Professor

• Computer Science
• Electrical and Computer Engineering (secondary affiliation)
  

Go West, Young Man

I come from the UK, and grew up in Derby. My home city played a major part in the industrial revolution, and has a proud history with a (once) fine football team known as the Rams. It is home to the first silk mill in England, the last remaining train manufacturer in the UK, and Rolls Royce.

After a few detours around England, first in Newcastle and then in the south, I set off west to discover the world wasn't flat after all. After all these years, my primary focus is trying to work out what I'm doing with my life, and how I landed on Mars. In my spare time, when I'm not trying to get back to earth, or tackle all the failings of mankind from the comfort of my armchair, I exercise my curiosity in a few trivial pursuits as outlined below.

Research Interests

• Real-time and embedded systems
  
• Operating systems
  
• Multicore systems
  
• Resource management
  
• Kernels
• System organization and structure
  
• Hardware-software interaction
• Machine virtualization
• Physical computing and the Internet of Things (IoT)
• Applied computing
  

Are you interested in building things?

• Have you ever played with Lego, Meccano, plastic model kits, chemistry sets, or electronics kits? Did you have a train set or a slot car track that filled your bedroom? What about scale-model aircraft hanging from your bedroom ceiling? Did you ever take your first car engine apart to fix that big-end bearing or broken distributor shaft? How about fixing your grandparents' old radio so you could study how it worked? Perhaps you built that radio-controlled vehicle, or you designed your own computer, or you reverse-engineered some kind of black box? Even if you never did any of the above (although that's what interested me) but you are keen to roll your sleeves up and build something, then you've come to the right place. My interests are not just thinking about computers or computing in an abstract sense, but applying computing concepts to practical applications. This is not just hacking, but building and designing solutions to practical problems in a principled way.
  
• If you like to work with kernels and systems software, investigate how software interacts with hardware at the architectural-level, and enjoy applying scientific principles to make things work, consider applying to my group. Either send me an email or submit your application to Boston University. Given that I am usually very busy, I may not always respond to your email right away.
• I'm keen to work with highly motivated people who have interests in one or more of the following:
• real-time computing
  
• kernels, for both new OSes and existing systems such as Linux
• novel mechanisms and policies for resource management
  
• hardware features and software abstractions to enhance the safety, security, predictability and efficiency of systems
• applications for mixed-criticality computing in areas such as robotics, automotive systems, avionics, manufacturing and IoT
• embedded devices
  
• embedded software development
  

• If you want to know more about some of our systems work, see the Quest OS we have been developing, or look at the BOSS group below.

Research Groups

• BOSS - Boston University Operating Systems and Services
• RTCC - Real-Time Computation and Communication Group
• iBench - The Internet Programming Workbench
  

Education

• PhD, Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA - August 2000
  
• MS, Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA - September 1998
  
• MEng, Microelectronics and Software Engineering (First class Honours), University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK - June 1991
  

Bio / Curriculum Vitae

• Biographical sketch
  
• Curriculum Vitae
  

Students

    Current Advisees:

• Anam Farrukh - PhD, September 2016-present
• Ahmad (Sasan) Golchin - PhD, September 2017-present
• Anton Njavro - PhD, September 2021-present
  
• Zhiyuan (Ryan) Ruan - ECE Senior Thesis advisee; PhD, September 2020-present
• Soham Sinha - PhD, September 2016-present

    Miscellaneous Students Working on Related Research and/or Co-advised:

• Esmail Asyabi (PhD)
  

    Former Advisees:

• Katherine Zhao - PhD, 2020
  
• Craig Einstein - MS, 2020 (ARiA Acoustics)
  
• Vijay Thakkar - ECE Senior Thesis, 2019 (Now at Georgia Tech)
  
• Wil Koch - PhD, 2019 (Primary advisor, Prof. Azer Bestavros)
• Zhuoqun (Tom) Cheng - PhD, 2018 (Pure Storage)
• Ying (Chris) Ye - PhD, 2017 (Google)
• Eric Missimer - PhD, 2017 (Draper Labs)
• Jingyi Zhang - MA, 2016 (VMware, Inc.)
• Ye Li - PhD, 2015 (VMware, Cambridge, MA)
• Matthew Danish* - PhD, 2015 (Post-doc at Cambridge University, UK)
• Faddy Saad - MA, 2014
• Mehrnoosh Sameki - PhD, 2017
  
• Mehaben Mehta - MA, 2010 (NetApp, Waltham, MA)
• Junfeng Zou - PhD
• Gabriel Parmer - PhD, 2009 (Associate Professor, George Washington University)
• Yuting Zhang - PhD, 2006 (Assistant Professor, Boston University Met. College)
• Xin Qi - MA, 2005 (Qualcomm)
• Albert Sidelnik - MA, 2005
• Jason Gilanfarr - BA, 2005(VMware)
• Luis Hernandez - MA, 2004 (Microsoft)
• Daniel Levin - MA, 2004
• Jason Gloudon - MA, 2004 (Revahertz)
• SuYan Zeng - MA, 2003 (Startup in China)
• Will Drewry - BA/MA, 2003 (Google)
• Gerald Fry - BA/MA, 2002 (Charles River Analytics, Cambridge, MA)
• Raj Ashar - BA/MA, 2001
  

        *Co-advisor with Professor Hongwei Xi
        NB: Destinations in parentheses are given at the time of completion of study at BU.

General Interests

• Electronics
  
• Football
  
• Cricket
• Cycling
• Lego
  
• Motor sports, including the history of F1 from 1950-present
• Scale models
  
• Robotics
  
• Tinkering with anything mechanical
• Car engines including rotaries, 2 stroke OHVs for lawnmowers/power equipment, and glow engines for scale models
  

• I have built several Reprap/Printrbot 3D printers with custom MinnowMax controllers running my Quest OS
• I have built several drones (S500s, 250/280mm) using STM32F1/F3/F7 and Intel Aero controllers
  
• Two S500 Intel Aero drones are being developed for full autonomous flight running Quest-V
• I also built a gyroscope/Birdcage capable of housing 500mm diameter drones for test flights
  

Footnote

"What's more important,
The method or the result?
In science surely it's the method.

What's more important,
The truth or glory?
In science surely it's the truth
...but in computer science?"

Q: Why is it difficult to spot a great researcher?
A: Because they're always probing around in the dark

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