Prescience Lab

Northwestern University

Welcome to the Prescience Lab, the research group of Peter Dinda. We work on a range of things in systems. It's "prescience" as via the Latin praescientia.

Do you program or manage programming in any capacity? Please take our floating point survey.

Members

Peter A. Dinda, Professor

Michael Wilkins, Ph.D. Student

Nick Wanninger, Ph.D. Student

Griffin Dube, Ph.D. Student

Kirill Nagaitsev, Ph.D. Student

Michael Polinski, Ph.D. Student

David Krasowska, Ph.D. Student

Kevin McAfee, Undergrad, MS, REU Student

Peizhi Liu, Undergrad, MS student

Yankai Jiang, MS student

Jiaxiang Li, MS Student

Hanming Wang, MS Student

Yangzhou Wang, MS student

Yan Xu, MS student

Luke Arnold, Undergrad, REU Student

Thomas Filipiuk, Undergrad, REU Student

Karl Hallsby, Undergrad (IIT), REU Student

Carson Surmeier, Undergrad, REU Student

Garrett Weil, Undergrad, REU Student

Nadharm Dhiantravan, Undergrad

Graham Grieb, Undergrad

Ruiqi (Jerry) Xu, Undergrad

Current Projects

Constellation Project (Unifying software and hardware for performant and frictionless heterogeneous parallelism)

Privacy Backplane (Individualized privacy in the Internet of Things)

Buoyancy Project (Systems and User Approaches to Floating Point Correctness and Resilience)

Interweaving Project (Reimagining the software/hardware stack for modern parallelism)

Distinguished Former Members

Ph.D. Graduates

Christopher Kraemer, Ph.D. Student (co-advised with Josiah Hester, moved to Georgia Tech along with Josiah)

Brian Suchy (Ph.D. 2022, First position: Google Research) (Ph.D. Thesis)

Maciej Swiech (Ph.D. 2016, First position: Ibotta) (Ph.D. Thesis)

Kyle Hale (Ph.D. 2016, First position: CS professor at Illinois Institute of Technology), (Ph.D. Thesis - Best Dissertation, Northwestern CS, 2016)

Chang Bae, (Ph.D. 2013, First position: Intel) (Ph.D. Thesis)

Lei Xia, (Ph.D., 2013, First position: VMware) (Ph.D. Thesis)

Stephen Tarzia, (Ph.D., 2011, First position: Assistant Chair, Northwestern EECS) (Ph.D. Thesis)

Jack Lange, (Ph.D., 2010. First position: CS professor at the University of Pittsburgh) (Ph.D. Thesis)

Yuan Tang, (Visiting Scholar, 2008-2010, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC)) (Project: VNET/P in Palacios)

Ashish Gupta, (Ph.D., 2008. First position: Google) (Ph.D. Thesis)

Bin Lin (Ph.D., 2007. First position: Apple) (Ph.D. Thesis)

Ananth Sundararaj (Ph.D., 2006. First position: Microsoft) (Ph.D. Thesis)

Dong Lu (Ph.D., 2005. First position: Vice President, Equities Strategies, Barclays Capital) (Ph.D. Thesis)

M.S. Graduates (Thesis/Project)

Drew Kersnar (B.S./M.S., 2022, CS Undergrad Research Award, First position: Microsoft) (Project among others)

Kevin Mendoza Tudares (B.S./M.S., 2022, First position: Tableau) (Numerous projects, Eschbach Award Winner)

Siyuan Chai (B.S./M.S., 2021, First position: UIUC Ph.D Program) (Project among others)

Aaron Nelson, (B.S./M.S., 2021, First position: SpaceX) (Project among others (CARAT CAKE))

Zhen Huang (M.S., 2021, First position: BloXroute Labs) (Project among others)

Wenyi Wang, (M.S., 2021, First position: U.Chicago Ph.D. program) (Project)

Michael Leonard, (M.S., 2019, First position: quadric.io) (Project, among others. MS Thesis was with Simone Campanoni and resulted in a CGO paper)

John Albers, (M.S., 2019, First position: Ab Initio Software) (Project, among others. MS thesis was on adding Rust support to the Nautilus Kernel)

