Hi! I'm Alan (Zaoxing) Liu, a computer systems and networking enthusiast. More professionally, I'm an Assistant Professor in ECE and CS (affiliated) at Boston University.
My research has won interdisciplinary recognition, including USENIX FAST Best Paper Award, USENIX ATC "Best of Rest", and ACM STOC "Best of Rest". Prior to BU, I did a postdoc at Carnegie Mellon University and obtained my Ph.D. in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University. [Email] [Bio]

-I'm always looking for self-motivated students who are interested in systems and networking research. If you are interested in joining forces with me, feel free to drop me an email with your CV. MTFBWYA! [Useful Links] [CE PhD Program] [How-to-apply]

-Feel free to contact me if you are interested in research internship opportunites in my group. If you are already at BU, let's schedule a chat!

Follow @Alan_Lau

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Updates

11/2021    Excited to receive research grant from Microsoft to work on data-driven optimization for 5G at BU. Thanks, Microsoft!

08/2021    Excited to lead a NSF CNS medium project on future-proof telemetry with collabrators at BU and CMU. Thanks, NSF!

08/2021    Precise telemetry error estimation paper to appear in IMC'21. Congrats to Peiqing!

08/2021    Excited to receive NSF SaTC and CNS grants to work on optics-enabled defense and data-driven network management, with collabrators at UOregon, UC Riverside, CMU, JHU. Thanks, NSF!

06/2021    HeteroSketch and SketchLib papers to appear in NSDI'22. Congrats to the team!

05/2021    CocoSketch to appear in SIGCOMM'21. Congrats to the team!

03/2021    NitroSketch is integrated into Intel DPDK load balancer product! Check out Yipeng and Chenmin's talk (slides) at DPDK Summit.

02/2021    Jaqen to appear in USENIX Security'21. Valar dohaeris!

01/2021    Started at Boston for a new adventure.

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Research

I'm broadly interested in systems and networking. I design, implement, evaluate systems and algorithmic tools for telemetry, in-network computing, ML/analytics, and network security.

- Network Telemetry and Management

• Sketch-based Telemetry for Heterogeneous and Dynamic Networks [HeteroSketch, NSDI'22]
• Efficient Library to Deploy Sketches on Hardware. [SketchLib, NSDI'22]
• Arbitary Partial Key Queries on Network Hardware [CocoSketch, SIGCOMM'21]
• Precise Error Estimation for Sketch Queries [ErrorEstimator, IMC'21]
• Sketch-based Telemetry for High-Speed Networks [NitroSketch, SIGCOMM'19]
• Interval-based Network Queries [IQ-Sketch, SIGMETRICS'20]
• Future-Proof Sketch-based Telemetry [UnivMon, SIGCOMM'16]

- Programmable Networks / In-Network Computing and Security

• High-Performance Switch-Native DDoS Defense [Jaqen, Security'21]
• Table Extension Architecture for Programmable Switches [TEA, SIGCOMM'20]
• Distributed Load Balancing for Data Centers [DistCache, FAST'19]

- Data Analytics Systems

• Future-Proof Analytics for Low-Power Sensors [Joltik, MobiCom'20]
• Distributed Approximate Graph Mining [ASAP, OSDI'18]

More...

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Publications

2022

• [NSDI] HeteroSketch: Coordinating Network-wide Monitoring in Heterogeneous and Dynamic Networks
  Anup Agarwal, Zaoxing Liu, Srinivasan Seshan
  to appear USENIX NSDI'22.
  [PDF]

• [NSDI] SketchLib: Enabling Efficient Sketch-based Monitoring on Programmable Switches
  Hun Namkung, Zaoxing Liu, Daehyeok Kim, Vyas Sekar, Peter Steenkiste
  to appear in USENIX NSDI'22.
  [PDF]

2021

• [Security] Jaqen: A High-Performance Switch-Native Approach for Detecting and Mitigating Volumetric DDoS Attacks with Programmable Switches
  Zaoxing Liu, Hun Namkung, Georgios Nikolaidis, Jeongkeun Lee, Changhoon Kim, Xin Jin, Vladimir Braverman, Minlan Yu, Vyas Sekar
  in USENIX Security'21.
  [PDF] [Slides]

