Research Interests

Distributed systems, information retrieval, computer networks, operating systems, services computing, and databases.

Education

• University of Rochester, Rochester, NY.       Ph.D. in Computer Science, August 2004.
  Advisor: Sandhya Dwarkadas.
  Dissertation: "Data Sharing and Information Retrieval in Heterogeneous Distributed Systems."
  One product of the dissertation is a middleware system, InterWeave, that supports the use of shared memory, RPC, and transactions in distributed applications written in different programming languages and running on heterogeneous platforms. Another direction of the dissertation combines techniques from multiple domains--information retrieval, database, and peer-to-peer computing--to build large-scale information retrieval systems.
• Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China.       M.S. in Computer Science, July 1999.
  Advisor: Guojie Li.
  Thesis: "Streaming Servers for Video-on-Demand in Hybrid-Fiber-Coaxial Networks."
  Used a co-design of algorithms, hardware, kernel modules, and user-level software to meet the real-time and scalability requirements of a Video-on-Demand system.
• University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China.       B.S. in Computer Science, July 1996.
  Advisor: Baohua Zhao.
  Thesis: "CDMA-based Wireless Group Telephone Systems."
  Explored the design space of CDMA-based wireless group telephone systems through simulations. Modified the hardware and software of a product to integrate our wireless communication modules.

Honors

• Winner of the SCC'06 Best Paper Award out of 66 accepted papers (full, short, and industry papers).
• Winner of the ICPP'02 Best Paper Award out of 67 accepted papers.
• Ranked 4^th among all Sichuan Province students in the Chinese National College Entrance Examination in 1991 (out of more than 200,000 examinees).
• Multi-time recipient of Excellent Student Scholarship, University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), 1991-1995.
• Recipient of Yi Li Da Graduate Scholarship, USTC, 1996.
• Bachelor's thesis received the highest grade in the CS department, USTC, 1996.
• Admitted into the graduate program in Chinese Academy of Sciences with the entrance exam waived due to undergraduate academic excellence, 1996.
• Second Prize Winner of the Chinese National Mathematics Contest of High School Students, 1991.

Patent Applications

Filed more than a dozen patents, which can be found here.

Experience

• IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Hawthorne, NY. Aug 2004--present
  Research Staff Member, doing research in Services Science and large-scale distributed systems.
• Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Palo Alto, CA. May 2002--Jan 2003
  Research associate. Worked on issues broadly related to systems, including peer-to-peer information retrieval, routing in peer-to-peer networks, streaming media, and semantic-aware file store, with a focus on using statistical semantic information to guide system design.
• SandCraft Inc., Santa Clara, CA, May 2001--Aug 2001
  (SandCraft Inc. has been acquired by Raza Microelectronics)
  Software intern. Built simulators to explore the microarchitecture design space of network processors, including indirect branch predictor, issue width, and out-of-order vs. in-order execution. Findings were used in product design. Worked at the boundary between hardware and software, e.g., real-time embedded Linux for network processors and hardware support for network applications.
• Self-employed hardware/software developer, Beijing, China, 1998--1999
  Used a co-design of algorithms, hardware, kernel modules, and user-level software to deliver solutions for systems that have real-time requirements. Successfully commercialized products include hardware and software for medical monitoring devices and laser-cutting machines.
• University of Rochester, Rochester, NY. Sept 1999--Aug 2004
  Research assistant. Developed a middleware system, InterWeave, that supports the use of shared memory, RPC, and transactions in distributed applications written in different programming languages and running on a wide variety of hardware and OS platforms. InterWeave currently consists of 45,000 lines of code. Also studied several issues centered around large-scale distributed computing, including peer-to-peer information retrieval, routing in peer-to-peer networks, application-level multicast, Internet distance estimation, and scalable dimensionality reduction.
• University of Rochester, Rochester, NY Sept 2000--Dec 2001
  Teaching assistant for three semesters in undergraduate and graduate courses. Graded homework and projects, gave tutorials, and assisted students as necessary.
• Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, Sept 1997--Jul 1999
  Research assistant in the National Center for Intelligent Computing Systems. Used a co-design of algorithms (e.g., data layout and disk scheduling), hardware, kernel modules, and user-level software to meet the real-time and scalability requirements of a Video-on-Demand system. The system has evolved into a product.
• University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China, Sept 1995--Jan 1996
  Teaching assistant for one semester.
• University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China, Sept 1994--Jun 1996
  Research assistant in the Software Lab. Built a CDMA simulator to explore the design space of a wireless group telephone system. Modified the hardware and software of an existing product to integrate our wireless communication modules.

Professional Services

• Technical Program Committee member of the Fourth Asian Information Retrieval Symposium (AIRS 2008)
• Technical Program Committee member of the 2007 International Conference on Parallel Processing (ICPP-07).
  
• Poster Committee member of the 15th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2006).
  
• Technical Program Committee member of the 2005 International Conference on Parallel Processing (ICPP-05).
  
• Technical Program Committee member of the First International Workshop on Mobility in Peer-to-Peer Systems (MPPS'05), in conjunction with ICDCS'05.
  
• Poster Committee member of the 14th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2005).
  
• NSF CSR Panelist (National Science Foundation, Computer Systems Research program), 2005.
• Technical Program Committee member of the 2006 International Workshop on Peer-to-Peer Information Management (P2PIM).