Conor Hetland, (M.S., 2018, Ph.D. ABD) (Project among many)

Xiaoyang Wang, (M.S., 2018, First position: UIUC Ph.D. program), (M.S. Project, among others)

Matt George, (M.S., 2017) (MS Project: Conservative Garbage Gollection in the Nautilus Kernel)

Akhil Guliani, (M.S., 2016, First position: UW-Madison Ph.D. program) (M.S. Project)

Shiva Rao, (B.S./M.S., 2013, First position: Altera) (MS Project: DVFS in Palacios)

Jaime Espinosa, (M.S., 2012, First position: Microsoft) (M.S. Project)

Andy Gocke, (B.S./M.S., 2012, First position: Microsoft) (Project: Initial VT/VMX implementation for Palacios)

Tim Zwiebel, (M.S., 2009. First position: Google) (M.S. Thesis)

J. Scott Miller (M.S., 2009. First position: ZS Associates) (M.S. Project, among others)

Jason Skicewicz (M.S., 2006, Ph.D. ABD, founder of Shacked Software) (M.S. Project: Tsunami wavelet toolkit in RPS)

Yi Qiao (M.S., 2005, First position: Synopsys; Ph.D. advised by F. Bustamante) (Numerous projects and publications)

Mike Knop (M.S., 2002 (advised by Jennifer Schopf), First position: IT-QBase GmbH) (Project)

Kevin Dill (M.S. 2001 (advised by Ken Forbus)) (Project: Minet)

B.S. Graduates (Thesis/Project)

Alex Bernat (High school student, REU student, First position: Harvard) (Project among others (FPVM, CARAT CAKE))

Charlie Bernat (High school student) (Project)

Alan Wang (High school student, First position: undergraduate at UIUC) (Project: reverse engineering Intel microcode)

Jiacheng Ma (Exchange student, First position: EPFL Ph.D. Program) (Project among others (FPVM))

Souradip Ghosh (B.S., 2021, First position: CMU Ph.D. program; also CRA Honorable Mention and CSGF Fellowship) (Project, among others (CARAT CAKE, OpenMP, FPVM, etc))

Michael Cuevas (B.S., 2021, First position: Meta ; also CRA Honorable Mention) (Project, among others (CARAT CAKE, OpenMP, etc))

Jin Han, (B.S., 2019, First position: CMU M.S program) (Project, among others)

Jinghang (Frank) Wang, (B.S., 2018, First position: CMU Ph.D. program) (Project, among others)

Christopher Beauchene, (B.S., 2016, First position: Amazon) (Project)

Madhav Suresh, (B.S., 2013, First position: Google) (Project: VM checkpoint/restore in Palacios)

Prem Seetharaman, (B.S., 2013, First position: Northwestern CS Ph.D. program) (Project)

Jason Lee, (B.S., 2012, First position: Microsoft) (Project: Programming Systems for TI Chronos)

Brad Weinberger, (B.S., 2012, First position: Microsoft) (Project: file and passthrough disk support in Palacios)

John Shawger, (B.S., 2012, First position: YMF Debut Orchestra) (Project: Rewrite Grammar-based Optimization)

Nick Pizzolato, (B.S., 2012, First position: Microsoft) (Project: Forth for Sensor Networks)

Rumou Duan, (B.S., 2012) (Project: Virtual Serial Port Device for Palacios)

Stephen Jaconette, (B.S., 2011, First position: Google) (Project: Direct Paging and Console for Palacios)

Jori Hardman, (B.S., 2011, First position: Chief Technology Officer at SwipeSense) (Project: Web Compiler for the ABSYNTH Project)

Robert Deloatch (B.S. (from UMBC), 2011, First position: CS Ph.D. student at UIUC) (Project: Console for Palacios)

Ben Prosnitz, (B.S. (Applied Math), 2010, First position: CS Ph.D. student at Stanford) (Project)

Peter Kamm, (B.S., 2009, First position: Digitas) (Project: Virtual NICs for Palacios)

Mat Wojcik, (B.S., 2009, First position: Eagle Seven Trading) (Project: Virtual NICs for Palacios)

