Writing control protocol for SDN

Hello all,

I graduated from college this year & now work as a cpp Dev who is interested in systems programming. Apart from work, I'm willing to write a paper. Upon talking to my former professor, I told him that I'm interested in doing research related to OS, System/network programming, parallel computing etc. He suggested that we can work on writing SDN controllers which involves system programming. Now I've seen some open source controllers and writing one of those looks quite challenging. My questions;

1. Is it possible to write a controller given that I've a full time job and I'm graduated recently?

2. What are the open and less time consuming research areas for someone of my experience & interest?

3. I'm also interested in algorithms. Does writing a new algorithm or modifying existing network protocols sounds too ambitious?

Thanks.