Daria Priakhina’s successful defense took place in Saint Petersburg On 5 December 2024, Daria Priakhina, a researcher at the Meshcheryakov Laboratory of Information Technologies, successfully defended her thesis for the degree of Candidate of Technical Sciences at Saint Petersburg State University (SPbSU). The topic of the thesis was digital twins for solving management and development tasks of distributed data acquisition, storage and processing centers. The work was completed in specialty 2.3.1. System Analysis, Information Management and Processing, Statistics. MLIT Scientific Leader Vladimir Korenkov was the scientific supervisor of the thesis. SPbSU Professor, Doctor of Physical and Mathematical Sciences Alexander Bogdanov headed the Dissertation Council. National Research Nuclear University MEPhI was appointed the leading organization. At present, as a result of experiments not only in the field of physics, but also in many other fields of science, a huge amount of data is generated. To effectively work with this data, distributed data acquisition, storage and processing centers (DDCs) are created. Daria Priakhina devoted her thesis to urgent issues related to solving management and development tasks of such DDCs. As MLIT Scientific Leader Vladimir Korenkov remarked, a distinctive feature of creating a data center for science is the impossibility of setting requirements for the architecture and equipment in advance and, as a result, drawing up an exact technical task for its creation. At the same time, conducting experiments and debugging the components of the architecture is often impossible both in terms of the amount of financial costs and the timing of project launches. To solve this task, the promising technology of digital twins (DTs) is increasingly applied. “Daria Priakhina’s work is pioneering in the field of developing digital twins for designing and analyzing the functioning of distributed heterogeneous computer systems for storing and processing data from large-scale scientific projects. It has great methodological and practical significance, and its results are already employed in the educational process at Dubna State University to train highly qualified specialists,” Vladimir Korenkov commented, noting the high scientific level of the thesis. Within her research, Daria Priakhina performed a detailed analysis of the state of the problem of modeling modern DDCs and identified the shortcomings of existing DTs applied in data centers. The findings showed that the existing DT technologies often did not take into account all the processes occurring in DDCs, including task flow management strategies, as well as data flow parameters for storage and processing. Based on the principles of the system approach and system analysis methods, Daria Priakhina elaborated a completely new method for constructing and using DDC digital twins. For the first time, the possibility of modeling data processing and storage processes, taking into account such important parameters as the characteristics of data flows and tasks, was proposed. The operation of DDCs is usually affected by external factors, which entail failures, changes in equipment performance, etc. The developed method provides for the possibility of setting probabilistic events to obtain results closer to real life, which is also an innovation. To apply this method, algorithms and a database structure were developed and implemented. On their basis, special software to create DDC digital twins was elaborated, it allows comparing the efficiency of the DDC operation depending on various equipment configurations. The developed software received a Russian certificate of state registration of a computer program No. 2023667305. “These works were successfully completed and applied to the study of computing systems of the experiments at the NICA accelerator complex at JINR. At the same time, the results obtained were highly assessed by the coordinators of these projects, which was reflected in the thesis’s reviews,” Vladimir Korenkov said. Thus, the tasks of searching for the configuration of equipment for the system of acquiring, storing and processing data of the ВМ@N experiment of the NICA complex, as well as the task of designing the computing system of the online filter for SPD experiment data, were solved. The received recommendations were taken into account in the design and development of computing infrastructures used in these experiments, which proved the operability of the software and the models and algorithms elaborated in the thesis. At the same time, within the thesis, a problem-oriented decision-making system for management and optimization tasks was developed to enhance the DDC technical characteristics on the basis of DT models. According to the general opinion of both Daria Priakhina’s scientific supervisor and the members of the Dissertation Council, the scientific novelty and practical significance of the results obtained by Daria Priakhina can make a significant contribution to solving DDC management and development tasks. Commenting on this important stage in her scientific career, Daria Priakhina emphasized: “First of all, I would like to express my deep gratitude to my scientific supervisor Vladimir Vasilyevich Korenkov for task setting, constant help and support on the way to achieving my goal. Sincere appreciation to those who provided advice and recommendations during the work, participated in the preparation, presentation, public defense and discussion of the thesis. I am very glad that 10 years ago, as a master’s student, I got into this wonderful team of the Laboratory of Information Technologies and plunged into the world of scientific research. I would like to separately highlight Chief Researcher, Professor Gennady Alekseevich Ososkov and Lead Programmer Vladimir Valentinovich Trofimov, who taught me a lot, captivated me and determined the direction of my future thesis research.” Speaking about her future scientific plans, Daria indicated that there existed a multitude of ideas for the development of the created software complex for constructing digital twins, expanding its functionality and introducing it into widespread use. “However, this project does not limit the range of my scientific interests, so I am open to new interesting tasks and investigations,” Daria Priakhina concluded. In 2013, Daria Priakhina graduated with honors from the International University of Nature, Society and Man “Dubna” with a bachelor’s degree in information technology. In 2015, she graduated with honors from the same university with a master’s degree in system analysis of design and technological solutions, and later, in 2019, she completed her postgraduate studies. Daria successfully combined her studies at the university with her work at MLIT JINR, where she actively participated in the implementation of current tasks, for example, in the elaboration of a system that provides the synthesis of modeling and monitoring processes for the development of large data array storage and processing systems. These developments were employed for the experiments at the NICA accelerator complex, at the Institute of High Energy Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. She conducted research on modeling a data center for the NICA experiments, modeling parallel computing in a cloud environment with the application of MPI technology using the example of calculating long Josephson junctions. Work on modeling distributed data storage and processing systems based on a probabilistic approach continued. This is how the idea of creating a digital twin platform subsequently emerged. Along with her scientific work at MLIT, while being a postgraduate student, Darya Priakhina was actively involved in educational activities at Dubna University, where, in addition to teaching, she took part in organizing the IT School “Data Science”, performing the responsible duties of a scientific secretary. At present, she successfully combines scientific activities in the Laboratory in the Scientific and Technical Department of External Communications and Distributed Information Systems with active work in the educational area, being a co-leader of the MLIT activity “Training of Specialists in Computational Physics and Information Technology”. Darya continues to actively participate in organizing IT schools and scientific events. She regularly delivers talks at prestigious conferences, seminars, collaboration meetings and IT schools. She continues to supervise bachelors’ theses, sharing her knowledge and experience with students from various universities of Russia and other JINR Member States.