Sam Rossoff, (B.S., 2007, First position: Amazon) (Project, Patent)

Jay Bruins, (B.S., 2007, First position: Apple) (Project: Distributed Popularity Indices)

Dave Huber, (B.S., 2007) (Project: Distributed Popularity Indices)

Blair Heuer, (B.S., 2006, First position: Facebook) (Project: Predictive Web Navigation)

Brian Cornell, (B.S., 2005, First position: Google) (Project)

Ricky Chen (B.S. 2005, First position: Bump Technologies) (Project: Minet)

Rachel Gold, (B.S. 2004) (Project)

Alex Shoykhet, (B.S., 2004, First position: Lookout Mobile Security) (Honors Thesis)

Andrew Weinrich, (B.S., 2003, First position: Cision) (Project: web system and other elements of the URGIS Project)

Luka Spoljaric, (B.S., 2003) (Project: Linux Sensors for RPS)

Jeff Kwiat, (B.S., 2003, First position: Abacus Group LLC) (Project: Analysis of PACS Workflow, Minet Contributions)

Curtis Barrett, (B.S., 2003, First position: Space Exploration Technologies) (Project: Micro/Meso-scale Traffic Simulation, and Virtualized Audio)

Jim Trieu, (B.S., 2003) (Project: Virtualized Audio)

Sam Benediktson, (B.S., 2003, First position: Vibes Media) (Project: Virtualized Audio)

Matt Lineen (B.S., 2003, First position: Chief Technology Officer of Table XI) (Project: Minet)

Budyanto Himawan, (B.S. 2003, First position: WMS Gaming) (Project: Minet)

Aja Nichols, (B.S., 2002, First position: Northwestern) (Project: Virtualized Audio)

David Zhao, (B.S. 2002) (Project: Minet)

Brandon O'Bryant (B.S. 2002) (Project: RPS)

Jason Moy (B.S. 2002) (Project: Minet)

Matt Zielinski, (B.S., 2001, now at Deloitte and Touche) (Project: Minet)

Others: Jack Hudson

Completed Projects

V3VEE: An Open Source Virtual Machine Monitor For Modern Architectures

ESP: The Empathic Systems Project

ABSYNTH: Sensor Network Programming Systems For Non-experts

Virtuoso: Resource Management and Prediction for Distributed Computing Using Virtual Machines

Clairvoyance: Resource Measurement and Prediction for Distributed Interactive Applications

Peer-to-Peer Systems

User Comfort: Understanding User Comfort With Resource Borrowing (This has become the Empathic Systems Project)

URGIS: A Unified Relational Approach to Grid Information Services

GA-IDS: Genetic Art For Intrusion Detection

Virtualized Audio: Immersive Interactive Audio

Minet: A user-level TCP/IP stack

Tsunami: Multiresolution Resource Queries and Other Applications of Wavelets to Resource Signals

WatchTower: Windows Performance Monitoring and Data Reduction

Diffusion: Zero Cost Information Dissemination

RTSA: Real-time Scheduling Advisors

Publications

Recent talks and papers can be found under each of the individual projects. Additional talks and additional papers are also available.

Systems

FPSpy: A tool for studying the floating point behavior of existing, unmodified binaries

Nautilus Aerokernel: A kernel framework for building hybrid parallel runtime systems

Philix: A toolchain for booting your third-party OS on the Intel Xeon Phi.

ClapIR: An iOS app for measuring room acoustics.

Batphone: An iOS app for acoustic-based indoor localization.

Sonar Power Manager: Ultrasonic sonar-based user presence detection

Palacios: An open-source virtual machine monitor for modern architectures

RPS: An extensible toolkit for building resource prediction systems. The Running Time Advisor and Real-time Scheduling Advisor codes are also included.

Playload: A tool for playing back realistic CPU workloads stored in host load traces.

Minet: A user-level network stack.

Linux Diffusion: Tools for piggybacking extra information on packets

GridG: A generator of computational grids

TameParallelTCP: Estimate throughput and impact of parallel TCP flows

Virtuoso Tools: VNET, VSched, Wayback and others