Graduate school experience in a systems group

Jinyang Liassistant professor

New York University

About me

• A graduate student at MIT (1999-2005)– Wireless networks– Distributed search engines– Peer to peer routing, storage

• A postdoc at Berkeley (2005-2006)– Wireless MAC protocols

• Advising my own graduate students since 2006– Peer to peer storage, distributed file system, mesh networks

Stay active

• Get your hands dirty– Reading papers only gets you so far– Implement your system; a throw-away

simulator/prototype

Build real systems (?)• How real do you have to make your systems?

effort

realitysimulator research prototype

Many real users Eat-your-owndog-food

Be independent

• Graduate school is for thinkers – Not a code monkey– Be able to question your advisor

• Talk to others about your idea

Be optimistic

• Paper rejection is not the end of the world– There’s always another conference– You are not judged by the # of publications

• Still no thesis topic after n years!– Everybody graduates

Be persistent

• Do not abandon a project because– others think it’s hype/doomed/over-crowded– your co-workers also think so

• Make a project your own

… he is a perfect academic, a true bulldog …

Graduate school in a nutshell

• A lot of work– What else do you expect?

• A lot of pain– Obsessing over hard/complex problems….

• A lot of fun too