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Prospective Students (especially PHD students)

• Wireless Sensor Networks: system research for wireless sensor networks, including hardware design and testing, operating systems, and applications. We also work a lot on the theoretical and algorithmic aspects for wireless sensor networks. We are specially interested in designing large scale, fault-tolerant, and reconfigurable sustainable sensor systems.
• Cyber-Physical Systems: study the interaction of wireless sensor networks, and physical systems (such as green energy, Green-House-Gas monitoring, water quality control, air quality control, health, smart traffic control, manufacturing, structure health mornitoring). We need domain expert from these areas and hardware design experts.
• Wireless networks: in general we are interested in designing protocols for fully exploiting the strengthes of wireless networking, the interaction of wireless networks and other networking such as social networking, and cloud computing. Knowledge from system (such as operating system, distributed computing, and program language), security, algorithm design and analysis (such as computational geometry, game theory), social science, and economics could be a great fit in our group.
• Other topics: We are also interested in practical algorithms' implementation, information processing, data mining, computer graphics, and scientific computing (3D meshing for various purposes, modeling and so on).

• PhD thesis research represents a substantial work. You may want to read Useful Things to Know About Ph.D. Thesis Research by H.T. Kung at Harvard.
• Choosing a PhD thesis advisor is a very important decision for a graduate student. Here are some suggested readings:
  1. How to Choose a Thesis Advisor by Michael C. Loui at UIUC.
  2. How to Succeed in Graduate School from ACM Crossroads student magazine.
  3. How to Be a Good Graduate Student from the Caltech Grad Handbook.
• Before you contact me, please check out mine research interests and read through the following. This will save both your time and mine.
  1. If you are working with another faculty member in our department, please do not contact me.
  2. Research is enjoyable most of the times. Some times, however, it may not be as smooth as you thought. Please make sure you have the dedication and determination to carry out research.
  3. On average (1997--present), I work about 50-60 hours a week. You have to be prepared for this. Hard working is a necessary condition for success, but not sufficient though, :-).
  4. My research centers around better algorithms for various optimization problems in computer networks (most recently, in cyber-physical systems, wireless ad hoc networks, sensor networks, and peer-to-peer networks). In order to thrive in my group, you need to have a strong ability in algorithm design and analysis, and a broad knowledge in networks, especially wireless networks.
  5. You will also need to be able to carry out implementations effectively. Proficiency in (not just knowing) C or C++ is a must. If you do not know any one of the following programming language, you have to be prepared to learn at least one of the following simulation tools before you start the PhD program:
     • TinyOS programming and sensor network system design. (basically required)
     • NS-2: the general network simulator (basically required)
     • MATLAB: scientific computing and graphics (basically required)
     • CPLEX: for solving LP and ILP
     • LEDA: library for efficient data structures and algorithms
     • OPNET: for wireless networks and WDM networks
     For students working in WSN or CPS area, you need to be proficient in TinyOS and/or hardware design.

What is the advisor's effort?

• I help my graduate students select important research topics and train them in research projects so that PhD students can perform independent research and publish papers of the highest quality (e.g. major ACM/IEEE Transactions or Journals). MS students can perform guided research and publish a paper in a reputable conference or journal.

Is it worth all the effort?

• In doing so, you will increase your market value (hopefully it is always the case, :-)).

How to read technical papers in computer science? When you read articles or reports, keep the following in mind

1. What is the main contribution of the paper?
2. Is this important, why?
3. Is this a theoretical contribution to some fundamental problems in CS, or a protocol-like contribution, or both?
4. What was the main insight in getting the result?
5. What is not clear to you?
6. What did the authors not do, and you regard important?
7. What are the most important assumptions, are they limiting?
8. What are the possible applications suggested in the paper?
9. How does this relate to other things we have seen?
10. What extensions does this suggest?
11. Can you suggest some project idea based around the ideas in this paper?

If you read through this point and still want to work with me, please email me at xli AT cs DOT iit DOT edu with your resume (ASCII, PDF or POSTSCRIPT) and sample papers (if you do have publications). Please acknowledge that you have read this page at the beginning of your email. Otherwise, I may not spend the time to read your resume. You can also contact my current or graduated students about the research topics and styles.