for many remote monitoring problems. Many such problems, including environmental monitoring, involve large deployment scenarios with lower-than-average node density, as well as a long time scale and limited budgets.
EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking / 2010.09.14
Jorge M. Soares , Mirko Franceschinis, Rui M. Rocha, Wansheng Zhang, Maurizio A. Spirito
2010-06-16 / Conference paper
Experimental and analytical performance evaluation of a real opportunistic wireless sensor network
The use of opportunistic communications, while increasing in popularity, is still limited, due in part to some uncertainty that still exists regarding its performance in real-world conditions. This paper tries to assess the real performance of an opportunistic routing implementation in a physical setting, by comparing it with its expected performance, determined by a simplified theoretical model.
2010 Future Network & Mobile Summit / 2010.06.16 / Florence, Italy
Jorge M. Soares , Wansheng Zhang, Mirko Franceschinis, Maurizio A. Spirito, Rui M. Rocha
2009-12-15 / Conference paper
CHARON: Routing in low-density opportunistic wireless sensor networks
Combining wireless sensor networks (WSNs) with delay-tolerant networking (DTN) has the potential to extend their use in a multitude of previously impossible applications. However, and despite numerous proposed solutions, there is still wide debate as to how to best route messages in these networks and, more importantly, how to do it in an energy-efficient way.
IFIP Wireless Days 2009 / 2009.12.15 / Paris, France
Jorge M. Soares , Rui M. Rocha
2009-10-02 / Thesis
CHARON: Convergent hybrid-replication approach to routing in opportunistic networks – efficient collection routing for low-density mobile WSNs
Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have been slowly moving into the mainstream as remote monitoring solutions – especially in hostile, hard-to-reach or otherwise complicated scenarios, where deployment of a traditional network may be unpractical.
Instituto Superior Técnico / 2009.10.02
2009-08-03 / Conference paper
Power management extensions for Tagus-SensorNet
A flexible Wireless Sensor Network platform for easier implementation of diverse applications has been developed and deployed at one of the Institute Superior Tecnico - Technical University of Lisbon (IST-TUL) campus.
18th International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN 09) / 2009.08.03 / San Francisco, CA, USA
Jorge M. Soares , Bruno Gonçalves, Rui M. Rocha

Blog posts

2023-06-16 / News, Events
ConsensusDays 23 recordings now available
ConsensusDays 23 took place 5-6 June and we have another successful edition to celebrate! Beyond the exciting programme, here are a few stats from this year: 22 talks 35 submissions 231 registrations 347 members of the #consensus channel 612 members of the ConsensusDays mailing list 614 YouTube views of the raw streams Today, we bring you the final news of the year: the edited talks are now available on YouTube.
2023-05-10 / News, Events
ConsensusDays 23 programme and registration
We’re happy to announce the publication of the ConsensusDays 23 programme. The workshop will take place 5-6 June in the 14:00-18:30 UTC period. We were again overwhelmed by the community interest, and many decisions ended up coming down to program limitations and session planning rather than quality alone.
2023-04-20 / News
IPC subnets land on Filecoin Spacenet
The Interplanetary Consensus framework (IPC), formerly known as Hierarchical Consensus, addresses two challenges of blockchain networks, transaction volume and application heterogeneity. In doing so, it boosts the capabilities of the Filecoin network.
2023-03-15 / News, Events
ConsensusDay 23: deadline extended to 19 Mar
We have already received a number of excellent submissions for ConsensusDay 23 but have decided to extend the submission deadline in order to accommodate several pending contributions. We will therefore be accepting submissions until the end of Sunday, 19 March, anywhere on earth.
2023-02-15 / News, Events
ConsensusDay 23: call for contributions
ConsensusDay is back! We’re returning to our roots and organising a virtual event on 5 June 2023, in a format similar to the 2021 edition. That means we will not be publishing proceedings this year and therefore welcome both novel contributions and those under review or published elsewhere in the last 12 months.
2022-11-30 / News, Events
The Filecoin Spacenet goes live
For all of the past year, our team at ConsensusLab has been hard at work pushing the boundaries of Filecoin scalability and devising a framework for horizontal scaling that allows for the seamless spawning of interoperable subnets, as well as a reference implementation of a consensus algorithm suitable for running said subnets.
