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Curriculum Vitae of Yi Cui [pdf]

 

CONTACT INFORMATION

 

Yi Cui                                                        Phone: (217) 333-1515 (O) (217) 840-1684 (C)

911 W. Springfield Av., Apt. 28                    Fax: (217) 244-6869

Urbana, IL 61801                                       Email: yicui@cs.uiuc.edu

USA                                                          URL: http://cairo.cs.uiuc.edu/~yicui

 

RESEARCH INTERESTS

 

Distributed systems and computer networks with a focus on overlay network, peer-to-peer system, multimedia system, ubiquitous computing, and wireless network.

 

EDUCATION

 

Aug 1999 – May 2005 (Expected)        University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign            Urbana, IL

Ph.D. in Computer Science

Dissertation: “Multimedia Content Distribution in Overlay Multicast”

    Advisor: Klara Nahrstedt

Aug 1997 – May 1999                                                    Tsinghua University            Beijing, China

M.S. in Computer Science

Dissertation: “A 3D Ultrasonic Visualization System for Medical Diagnosis and Surgery Simulation”

    Advisor: Long Tang

Aug 1992 – May 1997                                                    Tsinghua University            Beijing, China

B.S. in Computer Science

 

DISSERTATION

 

My dissertation targets the problem of large-volume on-demand content distribution in large-scale networks. The proposed solution is based on a new communication paradigm called overlay multicast, in which end hosts self-organize into a peer-to-peer network, and use unicast relay service to distribute data. This dissertation investigates the feasibility and advantage of overlay multicast through theoretical modeling, algorithm design, and system deployment. By extending the multicommodity flow theory, a theoretical foundation of overlay multicast is laid down. Based on this foundation, a series of distributed multicast routing algorithms are presented, which are proved to maximize end-to-end throughput. Extensive theoretical analysis and simulation demonstrate the advantage of overlay multicast solution to IP multicast solution at saving server load and network bandwidth consumption, under a variety of network topologies and user access patterns. The solution is implemented and deployed on the PlanetLab global testbed.

 

RESEARCH EXPERIENCE

 

May 2004 – Aug 2004       Research Intern                                                  Microsoft Research, Redmond

Mentor: Jin Li

PeerStreaming: Design and Implementation of an On-demand Distributed Streaming System

Designed and implemented a peer-to-peer streaming system. Employing the digital rights management technology, the system was able to combat the copyright violence, the most serious problem in peer-to-peer system.

May 2000 – Present            Research Assistant               Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois

Advisor: Klara Nahrstedt

Layered Peer-to-Peer Streaming

Proposed and developed a scalable media distribution solution in peer-to-peer networks. Considering the heterogeneity of end host resource capabilities, the media stream is divided and distributed among peer hosts as layered substreams. Each host with constrained bandwidth can still recover the signal with certain quality degradation, by receiving a subset of all layers.

Price-based Resource Allocation in Overlay Multicast

Based on non-linear optimization theory, proposed a price-based resource allocation scheme for overlay multicast. In this solution, end nodes adjust their sending and receiving rates independently by exchanging pricing signals. The solution can be implemented in an entirely distributed fashion, and guarantee to converge to the optimal point, where the aggregated utility of all receivers is maximized.

Middleware Solution for QoS-aware Ubiquitous Multimedia Service Delivery

Proposed a QoS-aware dependency management scheme for component-based systems, which dynamically and automatically adjusts the system configuration based on the end host and network resource availabilities. This scheme was built into MobiMan, a middleware system supporting configurable multimedia service delivery in the ubiquitous computing environment.

Aug 1997 – Aug 1999          Research Assistant            Department of Computer Science, Tsinghua University

Advisor: Long Tang

3D Ultrasonic Visualization for Medical Diagnosis and Surgery Simulation

Designed and developed a visualization system, which reconstructs the 3D image from parallel 2D ultrasonic scanned slices. This system was used by the PLA general hospital in Beijing for liver cancer diagnosis and simulated radiofrequency ablation surgery to destroy liver tumors.

 

TEACHING EXPERIENCE

 

Jan 2000 – May 2000           Teaching Assistant            Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois

CS273: Introduction to Theory of Computation

Aug 1999 – Dec 1999           Teaching Assistant           Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois

CS101: Introduction to Computing with Application to Engineering and Physical Science

 

HONORS AND AWARDS

 

Student Travel Grant, awarded by the programming committee of HPDC 2001

Excellent Graduate Student Scholarship, awarded by Tsinghua University, 1998.

Excellent B.S. Thesis, awarded by Tsinghua University, 1997.

Excellent Student Scholarship, awarded by Tsinghua University, 19941996.

 

PUBLICATIONS

 

(All publications are available online at http://cairo.cs.uiuc.edu/~yicui/publications.html)

REFERED JOURNAL/MAGAZINE PUBLICATIONS

1.       Yi Cui, Baochun Li, and Klara Nahrstedt, oStream: Asynchronous Streaming Multicast in Application-Layer Overlay Networks, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, Special Issue on Recent Advances in Service Overlays, vol. 22, no. 1, 2004.

2.       Yi Cui, Klara Nahrstedt, and Dongyan Xu, Seamless User-level Handoff in Ubiquitous Multimedia Service Delivery, Multimedia Tools and Applications Journal (ACM/Kluwer), Special Issue on Mobile Multimedia and Communications and m-Commerce, vol. 22, no. 2, 2004.

3.       Yi Cui, Yuan Xue, and Klara Nahrstedt, Optimal Distributed Multicast Routing using Network Coding: Theory and Applications, ACM SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review, vol. 32, no. 2, 2004.

