Department of Computer Science
University of Virginia
Rice Hall 304, 85 Engineer’s Way
Charlottesville, VA 22904
We are hiring! Our lab has Ph.D. student positions starting from Fall 2025. If you are interested in building/hacking systems, we should talk. [Link]
Update: we are currently looking for research interns on a collaboration project withMicrosoft (location based in China) to improve cloud reliability. Applicants with system background are preferred. Schedule a chat with us if you are interested.
About
I am a tenure-track assistant professor in Department of Computer Science at University of Virginia. My research centers on building robust and highly available systems. One major focus is to enhance the capabilities of distributed systems to detect, localize, and react to complex failures at runtime. I am also interested in solving reliability challenges in real-world systems from other domains, such as deep learning systems.
Our recent work includes developing principled approaches to deal with:
- silent semantic violations: [OKLib, OSDI’22]
- memory leaks in production cloud infrastructure: [RESIN, OSDI’22]
- partial failures: [Watchdog, HotOS’19] [OmegaGen, NSDI’20 Best Paper Award]
News
- 2024/10: Congratulations to Tseganesh (Grace) for being selected to present her work at SOSP SRC, see you at Austin!
- 2024/10: Zhenyu, Dimas and Kahfi received SOSP travel grants. Thanks to sponsors for the generous support!
- 2024/10: Will be serving on SOSP’25 Program Committee.
- 2024/5: Co-organizing a SIGCOMM workshop on Formal Methods x Networked Systems. Welcome to submit your work!
- 2024/4: Received grants from 4-VA Collaborative Program. Thanks to 4-VA!
- 2024/3: Invited to give a talk at the University of Chicago System Seminar.
- 2024/3: Will be serving on NSDI’25 Program Committee.
- 2023/12: Gave a talk to student interns in Alibaba on graduate school advice.
- 2023/10: I’m honored that my Ph.D. thesis titled “Enhancing Cloud System Runtime to Address Complex Failures” has been recognized with an Honorable Mention for ACM SIGOPS Dennis M. Ritchie Doctoral Dissertation Award. A heartfelt thank you to Ryan, the best Ph.D. advisor ever, as well as my wonderful collaborators Suman and Ding!
- 2023/10: Will be serving on EuroSys’25 Program Committee.
- 2023/10: Did a talk on 2023 UVA CS Research Symposium, Securing A Bad Career In Ph.D. Program, revealing three most common pitfalls for junior Ph.D. students. (Chinese ver.)
- 2023/9: Will be teaching CS4740: Cloud Computing with a new syllabus in Spring 2024. UVA undergraduates: if you are interested in principles and concepts behind cloud systems, this course is for you.
- 2023/9: Received Google Cloud Computing Research Grants. Thank you Google!
- 2023/8: A new chapter at UVA started.
Publication (selected)
(A TL;DR version from Morning Paper)
Siyuan Wang,
Students
I am very fortunate to work with these students:
- Zhenyu Li, Ph.D. student, 2024 - now
- Dimas Shidqi Parikesit, Ph.D. student, 2024 - now
- Kahfi Soobhan Zulkifli, Ph.D. student, 2024 - now
- Wenbo Qian, Master student, 2024 - now
- Tseganesh Beyene Kebede, Master student, 2024 - now
- Yichi Zhang, Undergraduate student, 2024 - now
- Yujin Huang, Undergraduate student, 2023 - now
Teaching
- CS6501: Cloud System Reliability, Fall 2024, University of Virginia
- CS4740: Cloud Computing, Spring 2024, University of Virginia [course eval]
- CS6501: Cloud System Reliability, Fall 2023, University of Virginia [course eval]
- LiftLab Reading Group
Academic Service
Program Committee
- 2025: SOSP, NSDI, EuroSys
- 2024: ATC, SIGCOMM FMANO
Misc.
- Reviewer: ACM TOCS, IEEE TMC
- Shadow PC: EuroSys’23
- AEC: EuroSys’23
- Web Chair: HAOC’21 (in conjunction with EuroSys’21)
Work Experience
- Data Scientist Intern (part-time), Microsoft Azure, Nov 2021 - Jan 2022
- Data Scientist Intern, Microsoft Azure, Jun 2021 - Aug 2021
- Data Scientist Intern, Microsoft Azure, Jun 2020 - Sept 2020
- Research Intern, Microsoft Research Asia, Oct 2015 - Jun 2016
Misc.
- My favorite proverb is “The unexamined life is not worth living“ from Socrates. A related comics.
- I like to spend my leisure time reading or playing sports (mostly basketball). I play guitar sometimes [Bob Dylan, The Beatles, Eva Cassidy].
Bio
I received my Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in May 2023, advised by Prof. Ryan (Peng) Huang. I obtained my B.S. degree in Computer Science from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in June 2016 and spent one gap year at IPADS working with Prof. Haibo Chen and Prof. Rong Chen.