2022-10-14 / News, Events
Join us in Lisbon for the ConsensusLab Summit
In less than two weeks, the Protocol Labs Network will be meeting in Lisbon, Portugal for LabWeek22, a decentralised conference and a first for us. ConsensusLab will also be present, and we’re organising our own event: the ConsensusLab Summit.
2022-09-15 / News, Events
ConsensusDay 22: programme now live!
Consensusday 22 is fast approaching! The workshop, which will be co-located with ACM CCS this year, will take place 7 November in Los Angeles. We have another exciting programme for this edition, comprising 15 talks that cover assumptions, PoS security, leader election, performance, and more.
2022-08-11 / News, Grants
Introducing Cryptonet network grants
Originally founded to drive the creation of Filecoin, Cryptonet set out to create a community of researchers and engineers working on designing, proving, improving the building blocks for crypto-networks to engender new capabilities across the Web 3.
2022-07-21 / News, Grants
The Pikachu RFP: Checkpointing Filecoin onto Bitcoin
Blockchains based on a reusable resource (such as proof-of-stake or proof-of-space) are not as secure as those based on proof-of-work. Specifically, they are vulnerable to long-range attacks (LRA), where an adversary can create a long fork very cheaply.
2022-07-18 / News, Grants
Streamlining our grantmaking framework
In our ongoing quest to continuously improve the UX around our research grants programme, we’re announcing today a number of updates to both the framework and the operations that should enable a more streamlined, faster, and easier experience for all stakeholders.
liz-bryson, Abby Silin , Jorge M. Soares
2022-06-24 / News, Events
ConsensusFactory summary and recordings
Last Wednesday, we hosted the first edition of ConsensusFactory: Decentralized Reflections on Consensus, a new virtual event that brought together speakers from different blockchain ecosystems to talk about the scalability strategies each of their projects are pursuing.
2022-06-13 / News, Team
ConsensusLab welcomes its 2022 summer fellows!
The ConsensusLab team is excited to welcome our first summer research fellows, who will be joining us at different times throughout the summer to work on some of our core research projects.
2022-06-08 / News, Events
Join us on 22 June for ConsensusFactory!
Are you interested in consensus and distributed system scalability? So are we! That’s why we’re organizing ConsensusFactory, a new virtual event that will bring together speakers from different blockchain ecosystems, who will present the scalability approaches they are exploring.
2022-05-26 / Blog
A Public Goods experiment on Filecoin: Retroactively funding impact with Quadratic Voting
The PL Network Goods team launched a quadratic voting funding experiment on Filecoin repositories with the help of maintainers and storage providers, rewarded community contributors, and built retroactive funding infrastructure for broader application.
2022-05-18 / News, Events
ConsensusDay 22: call for contributions
After a wildly successful 2021 edition, ConsensusDay is back for 2022! The goal remains the same: to provide a forum for the discussion of early-stage but high-impact research with scientific interest and real-world applications and to build a community around it.
2022-04-20 / Blog
The first graduating class of ConsensusLab projects
When ConsensusLab launched last year, we published a roadmap covering our first 18 months. We are still working towards that same roadmap, with minor adjustments over time to accommodate the changing landscape and externalities.
2022-03-16 / Blog
Working in public @ ConsensusLab
Do you ever wonder what ConsensusLab is up to? If so, you’re in for a treat! Ever since our launch in July ‘21, we’ve been sharing our work with the broader community – one of our very first initiatives was organising ConsensusDays.
2022-03-03 / Blog
Scaling blockchains with hierarchical consensus
Scaling blockchains is not an easy task. Less so if one is looking to accommodate not only crypto-native use cases but also Web 2.0-like applications handling significant volumes of data at high throughput (of the kind that you would host with your preferred cloud provider).
Alfonso de la Rocha , Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias, Jorge M. Soares , Marko Vukolić
2021-11-30 / News, Team
ConsensusLab welcomes Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias as an external collaborator
We are pleased to welcome Lefteris Kokoris-Kogias as an external collaborator on ConsensusLab projects. Lefteris is an assistant professor at IST Austria, where he leads the Secure, Private, and Decentralized Systems (SPiDerS) group.
2021-11-28 / News, Team
Vivien Quéma joins PL Research as an advisor to ConsensusLab
We are happy to announce that Vivien Quéma will be joining PL Research’s ConsensusLab as a research advisor. Vivien is a Professor of Computer Science at Grenoble INP and a member of the LIG laboratory.
