About me

I’m a computer scientist working on systems, networks, and security. I like to hack the systems with robust algorithms! More professionally, I’m an Assistant Professor in ECE and CS at Boston University. My research has won interdisciplinary recognitions, 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 a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Johns Hopkins University.

I’m looking for self-motivated students (ugrad, master’s, phd) who are interested in systems, networking, and applied algorithms research. My group has 2+ fully-funded PhD positions available! If you are interested in joining forces with me, drop me an email with your CV.

Feel free to contact me if you are interested in research internship opportunites.

News

• [09/2022] I’m teaching Cloud Computing at BU. Please reach out to me if you are interested in mentoring student projects.
• [07/2022] Hydra to appear in VLDB’22. Congrats to the team!
• [06/2022] Ran, Vova, Michael, and I are giving a tutorial about data-plane algorithms at SIGMETRICS’22.
• [05/2022] Excited to co-chair the Telemetry Working Group via MOC and Red Hat. We are calling for participation and committeed to open telemetry!
• [05/2022] Zeying will be interning at Microsoft Research this summer.
• [04/2022] NSDI’22 will be my first in-person conference since a while ago. Let’s meet up!
• [03/2022] I’m co-organizing the 3rd FFSPIN workshop at SIGCOMM’22. Submit your work!
• [12/2021] Thanks Red Hat for the 2022 Red Hat Collaboratory Research Incubation Award!
• [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. 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. 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.

Research

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

(Network) Analytics Algorithms and Data Systems

• Sketch-based Telemetry for Heterogeneous and Dynamic Networks [HeteroSketch, NSDI’22]
• Arbitary Partial Key Queries on Network Hardware [CocoSketch, SIGCOMM’21]
• Precise Error Estimation for Sketch Analytical Queries [ErrorEstimator, IMC’21]
• Future-Proof Analytics for Low-Power Sensors [Joltik, MobiCom’20]
• Interval-based Network Queries [IQ-Sketch, SIGMETRICS’20]
• Sketch-based Telemetry for High-Speed Networks [NitroSketch, SIGCOMM’19]
• Future-Proof Sketch-based Telemetry [UnivMon, SIGCOMM’16]

Approximate Computing Systems

• General Multidimensional Subpopulation (Data Cube) Analytics [Hydra, VLDB’22]
• Efficient Library to Deploy Various Sketches on Hardware [SketchLib, NSDI’22]
• Distributed Load Balancing for Data Centers [DistCache, FAST’19]
• Distributed Approximate Graph Mining [ASAP, OSDI’18]

Programmable Networks / In-Network Security

• High-Performance Switch-Native DDoS Defense [Jaqen, Security’21]
• Table Extension Architecture for Programmable Switches [TEA, SIGCOMM’20]