Last updated: February 1, 2021

Shuwen “Jethro” Sun

	805 Columbus Ave, 660 ISEC
	Boston, MA, 02115
	sun.shuw@northeastern.edu
Ph.D. in Computer Science	jethrosun@ccs.neu.edu
Khoury College of Computer Sciences	+1-617-816-1771
Northeastern University	www.khoury.northeastern.edu/home/jethrosun

 

Research Interests

My research focuses on systems and networking, with an emphasis on designing techniques and systems to improve performance, reliability, and security. I am also broadly interested in bridging the gap between theory and practice, and adapting interdisciplinary methods for systems research.

Education

Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts Sept. 2018–Present
      Ph.D. — Computer Science

• Coursework: Network Security, Advanced Algorithms, Machine Learning, Information Visualization.

• GPA: $3.9$

• Advisor: Prof. David Choffnes.

Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts Sept. 2015–May 2017
      M.S. — Computer Science

• Coursework: Grad. Computer Networks, Cloud Computing, Operating Systems, Advanced Algorithms, Distributed Systems, Data Science Tools, Advanced Networking¹¹1It was a Ph.D. level course taught by Prof. Rodrigo Fonseca at Brown University. I was not officially enrolled..

• Advisor: Prof. Orran Krieger.

Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China Sept. 2011–July2015
      B.Eng. — Software Engineering

• Advisor: Prof. Wushao Wen.

Selected Research Summaries

Personal Virtual Networks Sept. 2018–Present
      Mentor: Prof. David Choffnes.

• We ask the research question: what would happen if network functions deployed in a network were supplied by users or device instead of by the network owners? Towards this direction, we are exploring the use cases of these new types of NFs and the different aspects of them if they were deployed.

Pythia: A Cross-layer Just-in-time Instrumentation Framework for Debugging

Distributed Systems May 2017–July 2018
      Mentors: Dr. Raja Sambasivan & Prof. Orran Krieger.

• Many of today’s interesting applications (e.g., web services and cloud systems) running in clusters of thousands of nodes are growing increasingly diverse and complex. This makes performance diagnosis crucial, yet notoriously difficult. It is always hard to know a priori where, within what stack level, and at what granularity to add instrumentation to help diagnose problems that may occur far in the future. We observe that in many distributed applications, requests that have similar workflows—i.e., that are processed similarly within and among the nodes of a distributed application—should perform similarly. We are using this insight to build Pythia which is comprised of an advanced tracing instrumentation library that allows developers to dynamically enable and disable instrumentation points in the system, and a reconstruction, analysis and diagnosis pipeline to identify problematic areas in near real-time.

Enabling Flexibility in Cloud Networks with FlexNet Sept. 2016–May 2017
      Mentors: Prof. Orran Krieger & Prof. Rodrigo Fonseca.

• Applications running in cloud datacenters impose various requirements on the network. We observe that there are two intertwined issues in datacenter networking: protocols are not designed to co-exist with each other, and there is no uniform way for tenants (and their applications) to select different protocols best suited their needs. In FlexNet, we proposed an architecture that decouples datacenter network into pods, inter-pod networks, and Edge-of-pod switches, which enables scheduling network resources in a decentralized manner. We showed that FlexNet is sufficiently flexible to better support various kinds of applications running on the cloud for different tenants while it also enables niche protocols comprising of individual network technologies.

Selected Software Engineering Summaries

Building Network Functions with NetBricks Sept. 2018–Present
      Role: Developer & Maintainer

• Developed 4 network functions (RDR proxy for web browsing, BitTorrent downloader, TLS certificate validator, and video transcoder) and 6 coresident NFs in NetBricks with only safe Rust and external Rust crates.

• Total LOC (Rust): 3900

End-to-end Request Tracing with OpenStack May 2017–May 2018
      Role: Developer

• Worked on bootstrapping end-to-end tracing strategies into OpenStack’s profiling tool, Osprofiler. Also worked on exploring ways to combine OpenTracing ( now OpenTelemetry) with Osprofiler.

Hardware Isolation Layer May 2016–Jan. 2017
      Role: Core contributor

• Worked on the development and maintenance of HIL, a low-level tool for reserving physical machines and connecting them via isolated networks. Submitted 8 issues and 6 pull requests.

• LOC (Python): + 1098, - 119

Publication

In Preparation

1. \fullcite

   sun:understanding:2021

Professional Experience

Northeastern University Sept. 2018–Present
      Graduate Research Assistant

• Research groups: Networked Systems Research Group, Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute.

• Research project: Personal Virtual Networks

• Advisor: Prof. David Choffnes.

Hariri Institute for Computing, Boston University Jan. 2018–June 2018
      Staff Researcher/Engineer

• Worked on developing a novel diagnosis framework built upon end-to-end request tracing on the cloud. I worked on OpenStack’s tracing system OSprofiler and benchmarking tool Rally.

• Supervisors: Prof. Orran Krieger & Dr. Raja Sambasivan.

Red Hat Engineering June 2017–Dec. 2017
      Research Intern

• Invited research intern position as a part of the Distributed-system Tracing team within the MOC Research group. I worked on adopting end-to-end request tracing techniques for performance diagnosis on the cloud.

