About me

I was an assistant professor in the Computer Science department at UT Austin, between January 2016 and December 2021.

I have moved to the University of Washington in January 2022! My new webpage is here.

I graduated with a Ph.D. (Dr. sc. ETH) in Computer Science at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, in October 2012. Prior to that I graduated (Dipl.-Inf.) from the Carl-von-Ossietzky University of Oldenburg, Germany in 2006 with a major in Computer Science and a minor in Music. Before my position as assistant professor at UT Austin, I was a post-doc at the University of Washington with Tom Anderson and Arvind Krishnamurthy, from 2012 to 2015.

I am one of the founding authors of the Barrelfish multicore operating system.

Students

I have the honor to be advising a number of exceptional graduate students. Here they are:

Graduated students (and where they went):
  • Natacha Crooks, Ph.D. (UC Berkeley)
  • Antoine Kaufmann, Ph.D. (MPI-SWS)
  • Youngjin Kwon, Ph.D. (KAIST)
  • Cody Littley, MSc (Nutanix)
  • Ming Liu, Ph.D. (UW-Madison)
  • Dhathri Purohith, MSc (Nutanix)
  • Kevin Puthusseri, MSc (Google)

Research

My research interests are in Operating Systems and Networks. My current research projects are in low latency data center networking and storage design.

OS & runtime design:​

  • Scalable transactional SQL database
  • Scalable tiered memory management​
  • Low latency disaggregated storage
  • Low latency file mapping

Programmable NICs & switches:​

  • SmartNIC-offloaded distributed file systems
  • Flexible RDMA offload
  • ns-scale programmable congestion control​
  • In-network cache directory for storage​

Teaching

Fall 2021: Data Centers (395T)
Spring 2021: Multicore Operating Systems Implementation (378)
Fall 2020: Data Centers (395T)
Spring 2020: Multicore Operating Systems Implementation (378)
Fall 2019: Data Centers (395T)
Spring 2019: Multicore Operating Systems Implementation (378)
Fall 2018: Data Centers (395T)
Spring 2018: Multicore Operating Systems Implementation (378)
Spring 2017: Multicore Operating Systems Implementation (378)
Fall 2016: Multicore Operating Systems Implementation (395T)
Fall 2014: PMP Graduate Operating Systems (CSEP551) with Andrew Baumann (MSR) at UW

Vita and Publications

Please, read my CV. It has all of the information and I keep it updated. I also have a Google Scholar page, if you prefer a quick overview of my publications, but it typically lags behind my CV.

Personal

Apart from CS, I enjoy making and listening to music. I used to play the violin and compose electronic music on the computer. The advent of reasonably precise DJ controllers recently allow me to resurrect many of the old sounds in new ways. I enjoy going skiing in the winter and hiking in the summer. When I'm not doing any of the above, you'll probably find me dancing Lindy Hop.

In my teenage years, I used to be active in the Demoscene, a computer art subculture and I have fond memories of the good old times.

I was born in Oldenburg, situated in north-west Germany, and enjoyed living a good deal of my youth in the cozy area of Bad Zwischenahn.