2021-10-29 / News, Events
ConsensusDays 21 recap and recordings
It was a calm day in early August when we launched a call for contributions for ConsensusDay 21, the launch event for our ConsensusLab. Originally intended to be an intimate, one-day virtual workshop aiming to foster discussion of consensus research and bootstrap a collaboration network, it soon became clear that it was growing beyond our wildest expectations – and certainly beyond what we had planned and were prepared to accommodate.
2021-09-28 / News, Events
Announcing the ConsensusDays 21 program
After a two-week review marathon, we’re happy to announce the exciting program for ConsensusDays 21. The workshop will take place 6-7 October (next week!) in the 14:00-20:00 UTC period. We were overwhelmed by the number and quality of talk proposals, and many decisions ended up coming down to program limitations and session planning rather than quality alone.
2021-09-14 / News, Events
ConsensusDay becomes ConsensusDays 21
We would like to thank all authors for the overwhelming response to the call for contributions. We are delighted by the quality and number of submissions received, which already required us to expand our review team.
2021-08-03 / News, Events
ConsensusDay 21: call for contributions
It was only last week that we announced the launch of ConsensusLab, a new Protocol Labs research group focused on scalable consensus for decentralised systems. Looking to drive more focused research into the topic, we are now inviting you to participate in our first public event, ConsensusDay 21.
2021-07-30 / News
ConsensusLab: supercharging our consensus research
We are excited to announce the launch of ConsensusLab, a new research group focused on scalable consensus for decentralised systems and a part of Protocol Labs Research. Consensus — loosely defined as global agreement on the state of a decentralised network across its mutually untrusting participants — has been known to be at the heart of decentralised systems ever since the inception of Nakamoto’s Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus.
2021-07-21 / News, Events
Decentralising the Internet with IPFS and Filecoin (DI2F) — a report from the trenches
The first edition of the DI2F Workshop, which took place on 21 June 2021 and focused on decentralising the Internet with IPFS and Filecoin, has been a phenomenal success! We received more than 20 submissions, out of which 11 were selected to be presented on the day (scroll down to the three sections at the bottom of this page for the full text).
2021-07-13 / News
zk-SNARKs for the world!
Did you know Filecoin is the largest zk-SNARK network deployed to date? For the past two years we have been working on bringing zk-SNARKs to the world and to the Filecoin Network.
2021-05-27 / News, Grants, Microblog
COVID-19 Open Innovation Grant update
In the spring of 2020, as a rapid response to the COVID crisis, Protocol Labs launched an accelerated grants program to support open-source projects building tools to confront present and future pandemics.
2021-05-24 / News
Call for Participation: DI2F: Decentralizing the Internet with IPFS and Filecoin
The first edition of a research-focused workshop on decentralisation, IPFS, and Filecoin is here! DI2F is taking place alongside IFIP Networking 2021 on 21 June 2021 and has a packed programme full of interesting paper presentations, demos, abstracts, hands-on tutorials and invited talks!
2021-05-13 / Careers
We're hiring!
Protocol Labs Research has been growing rapidly, with the launch of CryptoComputeLab, CryptoEconLab, and CryptoNetLab, a number of new projects, and new researchers, advisors, and support staff joining the team.
2021-02-03 / Event
Decentralising the Internet with IPFS and Filecoin (DI2F) workshop at IFIP Networking 2021: Call for Contributions
Since the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) was first introduced in a 2014 whitepaper, interest from the research community on improving and building on its protocol stack has been steadily growing. A search for “IPFS networking” on Google Scholar now returns over 1500 results, and that is just a fraction of the relevant publications.
2020-09-25 / News, Grants
COVID-19 Open Innovation Grant update
In the spring, as COVID-19 swept the globe, Protocol Labs quickly retooled its grant program and launched an accelerated grants program to support open-source projects building tools to confront present and future pandemics.
2020-04-27 / News, Grants
Announcing our COVID-19 Open Innovation Grant awardees
After a marathon review, followed by necessary legal and financial procedures, we are happy to announce the projects we are supporting with Protocol Labs' COVID-19 Open Innovation Grant program. This program was created to surface and support open-source projects working on tools to help humanity through present and future pandemics.
2020-03-26 / News, Grants
Protocol Labs launches a COVID-19 Open Innovation Grants program
In 2018, Protocol Labs launched a Request for Proposals program to support research in distributed systems, cryptography, and other areas of interest to our projects and company. To date, we have given over $500,000, with results made available to the public under open-source licenses.