• [IMC] Precise Error Estimation for Sketch-based Flow Measurement
  Peiqing Chen, Yuhan Wu, Tong Yang, Junchen Jiang, Zaoxing Liu
  in ACM/SIGCOMM IMC'21.
  [PDF]

• [SIGCOMM] CocoSketch: High-Performance Sketch-based Measurement over Arbitrary Partial Key Query
  Yinda Zhang, Zaoxing Liu, Ruixin Wang, Tong Yang, Jizhou Li, Ruijie Miao, Peng Liu, Ruwen Zhang, Junchen Jiang
  in ACM SIGCOMM'21.
  [PDF]

• [SOSR] Telemetry Retrieval Inaccuracy in Programmable Switches: Analysis and Recommendations
  Hun Namkung, Daehyeok Kim, Zaoxing Liu, Vyas Sekar, Peter Steenkiste
  to appear in ACM SOSR 2021.
  [PDF]

• [TaPoPF] Sketchy With a Chance of Adoption: Can Sketch-Based Telemetry Be Ready for Prime Time?
  Zaoxing Liu, Hun Namkung, Anup Agarwal, Antonis Manousis, Peter Steenkiste, Srinivasan Seshan, Vyas Sekar
  in 1st IEEE TaPoPF Workshop (NetSoft). [This is an open-problem paper]
  [PDF]

[IoTDI] SecDeep: Secure and Performant On-device Deep Learning Inference Framework for Mobile and IoT Devices
Renju Liu, Luis Garcia, Zaoxing Liu, Botong Ou, Mani Srivastava
in ACM/IEEE IoTDI 2021.
[PDF]

2020

• [SIGCOMM] TEA: Enabling State-Intensive Network Functions on Programmable Switches
  Daehyeok Kim, Zaoxing Liu, Yibo Zhu, Changhoon Kim, Jeongkeun Lee, Vyas Sekar, Srinivasan Seshan
  in ACM SIGCOMM 2020.
  [PDF]

• [MobiCom] Joltik: Enabling Energy-Efficient "Future-Proof" Analytics on Low-Power Wide-Area Networks
  Mingran Yang, Junbo Zhang, Akshay Gadre, Zaoxing Liu, Swarun Kumar, Vyas Sekar
  in ACM MobiCom 2020.
  [PDF]

• [APoCS] Memory-Efficient Performance Monitoring on Programmable Switches with Lean Algorithms
  Zaoxing Liu, Samson Zhou, Ori Rottenstreich, Vladimir Braverman, Jennifer Rexford
  in SIAM ACM APoCS 2020 (Co-held with SODA 2020).
  [PDF] [Slides]

• [SIGMETRICS] I Know What You Did Last Summer: Network Monitoring using Interval Queries
  Nikita Ivkin, Ran Ben Basat, Zaoxing Liu, Gil Einziger, Roy Friedman, Vladimir Braverman
  in ACM SIGMETRICS 2020.
  [PDF]

• [CoRR] Unleashing In-network Computing on Scientific Workloads
  Daehyeok Kim, Ankush Jain, Zaoxing Liu, George Amvrosiadis, Damian Hazen, Bradley Settlemyer, Vyas Sekar
  [arXiv]

2019

• [SIGCOMM] NitroSketch: Robust and General Sketch-based Monitoring in Software Switches
  Zaoxing Liu, Ran Ben-Basat, Gil Einziger, Yaron Kassner, Vladimir Braverman, Roy Friedman, Vyas Sekar
  in ACM SIGCOMM 2019.
  [PDF] [Slides] [Talk]

• [FAST] DistCache: Provable Load Balancing for Large-Scale Storage Systems with Distributed Caching
  Zaoxing Liu, Zhihao Bai, Zhenming Liu, Xiaozhou Li, Changhoon Kim, Vladimir Braverman, Xin Jin, Ion Stoica
  in USENIX FAST 2019.
  [PDF] [Extended Version] [Slides] [Talk] [Invited Talk]
  Best Paper Award
  

• [CoRR] Enhancing the Privacy of Federated Learning with Sketching
  Zaoxing Liu, Tian Li, Virginia Smith, Vyas Sekar
  [arXiv]

