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 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. May the force be with you! [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

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

12/2020    Move to Boston for a new adventure.

08/2020    Joltik to appear in MobiCom'20. Congrats to the team!

05/2020    TEA to appear in SIGCOMM'20. Congrats to the team. See you online!

10/2019    Lean algorithms to appear in APOCS'20 (held with SODA'20). See you in Salt Lake City!

10/2019    Interval-query work to appear in SIGMETRICS'20. Congrats to the team!

07/2019    Give an invited talk at USENIX ATC'19. See you in Seattle!

05/2019    NitroSketch work to appear in SIGCOMM'19. See you in Beijing!

12/2018    DistCache work to appear in FAST'19. (Update: Best Paper Award)

10/2018    Successfully defended my Ph.D. dissertation.

07/2018    Joining CMU/Harvard as a postdoctoral researcher (with Vyas Sekar and Minlan Yu).

07/2018    ASAP work to appear in OSDI'18.

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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 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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Technical Reports / White Papers

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
[arXiv]

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

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

Publications

[Security'21] 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
to appear in USENIX Security'21.
[PDF] [Slides]

[IoTDI'21] 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]

[SIGCOMM'20] 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'20] 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'20] 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'20] 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]

[SIGCOMM'19] 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'19] 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

[OSDI'18] 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'18] 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]

[SIGCOMM'16] 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.

[HotNets'15] 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'15] 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'15] 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]

[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]

[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]

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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 will be focusing on building next-generation networked systems. Prior to BU, Dr. Liu was a postdoctoral researcher at Carnegie Mellon University and obtain 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