Students and visitors

Last update: 09/05/2006 01:49:42 PM -0400

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Before sending me an email, please check whether your inquiry may be addressed by one of the topics below.

• Scheduling appointments
• Senior projects
• Admissions: Graduate Program
• Research assistantships
• Visiting researchers and postdocs
• Recommendation letters and references

Scheduling Appointments

Each semester, I have general office hours during which there is no need to schedule an appointment if you can drop by during these hours. My office is AKW AKW 308A.

Senior Projects

Each semester I can take at most 2 to 3 students for senior projects. As part of a senior project, the student should make a presentation to the ants reading group. Please talk to me before a semester starts.

Admissions: Graduate Program

The first step is to get admitted to the program. After you are accepted, please feel free to contact me regarding research opportunities. Admission decisions are made by a faculty committee, and I have limited influence. All the information you need on applying for admission to CS graduate programs is available on the Web. If your research interests include networks and systems, please indicate so clearly in your application.

I am particularly interested in PhD students with interest in networks but with strong background/interests in algorithms, distributed computing, game theory, operating systems, optimization, network security, or stochastic processes. To give you more concrete examples, below I list some basic topics/books from each of the above fields. If you feel comfortable with one field or two fields below, please feel free to contact with me, and I will try my best to get you admitted to our PhD program. If you do not have background in the fields yet but have a strong mathematical background (e.g., medals in mathematical competition, training camps in mathematical Olympiad, or a CS major but have taken real and functional analysis), please feel free to contact with me and I will be very interested in talking to you.

• Algorithms
  • Introduction to Algorithms, Second Edition by Thomas H. Cormen, Charles E. Leiserson, Ronald L. Rivest, Clifford Stein. 2001.
  • Approximation Algorithms, by Vijay V. Vazirani.  2001.
  • Randomized Algorithms, by Rajeev Motwani, Prabhakar Raghavan. 1995.
  • Network Flows: Theory, Algorithms, and Applications by Ravindra K. Ahuja, Thomas L. Magnanti, James B. Orlin. 1993.
• Distributed Computing
  • An Introduction to Distributed Algorithms, by Valmir C. Barbosa 1997.
  • Parallel and Distributed Computation: Numerical Methods by Bertsekas and Tsitsiklis 1997.
• Game Theory and Economics
  • A Course in Game Theory by Martin J. Osborne and Ariel Rubinstein 1993.
  • Microeconomic Theory, by Andreu Mas-Colell, Michael D. Whinston, Jerry R. Green 1995.
• Operating Systems
  • you have a good understanding of Linux or BSD kernel, at least the networking part; for example W. Richard Stevens, Gary R. Wright, "TCP/IP Illustrated, Volume 2: The Implementation",  Addison-Wesley, Hardcover, Published January 1995, 832 pages, ISBN 020163354X.
• Optimization
  • Convex Optimization, S. Boyd and L. Vandenberghe 2003. (the class slides are useful, including contents on Ellipsoid and subgrient method which are not covered in the book)
  • Nonlinear Programming by Bertsekas, 1998. (slides and solutions can be found at the web site)
  • Network Optimization: Continuous and Discrete Models by Bertsekas 1998.
  • Dynamic programming by Bertsekas, 2000 and 2001. (slides can also be found at the web site)
• Network Security
  • Cryptography and Network Security: Principles and Practice by Stalling, Third Edition, Prentice-Hall, 2003.
  • Cryptography: Theory and Practice by Stinson, 2000.
  • Applied Cryptography by Schneier 1996.
• Stochastic Processes, Queueing Theory
  • Fundamentals of Queueing Theory, by Gross and Harris. 1998.
  • A Modern Approach to Probability Theory by  Bert Fristedt, Lawrence Gray. 1996.
  • A First Course in Stochastic Processes, by Karlin 1975.
  • A Second Course in Stochastic Processes, by Karlin 1981.
  • Queueing Systems, Volume 1, by Kleinrock 1975.
  • Queueing Systems, Volume 2, by Kleinrock 1976.

Research Assistantships

For MS students, at this time I do not have any research assistantships available. If you are a PhD student, my grants allow me to support a couple more students. Please talk to me early about research opportunities.

Visiting Researchers and Postdocs

Unfortunately, I do not support visitors at this moment, unless there is a reasonable match between our research interests.

Recommendation Letters and References

I‘m happy to provide recommendation letters and/or serve as a reference for students who have taken a class from me, and for my undergraduate, MS, and Ph.D. advisees. To write a thorough letter I need the following:

• Resume if you have one
• Copy of your "statement of purpose" for graduate school admission letters (anything exceptional about you)
• Your cumulative GPA, both overall and just counting courses in your major
• GRE scores (raw and percentile) for graduate school admission letters
• The forms I need to fill out if there are any
• Information about deadlines for receipt of the letters
• At least a week‘s time after getting these materials and before the letter or reference is needed

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