2018

• [OSDI] ASAP: Fast, Approximate Pattern Mining at Scale
  Anand Iyer*, Zaoxing Liu*, Xin Jin, Shivaram Venkataraman, Vladimir Braverman, Ion Stoica
  in USENIX OSDI 2018.
  (*Co-leading author)
  [PDF][Blog:the morning paper]

• [HotCloud] Towards Fast and Scalable Graph Pattern Mining
  Anand Iyer*, Zaoxing Liu*, Xin Jin, Shivaram Venkataraman, Vladimir Braverman, Ion Stoica
  in USENIX HotCloud 2018.
  (*Co-leading author)
  [PDF]

• [Astro. & Comp.] Scalable Streaming Tools for Analyzing N-body Simulations: Finding Halos and Investigating Excursion Sets in One Pass
  Nikita Ivkin, Zaoxing Liu, Lin F. Yang, Srinivas Suresh Kumara, Gerard Lemsona, Mark Neyrinckc, Alexander S. Szalay, Vladimir Bravermana, Tamas Budavari
  in Astronomy and Computing 2018.
  [PDF]

2017

• [Algorithmica] New Bounds for the CLIQUE-GAP Problem using Graph Decomposition Theory
  Vladimir Braverman, Zaoxing Liu*, Tejasvam Singh, N.V. Vinodchandran and Lin Yang (Alphabetical)
  in Algorithmica 2017.
  [PDF]

2016

• [SIGCOMM] One Sketch to Rule Them All: Rethinking Network Flow Monitoring with UnivMon
  Zaoxing Liu, Antonis Manousis, Greg Vorsanger, Vyas Sekar, Vladimir Braverman
  in ACM SIGCOMM 2016.
  [PDF] [Slides] [Talk] [Invited Talk]
  Selected as Plenary Talk ("Best of Theory") at STOC 2018.

2015

• [HotNets] Enabling a "RISC" Approach for Software-Defined Monitoring using Universal Streaming
  Zaoxing Liu, Greg Vorsanger, Vladimir Braverman, Vyas Sekar
  in ACM HotNets 2015.
  [PDF] [Slides]
  Best Poster Award at AT&T Research Summit 2016.

• [eScience] Streaming Algorithms for Halo Finders
  Zaoxing Liu, Nikita Ivkin, Lin F. Yang, Mark Neyrinck, Gerard Lemson, Alexander S. Szalay, Vladimir Braverman, Tamas Budavari, Randal Burns, and Xin Wang
  in IEEE eScience 2015.
  [PDF]

• [MFCS] New Bounds for the CLIQUE-GAP Problem using Graph Decomposition Theory
  Vladimir Braverman, Zaoxing Liu*, Tejasvam Singh, N.V. Vinodchandran and Lin Yang (Alphabetical)
  in MFCS 2015.
  [PDF]

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Team

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Funding

Our research cannot happen without generous sponsorship from government, industry, foundations, and individual donors. To find out more about our research outcomes and current projects in need of financial support, please contact Alan Liu (email).

Acknowledgements:

We are grateful to National Science Foundation and Microsoft for their generous support. The findings, positions, or opinions of our research projects do not necessarily reflect the official policy of any of these organizations.

Current supporters:

 

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Academic Service

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Teaching

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Recent Talks

SIGCOMM'20-Network Telemetry Preview

SIGCOMM'19

ATC'19

FAST'19

DIMACS Networking Workshop

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Bio

Dr. Alan (Zaoxing) Liu is a tenure-track assistant professor at Boston University ECE and CS. His research interests are in systems and networking, and his group at BU is focusing on building next-generation networked systems. Prior to BU, Dr. Liu was a postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon University and obtained his PhD in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University. His research papers have been published in top-tier venues such as ACM SIGCOMM, MobiCom, USENIX FAST, and OSDI. He is a recipient of the best paper award at USENIX FAST'19 for his work on large-scale distributed load balancing. His work received multiple recognitions, including ACM STOC "Best-of-Theory" plenary talk and USENIX ATC "Best-of-Rest".

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Contact

Email: zaoxing AT bu.edu >> GPG key

Address:

PHO 335, College of Engineering

Boston University

8 St Marys St

Boston, MA 02215