• Host: Jan Mark Holzer

• Supervisors: Prof. Orran Krieger & Dr. Raja Sambasivan.

Massachusetts Open Cloud, Boston University Sept. 2016–May 2017
      Graduate Student Researcher

• Worked with Da Yu, Prof. Orran Krieger, Prof. Rodrigo Fonseca, Dr. Raja Sambasivan and Dr. Jason Hennessey on FlexNet, a novel datacenter networking design. I also served as a core contributor to the HIL project.

• Supervisors: Prof. Orran Krieger & Prof. Rodrigo Fonseca.

Massachusetts Open Cloud, Boston University May 2016–Aug. 2016
      Research Intern

• Worked with Prof. Orran Krieger, Prof. Peter Desnoyers, and Dr. Jason Hennessey on Hardware Isolation Layer project.

• Supervisors: Prof. Orran Krieger & Prof. Peter Desnoyers.

Computer Network and Information Security Lab, Sun Yat-sen University
      Research Assistant Feb. 2014–June 2015

• Performed research on networking and cloud computing. I worked on exploring Software Defined Networking and applying it to network QoS. I also worked on developing and deploying a OpenStack based customized cloud environment solution.

• Supervisor: Prof. Wushao Wen.

Honors & Awards

Academic Honors

• Northeastern University Graduate School Ph.D. Fellowship. Jan. 2018
  (Admitted to Ph.D. program in Computer Science at Northeastern University)

Travel Grant Awards

• NSDI ’20 Conference Student Grant, USENIX Feb. 2020

• SIGCOMM ’19 Conference Student Grant, NSF Aug. 2019

• SIGCOMM ’17 Conference Student Grant, NSF Aug. 2017

• ATC ’16 and HotCloud ’16 Conference Student Grant, USENIX July 2016

Other Awards

• Second-class Scholarship for Outstanding Students at Sun Yat-sen University (Top 10%). Sept. 2014

• Recipient of independent recruitment for Sun Yat-sen University in 2011 (Top 6%, roughly 660
  of 11,000 in China). April 2011

Talks & Posters

Talks

• “Enhancing End-to-End Tracing Systems for Automated Performance Debugging in Distributed Systems.” Shuwen Jethro Sun. Talk at MOC Spring Research Group Meeting. Boston, MA Jan. 2018

• “Pythia: A Just-in-Time Instrumentation Framework for Debugging Distributed Systems.” Lily Sturmann, Shuwen Jethro Sun. Talk at 2017 Massachusetts Open Cloud Annual Workshop. Boston, MA Oct. 2017

Posters

• “How well does your network (function) function? Understanding Network Functions Under User-level Use Cases” Shuwen Jethro Sun, David Choffnes. Poster at Khoury Ph.D. Open House. March 2020

• “Pythia: A Cross-layer Just-in-Time Instrumentation Framework for Debugging Distributed Applications.” Lily Sturmann, Shuwen Jethro Sun, Raja Sambasivan, Orran Krieger, Peter Portante. Poster at IV New England Networking and Systems Day (NENS’17). Boston, MA Dec. 2017

• “Pythia: A Just-in-Time Instrumentation Framework for Debugging Distributed Systems.” Lily Sturmann, Shuwen Jethro Sun, Rajul Kumar, Vladimir Pchelin, Orran Krieger, Peter Portante, Raja Sambasivan. Poster at 2017 Massachusetts Open Cloud Annual Workshop. Boston, MA Oct. 2017

Service

To Northeastern University

• Volunteer — Khoury Graduate Students Association, Khoury College Jan. 2021

• Ph.D. Open House Co-organizer — 2021 Ph.D. Open House, Khoury College Jan. 2021

• Ph.D. Admission Volunteer — 2021 Ph.D. Admission, Khoury College Dec. 2020

• Panelist — 2020 Ph.D. Open House Graduate Student Panel, Khoury College March 2020

• Panelist — Ph.D. Orientation 2019, Khoury College Sept. 2019

• Letter writer — Khoury College Naming Ceremony Thank you Gift, Northeastern University March 2019

• Panelist — 2019 Ph.D. Open House Graduate Student Panel, Khoury College March 2019

• Co-organizer — Systems and Networking Reading Group, Khoury College Spring 2019

To the Discipline

• Organizing Volunteer — SIGCOMM 2020 Hallway Sessions 2020

• External Reviewer — IMC 2020 2020

• External Reviewer — NSDI 2020 2019

• Layer 9 Scriber — SIGCOMM 2017 Summer 2017

Skill Sets

• Programming languages: Rust, Python, Go, C/C++, Bash

• Systems: DPDK, OpenTracing/OpenTelemetry, OpenStack, SDN

• Tools: Mininet, NS3, Git, Wireshark, LaTeX, D3.js

• Platforms: Linux/UNIX, macOS

Personal Trivia

• Languages: English (professional proficiency), Mandarin (native)

Affiliations

• Cybersecurity and Privacy Institute, Northeastern University

• Khoury College of Computer Sciences, Northeastern University

References

Available upon request.