Jian Li
Assistant Professor
Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics
Department of Computer Science
College of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Stony Brook University
E-mail: jian.li.3 AT stonybrook DOT edu
Short Biography
Jian Li is an Assistant Professor of Data Science with the Departments of Applied Mathematics and Statistics & Computer Science in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Stony Brook University, State University of New York (SUNY). Before that, he was an assistant professor at SUNY-Binghamton from 2019 to 2023, and a postdoc with the College of Information and Computer Sciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst from 2017 to 2019, hosted by Prof. Don Towsley. He completed his Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from Texas A&M University in 2016 under the supervision of Prof. Srinivas Shakkottai. He also worked very closely with Prof. Vijay Subramanian from University of Michigan. He received his B.E. from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2012. Dr. Li is a recipient of the NSF CISE CRII Award. His papers have received the ACM e-Energy'21 Best Paper Runner-Up Award and IEEE MASCOTS'18 Best Paper Runner-Up Award. His research is supported by NSF, ARO and DOE.
Research Interests
Theory: Reinforcement Learning, Multi-Armed Bandits, Federated/Decentralized Learning, Stochastic Optimization and Control, RL with Human Feedback and Alignment for Large Language Models (LLMs)
Applications: Next-Generation Large-Scale Networked Systems include wireless networks, edge and cloud computing, caching and content delivery, serverless computing and Internet-of-Things.
I am actively looking for highly motivated Ph.D. students and postdocs with strong background in machine learning (particularly reinforcement learning), applied mathematics, statistics, optimization, and/or operation research, as well as interests in applications of next-generation networked systems (e.g., wireless networks, edge and could computing). Please feel free to apply to either the Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics or the Department of Computer Science and mention my name in your application if you are interested in joining our group!
News
03/2024: Delivered an invited talk at INFORMS Optimization Society Conference - Emerging Applications of Data-driven Sequential Decision Making.
02/2024: [Award] Excellence in Teaching Award for Fall 2023.
02/2024: Delivered an invited talk at Information Theory and Applications Workshop - ITA 2024.
01/2024: [Paper] One paper accepted to ICLR 2024 (acceptance rate: 31%).
12/2023: [Paper] Three papers accepted to AAAI 2024 (acceptance rate: 23.75%).
12/2023: [Service] I will serve as a PC member for ICML 2024, ACM MobiHoc 2024 and IEEE ICNP 2024.
11/2023: [Student] My Ph.D. student Shufan Wang will be a research intern at AT&T Labs - Research in the summer of 2024.
10/2023: [Student] Congratulations to Gang Yan for passing his Ph.D. dissertation defense. Best of luck on your upcoming adventure at UC Merced and beyond!
10/2023: [Student] My Ph.D. student Guojun Xiong received the Scholar Award from NeurIPS 2023.
09/2023: [Paper] One paper accepted to NeurIPS 2023 (acceptance rate: 26.1%).
08/2023: [Service] I will serve as a Reviewer for ICLR 2024.
07/2023: [Paper] One paper accepted to ACM ASPLOS 2024 (acceptance rate: 16.3%).
06/2023: [Grant] Our project on robust federated learning is funded by the NSF SaTC CORE program. Thanks, NSF.
06/2023: [Service] I will serve as a Senior Program Committee member (SPC) for AAAI 2024.
05/2023: [Paper] One paper accepted to ACM KDD 2023 (acceptance rate: 22.1%).
04/2023: [Paper] Two papers accepted to ICML 2023 (acceptance rate: 27.9%).
04/2023: [Service] I will serve as a TPC member for IEEE INFOCOM 2024.
04/2023: [Award] Awarded the Distinguished Member of the 2023 IEEE INFOCOM Technical Program Committee.
03/2023: [Service] I will serve as a PC member for NeurIPS 2023 and IEEE ICNP 2023.
02/2023: [Student] My Ph.D. student Guojun Xiong will be a research intern at Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs this summer.
02/2023: Delivered an invited talk at Information Theory and Applications Workshop - ITA 2023.
01/2023: [Student] My Ph.D. student Gang Yan will be a research intern at AT&T Labs - Research this summer.
12/2022: [Grant] Our project on resource constrained reinforcement learning in tactical networks is funded by the U.S. Army Research Office (ARO). Thanks, ARO.
12/2022: [Paper] Our paper "Reinforcement Learning for Dynamic Dimensioning of Cloud Caches: A Restless Bandit Approach" accepted to IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking.
12/2022: [Student] My Ph.D. students Guojun Xiong and Gang Yan received the Student Scholar Award from AAAI 2023.
12/2022: [Service] I will serve as a PC member for ICML 2023.
11/2022: [Paper] Our paper "Decentralized Stochastic Multi-Player Multi-Armed Walking Bandits" accepted to AAAI 2023 (oral presentation, acceptance rate: 10.8%).
11/2022: [Paper] Our paper "DeFL: Defending Against Model Poisoning Attacks in Federated Learning via Critical Learning Periods Awareness" accepted to AAAI 2023 (acceptance rate: 19.6%).
