Research Interests

I am a systems researcher interested in operating systems, state management, compiler safety, and software architecture. I'm currently working on Theseus OS, which I've written from scratch in Rust to rethink OS structure, state management, and the fundamental division of responsibilities between the OS and compiler. Our primary goals in Theseus are to enable easy, efficient, and arbitrary runtime evolvability (e.g., live update) and availability without redundancy (fault recovery). One key to realizing this is that any part of the system, even core kernel components, can be arbitrarily reconfigured or replaced at runtime without rebooting.

In the past I have worked on virtual reality, mobile devices, I/O virtualization, multiscreen streaming frameworks, static analysis of device drivers, software engineering tools for change impact analysis, and novel debugging procedures for mobile robotics.

Academics

I received my Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Computer Engineering from Rice University in Houston working with Dr. Lin Zhong as part of the Rice Efficient Computing Group. My research focused on the structure and state management of operating systems, resulting in the birth of Theseus OS.

I received my B.S. in Computer Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin, where I focused on embedded systems and software.
After graduating from UT Austin, I continued as a PhD student in UT Austin's Software Engineering department for one year until I transferred to Rice.

About me

I was born and raised in north Dallas, TX, where I attended Lake Highlands High School. My father worked as a patent lawyer and my mother was an insurance agent and homemaker during my childhood. I have one younger brother who also went to UT Austin.

In my spare time, I enjoy cooking all kinds of cuisines, including Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Thai, new American, and Italian. I have always been a musical person; I started playing classical piano at the age of 6 and haven't stopped since. I also played jazz saxophone all throughout high school (and once in college) and, as a result, I'm a huge fan of jazz and big band swing. I enjoy things related to Chinese and Vietnamese culture, and can speak some Chinese (don't test me...) after spending a summer in Beijing. One of my latest and most loved hobbies is long-distance overnight backpacking.

My wife and I live in Bellevue, WA with our dog Puma. She currently works as a technical hardware manager in an FPGA group in Microsoft Azure.