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
  • Data

  • Host Load Trace Archive: About one gigabyte of host load traces.
  • Resources

  • Prescience Lab Testbed (Internal Only)
  • ABSYNTH Sensor Network Environment (Internal Only)
  • Honeynut Cluster (nee Virtuoso Cluster)
  • Distributed Optical Testbed (DOT Cluster - defunct)
  • PlanetLab
  • VLab (for systems education)