I am an experimental computer scientist and I build systems as a way to validate research hypotheses. I care about how computing and information technologies can serve people untethered, or Mobile Computing. In this space, my students and I have built mobile operating systems, mixed-signal sensors, world's first massive MIMO base stations, as well as novel ways for mobile systems to collaborate and the first publicly reported longitudinal study of smartphone users in the field. Lately I am interested in pushing the limits of software systems by embracing analog hardware, formal methods, and new systems programming languages. We are building a new operating system with baremetal efficiency and runtime composability for edge servers and embedded systems alike.

I am currently on leave with Microsoft Research (Redmond) as a visiting researcher.

If you are interested in using our Argos massive MIMO systems, they are commericially available from Skylark Wireless, a starup co-founded by my former Ph.D. student Clay Shepard. They will also be available soon as part of the NSF-funded Platform for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) program.

Biosketch, Full CV

If you enjoy buidling systems and find our recent work interesting, email me with your CV for opportunities.

Ph.D. Alumni

• Min Hong Yun (Google): Ph.D., 2018 (Distinguished Paper Finalist, NDSS'19).
• Clayton Shepard (CTO and Co-founder of Skylark Wireless): Ph.D., 2017.
• Robert LiKamWa (Assistant Professor, Arizona State EE & Media): Ph.D., 2016. (Best Paper Award, MobiSys'13)
• Ardalan Amiri Sani (Assistant Professor, UC Irvine CS): Ph.D., 2015. (Best Paper Award, MobiSys'14)
• Hang Yu (MobiSport): Ph.D., 2015.
• Felix Xiaozhu Lin (Assistant Professor, Purdue ECE): Ph.D., 2014. (Best Paper Award, ASPLOS'14)
• Mian Dong (Co-founder of MobiSport): Ph.D., 2013. (Best Paper Award, MobiSys'11)
• Ahmad Rahmati (Apple): Ph.D., 2012. (Best Paper Award, MobileHCI'07)
• Jun Yao (Assistant Professor, UMass-Amherst ECE): Ph.D., 2011.

Recent Talks

• Time to retire Linux (and C) (Keynote at IEEE IoTDI. Theseus OS.)
• Taming the mess at the hardware/software boundary (invited talks at USC, UCLA and Chicago)
• Toward continuous mobile vision (Invited talks at Dartmouth and Univ. of Washington)
• Many-antenna base stations are interesting systems (Keynote at All Things Cellular, August 2014)(Slides for the panel discussion)
• Sources of inspiration in mobile computing (for the SIGMOBILE Rockstar Award received at MobiSys 2014).

Selected Recent Publications (Full list)

• Ginseng: Keeping secrets in registers when you distrust the operating system (NDSS 2019) (PDF) (Distinguished Paper Finalist)
• A characterization of state spill in modern operating systems (EuroSys 2017) (PDF)
• RedEye: Analog ConvNet image sensor architecture for continuous mobile vision (ISCA 2016) (PDF)
• Rio: a system solution for sharing I/O between mobile systems (MobiSys 2014) (PDF, received Best Paper Award)
• K2: a mobile operating system for heterogeneous coherence domains (ASPLOS 2014) (PDF, received Best Paper Award)
• Argos: practical base stations with many antennas (MobiCom 2012) (PDF)

Dangerous Opinions

• Tips about writing systems papers
• Finding your advisor at Rice
• The sciences of system building (it is art too)
• The Prophet Dilemma: a Challenge to Induction