10/2022: [Student] My Ph.D. student Guojun Xiong received the Scholar Award from NeurIPS 2022.
10/2022: [Service] I will serve as a TPC member for ACM MobiHoc 2023 and IEEE ICDCS 2023.
09/2022: [Paper] Our paper "Learning Infinite-Horizon Average-Reward Restless Multi-Action Bandits via Index Awareness" accepted to NeurIPS 2022 (acceptance rate: 25.6%)
08/2022: [Service] I will serve as a PC member for AAAI 2023.
07/2022: [Paper] Our paper "Index-Aware Reinforcement Learning for Adaptive Video Streaming at the Wireless Edge" accepted to ACM MobiHoc 2022 (acceptance rate: 19.8%).
07/2022: [Award] I was awarded as an outstanding reviewer (top 10%) of ICML 2022.
04/2022: [Paper] Our paper "Towards Latency Awareness for Content Delivery Network Caching" accepted to USENIX ATC 2022 (acceptance rate: 16.3%).
04/2022: [Service] I will serve as a TPC member for IEEE INFOCOM 2023.
04/2022: [Grant] Our proposal entitled "RINGS: Resilient Edge Networks with Data-driven Model-based Learning" is funded through the NSF Resilient & Intelligent NextG Systems (RINGS) program, with collaborators from NYU. Thanks, NSF.
03/2022: [Student] My Ph.D. student Guojun Xiong received the IEEE INFOCOM 2022 Student Conference Grant.
03/2022: [Service] I will serve as a PC member for NeurIPS 2022.
02/2022: [Award] Awarded the Distinguished Member of the 2022 IEEE INFOCOM Technical Program Committee.
01/2022: [Paper] Our paper "Accelerating Serverless Computing by Harvesting Idle Resources" accepted to ACM WWW 2022 (acceptance rate: 17.7%).
12/2021: [Service] I will serve as a PC member for ICML 2022.
12/2021: [Paper] Our paper "Reinforcement Learning for Dynamic Dimensioning of Cloud Caches: A Restless Bandit Approach" accepted to IEEE INFOCOM 2022 (acceptance rate: 19.9%).
12/2021: [Paper] Our paper "Reinforcement Learning Augmented Asymptotically Optimal Index Policies for Finite-Horizon Restless Bandits" accepted to AAAI 2022 (oral presentation, acceptance rate: 4.6%).
12/2021: [Paper] Our paper "Seizing Critical Learning Periods in Federated Learning" accepted to AAAI 2022 (acceptance rate: 15%).
12/2021: [Student] My Ph.D. student Gang Yan received the ACM CoNEXT 2022 Student Conference Grant.
11/2021: [Service] I will serve as a TPC member for ACM MobiHoc 2022.
09/2021: [Paper] Our paper "Learning from Optimal Caching for Content Delivery" accepted to ACM CoNEXT 2021 (acceptance rate: 22.5%).
06/2021: [Paper] Our ACM e-Energy paper on online energy scheduling won the Best Paper Runner-Up Award.
04/2021: [Service] I will serve as a TPC member for IEEE INFOCOM 2022.
04/2021: [Paper] Our paper "Online Peak-Aware Energy Scheduling with Untrusted Advice" accepted to ACM e-Energy 2021 (acceptance rate: 22%).
04/2021: [Grant] Honored to receive the NSF CRII Award. Thanks NSF.
12/2020: [Service] I will serve as a TPC member for ACM MobiHoc 2021 and IEEE ICDCS 2021.
11/2020: [Grant] Thanks the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) for funding our project to advance solar technologies. Media coverage: BingUNews.
09/2020: [Paper] Our paper "Online Algorithms for Multi-shop Ski Rental with Machine Learned Advice" accepted to NeurIPS 2020 (acceptance rate: 20%).
07/2020: [Paper] Our paper "RL-Belady: A Unified Learning Framework for Content Caching" accepted to ACM Multimedia 2020 for full oral presentation (acceptance rate: 27%).
06/2020: [Service] I will serve as a TPC member for IEEE INFOCOM 2021.
02/2020: Delivered an invited talk at Information Theory and Applications Workshop - ITA 2020.
10/2019: [Paper] Our paper "Quickest Detection of Dynamic Events in Networks" accepted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theory (IEEE TIT).
08/2019: I joined Binghamton University-SUNY as an assistant professor.
07/2019: I was invited to attend NSF-NeTS Early Career Workshop.
04/2019: [Paper] Our paper on streaming analytics in geo-distributed edge systems accepted to ACM SIGMETRICS/IFIP Performance 2019 (acceptance rate: 17%).
04/2019: [Service] I will serve as a TPC member for IEEE INFOCOM 2020.
09/2018: [Paper] Our paper on network cache design selected as best paper finalist at IEEE MASCOTS 2018.
04/2018: [Paper] Our paper on online learning for caching algorithm design accepted to IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (IEEE JSAC).
04/2018: I was invited to attend Microsoft Research Faculty Summit 2018. See you in Redmond this summer!