Research

Systems Research Group (SRG)

I lead the Systems Research Group (SRG), which consists of twelve interdisciplinary faculty members, and a large cohort of Research Fellows and PhD students. Systems is the largest research area in the School of Computer Science, covering the broad areas of distributed systems, networked systems, sensor systems and data-intensive systems.

I am a systems researcher. I design, build, and evaluate real-world computer systems. A common goal of my research is to support the architecture and engineering of highly scalable distributed systems.

I work at the intersection of a variety of research topics, including:

• Large-scale distributed systems
• Cloud computing and big data infrastructure
• Cluster management frameworks and scheduling algorithms
• Performance evaluation and benchmarking
• Systems and machine learning
• Microservices: in particular service choreography languages

PhD students

• Nnamdi Ekwe-Ekwe, University of St Andrews
• Chalee Boonprasop, University of St Andrews
• Ole Weidner, co-supervised with Malcolm Atkinson, University of Edinburgh

Graduated

• Sheriffo Ceesay, PhD in Computer Science, University of St Andrews, 2020. Now a PDRA at the University of St Andrews.
• Dawand Sulaiman, PhD in Computer Science, University of St Andrews, 2020. Now at Ocado.
• Paolo Pareti, Representation and Execution of Human Know-How on the Web, PhD in Informatics, University of Edinburgh, 2019 (co-supervised with Ewan Klein). Now a PDRA at the University of Southampton.
• Long Thai, Optimising the Usage of Cloud Resources for Executing Bag-of-task applications, PhD in Computer Science, University of St Andrews, 2017. Now at Amazon.
• Ward Jaradat, On the Construction of Decentralised Service-oriented Orchestration Systems. PhD in Computer Science, University of St Andrews, 2016. Now at Adobe
• Jonathan Ward, Efficient Monitoring of Large Scale Infrastructure as a Service Clouds. PhD in Computer Science, University of St Andrews, 2015. Now at Amazon.
• Chris Schneider, Using Unsupervised Machine Learning for Fault Identification in Virtual Machines. PhD in Computer Science, University of St Andrews, 2015. Now at Google.
• Gary McGilvary, Ad hoc Cloud Computing. PhD in Informatics, University of Edinburgh, 2014. Now at CloudReach.

Research Fellows and Visitors

• Dr Sheriffo Ceesay, Research Fellow, September 2020 – Current.
• Dr Yuhui Lin, Research Fellow, April 2018 – Current.
• Dr Bo Chen, visitor from University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), Jan 2016 – Jan 2017.
• Dr Roushanak Rahmat, Research Fellow, Jan 2016 – Jan 2017. Now a PDRA at the University of Cambridge.
• Dr Long Thai, Research Fellow, June 2014–June 2015. Now at Amazon.
• Dr Blesson Varghese, Research Fellow, 2012-2015. Now a Senior Lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast.

Research grants

To support my research I am an Investigator (both PI and Co-I) on grants worth over £3 Million from a diverse range of funding sources, including the EPSRC, European Research Council (ERC), Royal Society, Google, Royal Society of Edinburgh, Impact Acceleration Account (IAA), SICSA, Amazon and Microsoft

• Google, Visiting Faculty, 2019.
• EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA), £5,000, PI.
• ABC: Adaptive Brokerage for the Cloud, EPSRC (EP/R010528/1) and EPSRC (EP/R010889/1), £775,259.00, 2018 – 2021, PI.
• Microsoft, Microsoft Azure for Research, $20,000, 2016, PI.
• Google, Visiting Faculty, 2016.
• WORKANDHOME, European Research Council (ERC), €1,430,921.00, 2015 – 2020, Co-I.
• EPSRC Impact Acceleration Account (IAA), £33,323.00, Joint-PI.
• Bringing Science to the Cloud, Royal Society Industry Fellowship, 2014 – 2016, PI.
• Working Together Across ICT: Constraints and Cloud Computing, EPSRC (EP/K015745/1), £630,232.00, 2013 – 2016, Co-I.
• Tweeting the Blues, Royal Society of Edinburgh, £3732.00, 2012 – 2014, PI.
• Stop Traffic, Royal Society of Edinburgh, £3932.00, 2012 – 2014, Co-I.
• Elastic Virtual Infrastructure for Research Applications (ELVIRA), EPSRC (EP/I034327/1), £72,283.00, 2011, Co-I.
• Travel Grant to UC Berkeley, SICSA, £7500.00, 2012 – 2013, PI.
• Scottish Crucible 2012.
• Amazon Research Grant, 2012 – 2014, PI.
• Microsoft Windows Azure Academic Collaboration, PI.

Recent Invited Talks and Keynotes

• Academic Cloud Computing Research: Pitfalls and Opportunities. Barcelona Super Computing Centre, August 2018.
• Keynote: Academia and Industry: A Research Perspective. University of Cardiff, Research Retreat, May 2017.
• Keynote: Academia and Industry: A Systems Research Perspective. SICSA DEMOfest, Glasgow, November 2016.
• Network-Aware Borg. Google Borg Master Team, Google headquarters, Mountain View, September 2016.
• Everything you wanted to know about Borg but forgot to ask! Google Borg Master Team, Google headquarters, Mountain View, March 2016.
• Cloud Services Brokerage: A Survey and Research Roadmap. 8th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing (CLOUD 2015), NYC, July 2015.
• Executing Bag of Distributed Tasks on Virtually Unlimited Cloud Resources. 5th International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science (CLOSER 2015), Lisbon, May 2015.
• Academic Cloud Computing: Five Pitfalls and Five Opportunities. University of Zurich, Zurich, March 2015.
• Academic Cloud Computing: Five Pitfalls and Five Opportunities. University of Lancaster, Lancaster, February 2015.
• Cloud Benchmarking for Performance. 6th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science (CloudCom 2014), Singapore, December 2014.
• Keynote: Academic Cloud Computing: Five Pitfalls and Five Opportunities. 7th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing (UCC 2014), London, December 2014.
• Bringing Science to the Cloud. Royal Society Research Conference, London, March 2014.
• Data-Intensive Distributed Systems. Large-Scale Complex IT Systems Workshop, Grasmere, February 2014.

Media coverage

• Google reveals how its Borg clusters have evolved, The Register, April 2020.
• Yet More Google Compute Cluster Trace Data, Google AI Blog, April 2020.
• Rethinking HPC Platforms for ‘Second Gen’ Applications, Communications of the ACM, February 2017.
• HPC Wire, February 2017.
• Big Data Solving Big Problems, Forbes, March 2015.
• Big data: 4 predictions for 2014, The Guardian, January 2014.
• Six new Royal Society Industry Fellowships connect academia and industry, The Royal Society, October 2013.
• The Big Data Conundrum: How to Define It?, MIT Technology Review, October 2013.
• EPSRC: Examples of Working Together, EPSRC, 2013.
• Cover Story: Delivering Big Data, ASEE PRISM Magazine, December 2012.