4.       Yuan Xue, Yi Cui, and Klara Nahrstedt, Maximizing Lifetime for Data Aggregation in Wireless Sensor Networks, to appear in ACM/Kluwer Journal of Mobile Networks and Applications, Special Issue on Energy Constraints and Lifetime Performance in Wireless Sensor Networks, 2004. (acceptance ratio: 24%)

REFERRED CONFERENCE/WORKSHOP PUBLICATIONS

5.       Yi Cui, Yuan Xue, and Klara Nahrstedt, Optimal Distributed Multicast Routing using Network Coding: Theory and Applications, in Proc. of ACM Workshop on MAthematical performance
Modeling and Analysis (MAMA, in conjunction with SIGMETRICS), New York, NY, June, 2004.

6.       Yi Cui, Baochun Li, and Klara Nahrstedt, On Achieving Optimized Capacity Utilization in Application Overlay Networks with Multiple Competing Sessions, in Proc. of ACM Symposium on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA), Barcelona, Spain, June, 2004.

7.       Yi Cui, Yuan Xue, and Klara Nahrstedt, Max-min Overlay Multicast: Rate Allocation and Tree Construction, in Proc. of IEEE International Workshop on Quality of Service (IwQoS), Montreal, Canada, June, 2004. (acceptance ratio: 19%)

8.       Yi Cui, Yuan Xue, and Klara Nahrstedt, Optimal Resource Allocation in Overlay Multicast, in Proc. of IEEE International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP), Atlanta, GA, November, 2003. (acceptance ratio: 13%)

9.       Yi Cui and Klara Nahrstedt, Layered Peer-to-Peer Streaming, in Proc. of ACM International Workshop on Network and Operating Systems Support for Digital Audio and Video (NOSSDAV), Monterey, CA, June, 2003. (acceptance ratio: 30%)

10.    Yi Cui and Klara Nahrstedt, Proxy-based Asynchronous Multicast for Efficient On-demand Media Distribution, in Proc. of SPIE Multimedia Computing and Networking (MMCN), Santa Clara, CA, January, 2003.

11.    Yi Cui and Klara Nahrstedt, Supporting QoS for Ubiquitous Multimedia Service Delivery, in Proc. of ACM Multimedia (Doctoral Symposium), Ottawa, Canada, November, 2001.

12.    Yi Cui and Klara Nahrstedt, QoS-Aware Dependency Management for Component-Based Systems, in Proc. of IEEE International Symposium on High Performance Distributed Computing (HPDC), San Francisco, CA, August, 2001.

13.    Yi Cui, Dongyan Xu, and Klara Nahrstedt, SMART: A Scalable Middleware Solution for Ubiquitous Multimedia Service Delivery, in Proc. of IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo (ICME), Tokyo, Japan, August, 2001.

MANUSCRIPTS UNDER REVIEW

14.    Yi Cui, Baochun Li, and Klara Nahrstedt, On Achieving Optimized Capacity Utilization in Application Overlay Networks with Multiple Competing Sessions, submitted to IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking.

15.    Yi Cui, Yuan Xue, and Klara Nahrstedt, Optimal Resource Allocation in Overlay Multicast, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems.

16.    Jin Li and Yi Cui, PeerStreaming: Design and Implementation of an On-demand Distributed Streaming System, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Multimedia.

 

SOFTWARES

 

(All softwares are available online at http://cairo.cs.uiuc.edu/~yicui/softwares.html)

3D Teleimmersive System

A 3D teleimmersion system, which is capable of 3D scene capture via camera clusters, 3D video streaming, and 3D scene reconstruction. I am in charge of the design and development of 3D data compression and streaming functions. The live-streaming testbed has been successfully setup between UIUC and the CITRIS Center at Berkeley.

PlanetVAM (PlanetLab Video/Audio Meeting)

An overlay-based open desktop video conferencing system deployed on the PlanetLab global testbed. The system consists of proxies and end hosts. Proxies coordinate with each other to construct source-based overlay multicast tree, and relay audio/video packets during the conferencing. Attached to proxies are end hosts, through which users send and receive audio/video streams. I designed and implemented the proxy system, which runs on Linux. PlanetVAM has successfully broadcasted the PlanetLab PI meeting in November, 2003.

Layered Peer-to-Peer Streaming System

The system has two modules. The server module supports transforming of AVI video to PVH (Progressive Video with Hybrid transform) layer-coded streams, and live transmission of these streams. The client module is capable of receiving, rendering and relaying of layered streams. The system runs on Windows-based PC and handheld device running Windows CE.

MobiMan (Mobile Multimedia Access Network)

A middleware system supporting ubiquitous multimedia service delivery. The main functions of the framework include user-level handoff management and configurable service instantiation across heterogeneous computing platforms. Two sample multimedia applications, mobile MP3 audio and mobile MPEG video streaming, have been built as proof-of-concept. The system runs on Unix, Windows and Windows CE. It has been integrated with the Gaia Operating System.

 

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

 

External Referees for Conferences and Journals

IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine, IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, Multimedia Tools and Applications Journal. IEEE Transactions on Networking, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems

INFOCOM 2003, ICDCS 2003, ICME 20012002, ICNP 2002, IwQoS 20012003, ACM Multimedia 20012003, ICC 20032004, Middleware 2003, SIGMETRICS 2004, PerCom 2004

Session Chair

SPIE Multimedia Computing and Networking (MMCN 2003).

 

REFERENCES

 

Available Upon Request