About Me

Computer scientist located in Budapest, HUN, working as a research fellow on the model-based design and performability assesment of blockchain systems at ftsrg@BME. PhD in empirical performance analysis from BME, Hungary. Feeling the most comfortable at the intersection of theory and practice, where the latest research results come to life in real-world solutions.

Education

• 2016 - 2020: Budapest University of Technology and Economics
  Computer science PhD, advised by Prof. András Pataricza
   Dissertation: Measurement-based performance evaluation of distributed ledger technologies
• 2014 - 2016: Budapest University of Technology and Economics
  Computer Engineering MSc, Thesis: Efficient stochastic analysis of asynchronous systems
• 2009 - 2014: Budapest University of Technology and Economics
  Computer Engineering BSc, Thesis: Editor and analysis framework for Petri net-based models

Employment

• 2023 - present: ftsrg@BME, Budapest, HUN, Research Fellow

  Design and performance analysis of DLT-based solutions. Currently, the main focus points of my research are: i) the knowledge-base supported performance monitoring and analysis of service-oriented (mainly DLT) systems; ii) the model-based design of DLT smart contracts; and iii) privacy-aware data model design for DLT smart contracts.

• 2020 - 2022: ftsrg@BME, Budapest, HUN, Research Assistant

  Performance analysis of distributed ledger solutions. The scope of my research during this period was the rigorous measurement-based performance analysis of DLT frameworks. The main focus of my work was the systematic performance measurement and analysis of the Hyperledger Fabric DLT platform, including the detailed supporting methodologies across the entire life-cycle of the measurement campaign.

Projects

• 2023 - present: Ongoing projects @ ftsrg

  Technical lead, system design and consultation. I provide technical-level system design and consultation for ongoing projects concerning DLT-based data management solutions.

• 2020 - present: Development and performance assessment of a CBDC prototype system @ ftsrg

  Lead technical expert of the smart contract development and the performance assessment tracks. I partially designed and developed components of a multi-tier, DLT-based prototype system for the handling of central bank digital currency (CBDC). Moreover, I was the lead technical expert of the research track targeting the performance measurement and assessment of the prototype. This work was created under the Cooperation Agreement between the Hungarian National Bank (MNB) and the Budapest University of Technology and Economics (BME) in the Digitisation, artificial intelligence and data age workgroup.

• 2018 - 2019: Fault Injection of Blockchain Systems @ ftsrg

  Key participant in research and development. The project targeted the performance and robustness assessment of the Hyperledger Fabric platform in the presence of faulty smart contracts, achieved using software fault injection. I designed and implemented the deployment, measurement, and workload generation aspects of the project. Furthermore, I was a key participant in the analysis of the gathered measurement data.

Tools / Opensource

• 2021 - present: Hyperledger Caliper @ Linux/Hyperledger Foundation

  Maintainer/principal developer. Caliper is an open-source, scalable, and flexible tool for the benchmarking of blockchain technologies, governed by the Linux Foundation. I am among the principal developers of the project, shaping its architecture and feature set, following best practices I gather during my own research.

• 2018 Oct. - present: TPC-C for Hyperledger Fabric @ ftsrg

  Benchmark port design and development. I designed and developed a Hyperledger Fabric smart contract as the implementation of the standard TPC-C performance benchmark specification. Furthermore, I also implemented the corresponding workload generation using Hyperledger Caliper.

• 2011 - 2016: PetriDotNet @ ftsrg

  Design and development. PetriDotNet is a modeling framework for editing, simulating and analyzing Petri nets. I researched, designed and implemented modular and scalable linear algebra algorithms (using .NET, C#, MEF), provided a graphical interface for a configurable model analysis workflow (using WinForms), and thoroughly unit tested the related algorithms (using IntelliTest, combinatorial testing, interval testing, and test generation techniques).

Mentoring / Internships

• 2023 June - Nov.: Summer Mentorship Program @ Hyperledger

  Mentor. I’m mentoring two projects related to mostly Hyperledger Fabric. The first project’s goal is to aid the work of smart contract developers by providing ORM-like features for designing the data model of the contract. The second project (co-mentored by AMD Singapore) aims to provide a service-oriented solution for the monitoring and performance analysis of Fabric networks.

• 2022 June - Aug.: Summer Mentorship Program @ Hyperledger

  Mentor. I mentored a university student from the USA who designed and implemented an extension for the Visual Studio Code development environment to facilitate the usage of Hyperledger Caliper for users.

• 2021 June - Aug.: Summer Mentorship Program @ Hyperledger

  Mentor. I mentored a university student from India who designed and implemented a built-in workload module for Hyperledger Caliper that allows users the declarative, configuration file-based definition of workloads instead of directly implementing them in code.

• 2019 June - Aug.: Summer Mentorship Program @ Hyperledger

  Mentor. I co-mentored (with Huawei) a university student from the USA who conducted preliminary work on a GUI component for the Hyperledger Caliper project.

• 2018 Dec.: Ph.D. winter school in Jerusalem

  Participant. I participated in the 3rd Advanced School in Computer Science and Engineering: Blockchains and Cryptocurrencies Ph.D. winter school, organized in Jerusalem, Israel.

• 2017 June - Aug.: Summer Mentorship Program @ Hyperledger

  Intern. I researched and prototyped an approach for the automatic execution of business processes on the Hyperledger Fabric DLT platform. I applied standard- and model-based development techniques (BPMN, Petri nets, state machines), model transformation frameworks (Eclipse, Java, EMF, ATL), and model-based code generation (Xtend, Golang).

Selected Publications

• Using fault injection to assess blockchain systems in presence of faulty smart contracts
  IEEE Access Vol 8, DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3032239, 2020 Authors: Ákos Hajdu, Naghmeh Ivaki, Imre Kocsis, Attila Klenik, László Gönczy, Nuno Laranjeiro, Henrique Madeira, and András Pataricza
• Adding semantics to measurements: Ontology-guided, systematic performance analysis
  Acta Cybernetica, DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2020.3032239, 2022 Authors: Attila Klenik and András Pataricza
• Systematic performance evaluation using component-in-the-loop approach
  International Journal of Cloud Computing Vol. 7, DOI: 10.1504/ijcc.2018.095401, 2018 Authors: Imre Kocsis, Attila Klenik, András Pataricza, Miklós Telek, Flórián Deé, and Dávid Cseh
• Porting a benchmark with a classic workload to blockchain: TPC-C on Hyperledger Fabric
  The 37th ACM/SIGAPP SAC, DOI: 10.1145/3477314.3507006, 2022 Authors: Attila Klenik and Imre Kocsis
• Towards Model-Driven Engineering of Smart Contracts for Cyber-Physical Systems
  48th Annual IEEE/IFIP Int. Conf. on DSN-W, DOI: 10.1109/DSN-W.2018.00052, 2018 Authors: Péter Garamvölgyi, Imre Kocsis, Benjámin Gehl, and Attila Klenik

Full list of publications / Google Scholar / MTMT