Jiawei Tyler Gu
Reliable Cloud System Management: Challenges and Tools
Siebel School of Computing and Data Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Advisor: Tianyin Xu

Siyuan Chai
Building an OS Framework for New Memory Translation Architectures
Siebel School of Computing and Data Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, passed prelim on May 2, 2025.
Advisor: Tianyin Xu

Yinfang Chen
Agentic AI for Cloud System Troubleshooting
Siebel School of Computing and Data Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, passed prelim on Apr. 22, 2025.
Advisor: Tianyin Xu

Jiawei Liu
Software Quality Assurance for Machine Learning Systems
Siebel School of Computing and Data Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, passed prelim on Jan. 15, 2025.
Advisor: Lingming Zhang

Jovan Stojkovic
Chasing the Tail at Scale: Towards Cloud-Native Processor Architectures
Siebel School of Computing and Data Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, passed prelim on Sep. 13, 2024.
Advisor: Josep Torrellas

Jason Liu
Designing and Analyzing Security Systems via Analysis of Log Data
Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, passed prelim on July 29, 2024.
Advisor: Adam Bates

Houxiang Ji
Memory Optimization Kernel Feature Offloading in Heterogeneous Systems
Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, passed prelim on May 3, 2024.
Advisor: Nam Sung Kim

Xudong Sun
Testing and Verification of Cloud Infrastructure Systems
Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, defended on May 7, 2025.
Advisor: Tianyin Xu

Jinghao Jia
Making Safe OS Kernel Extensions Expressive, Efficient, and Easy to Program
Siebel School of Computing and Data Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, defended on Apr. 4, 2025.
Advisors: Tianyin Xu and Dan Williams

Runxiang (Sam) Cheng
Regression Test Prioritization for Modern Software
Siebel School of Computing and Data Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, defended on Apr. 1, 2025.
Advisor: Darko Marinov

Tzu-Bin Yan
An Internet Measurement Framework for Low-Cost Vantage Point Sharing
Siebel School of Computing and Data Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, defended on Mar. 25, 2025.
Advisor: Kirill Levchenko

Kuan-Yen Chou, Ph.D.
Scalable Verification of Complex Networks
Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, defended on Oct. 21, 2024.
Advisor: Matthew Caesar

Jie Huang, Ph.D.
On the Capabilities and Risks Of Large Language Models
Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, defended on April 5, 2024.
Advisor: Kevin Chen-Chuan Chang

Hongpeng Guo, Ph.D.
Multi-objective Optimizations for Resource-efficient Large Scale Machine Learning Systems
Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, defended on Feb. 29, 2024.
Advisor: Klara Nahrstedt

Bingzhe Liu, Ph.D.
Enhancing the Reliability of Dynamic Management in Cloud Infrastructures
Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, defended on Nov. 17, 2023.
Advisor: Brighten Godfrey

Dan Plyukhin, Ph.D.
Fault-Tolerant and Fault-Recovering Garbage Collection for The Actor Model: A Collage-based Approach
Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, defended on Aug. 15, 2023.
Advisor: Gul Agha

Zhe Yang, Ph.D.
Soft Real Time Resource Management for Vision Based Internet of Things Systems
Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, defended on Sep. 27, 2022.
Advisor: Klara Nahrstedt

Wenyu Wang, Ph.D.
Empowering Automated Mobile UI Testing With External Support
Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, defended on Jun. 25, 2022.
Advisors: Tao Xie and Tianyin Xu

Hsuan-Chi (Austin) Kuo, Ph.D.
Attack Surface Reduction in Contemporary Operating Systems via Practical Kernel Debloating
Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, defended on Apr. 13, 2022.
Advisor: Sibin Mohan

Apostolos Kokolis, Ph.D.
New Architectures for Non-Volatile Memory Technologies
Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, defended on Apr. 6, 2022.
Advisor: Josep Torrellas
David J. Kuck Outstanding PhD Thesis Award

Atul Sandur, Ph.D.
Scalable Resource Management for Internet-of-Things (IoT) Applications: Challenges, Methods and Tools
Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, defended on Jan. 6, 2022.
Advisor: Gul Agha

Saurabh Jha, Ph.D.
Machine Learning For Achieving Dependability in Mission-Critical Systems
Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, defended on Oct. 14, 2021.
Advisor: Ravishankar K. Iyer

Ali Kheradmand, Ph.D.
Foundations for Practical Network Verification
Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, defended on July 27, 2021.
Advisors: Brighten Godfrey and Grigore Roşu

Wing Lam, Ph.D.
Software Testing in a Non-Deterministic World
Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, defended on June 24, 2021.
Advisors: Tao Xie and Darko Marinov
ACM SIGSOFT Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Award

Dimitrios Skarlatos, Ph.D.
Rethinking Computer Architecture and Operating System Abstractions for Good & Evil
Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, defended on August 19, 2020.
Advisor: Josep Torrellas
ACM SIGARCH - IEEE-CS TCCA Outstanding Dissertation Award
David J. Kuck Outstanding PhD Thesis Award

Faria Kalim, Ph.D.
Satisfying Service Level Objectives in Stream Processing Systems
Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, defended on July 1, 2020.
Advisor: Indranil Gupta

Tarek Elgamal, Ph.D.
Utility-driven Optimization and Placement Framework for Visual IoT Analytics over Edge-cloud Environments
Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, defended on May 8, 2020.
Advisor: Klara Nahrstedt

Santhosh Prabhu, Ph.D.
Practical Verification of Network Planes
Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, defended on March 12, 2020.
Advisor: Matthew Caesar