Haifeng YU
Associate Professor
Computer Science Department
School of Computing
National University of Singapore

Mailing address:
COM2-04-25
15 Computing Drive
School of Computing
National University of Singapore
Republic of Singapore 117418


[Curriculum Vitae]
 

Current Research Interests

Distributed Computing, Distributed Algorithms, Communication Complexity, Applied Algorithms in Networking, and Distributed Systems Security.
 

Research Opportunities (email me to apply)

Opening for Ph.D. students seeking advisors: I am actively recruiting Ph.D. students to collaborate on world-class research on distributed algorithms and network algorithms. Besides CS major students, I am also very interested in working with students with a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics. Students with Bachelor's degrees in other related areas (such as Physics) and with strong mathematical background (e.g., with achievements in Mathematical Olympiad) are also very welcome.

If you are considering being my student, please read Advisor's README first and then email me to set up a time to chat.
 

Experience

July 2010 to present: Associate Professor, School of Computing, National University of Singapore, Singapore.

Oct 2006 to June 2010: Assistant Professor, School of Computing, National University of Singapore, Singapore.

Nov 2003 to Sept 2006: Research Scientist, Intel Research Pittsburgh, USA.

Nov 2003 to Sept 2006: Adjunct Assistant Professor, Computer Science Department, Carnegie Mellon University, USA.

Sept 2002 to Nov 2003: Post-doctoral Researcher, Computer Science Department, Duke University, USA.

September 2002 Ph.D. Computer Science Department, Duke University, USA.
Ph.D. Thesis: Wide-Area Replication Using Continuous Consistency: Theory and Practice
Nominated for ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award

December 1999 M.S. Computer Science Department, Duke University, USA.
M.S. Thesis: DRAM-page Based Prediction and Prefetching

June 1997 B.E. Computer Science and Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, P.R.China.
Undergraduate Thesis: Thread-based Fault-tolerant Distributed Shared Memory
 

Teaching

Note: All my course materials are on IVLE: Simply search for the course number on IVLE.

• AY 2013/2014 Semester 1: CS5223 Distributed Systems
• AY 2012/2013 Semester 2: CS3230 Design and Analysis of Algorithms

• Yuda ZHAO (Ph.D. student)
• Ziling ZHOU (Ph.D. student)
• Xiao LIU (Ph.D. student)
• Binbin CHEN (Former post-doctoral researcher, now at ADSC)

• International Journal of Security and Networks

• PC Co-Chair for Distributed Computing Track, ICDCN'11 (International Conference on Distributed Computing and Networking)

• PODC'13 (ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing)
• ICDCS'13 (International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems)
• CCS'12 (ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security)
• SIGCOMM'12 (ACM SIGCOMM Conference)
• APSys'11 (ACM SIGOPS Asia-Pacific Workshop on Systems)
• CCS'11 (ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security)
• SIGCOMM'11 (ACM SIGCOMM Conference)
• SIGMETRICS'11 (International Conference on Measurement and Modeling of Computer Systems)
• NetEcon'10 (Workshop on the Economics of Networks, Systems, and Computation)
• DCOSS'10 (IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing in Sensor Systems)
• CCS'10 (ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security)
• Oakland'10 (IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy)
• IPTPS'10 (International Workshop on Peer-to-Peer Systems)
• IPDPS'10 (IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium)
• ICDCN'10 (International Conference on Distributed Computing and Networking)
• PODC'09 (ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing)
• ICDCS'09 (International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems)
• ICDE'09 (International Conference on Data Engineering)
• DISC'08 (International Symposium on Distributed Computing)
• SIGMETRICS'08 (International Conference on Measurement and Modeling of Computer Systems)
• DSN'08 (International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks)
• STC'07 (ACM Workshop on Scalable Trusted Computing)
• IPTPS'07 (International Workshop on Peer-to-Peer Systems)
• STC'06 (ACM Workshop on Scalable Trusted Computing)
• PODC'06 (ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing)
• DSN'06 (International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks)
• PODC'05 (ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing)

• Haifeng Yu, Phillip B. Gibbons, and Chenwei Shi, "DCast: Sustaining Collaboration in Overlay Multicast despite Rational Collusion." Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS'12), October 2012. [PDF]. (The source code of the simulator used in this paper is available, upon request, for public research purposes.)

• Binbin Chen, Haifeng Yu, Yuda Zhao, and Phillip B. Gibbons, "The Cost of Fault Tolerance in Multi-Party Communication Complexity." Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC'12), July 2012. [PDF]. Full version available as [Technical Report]. [Conference talk slides].

• Binbin Chen, Ziling Zhou, Yuda Zhao, and Haifeng Yu, "Efficient Error Estimating Coding: Feasibility and Applications." IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (ToN), Volume 20, Issue 1, pp. 29-44, February 2012.

• Haifeng Yu, "Sybil Defenses via Social Networks: A Tutorial and Survey." ACM SIGACT News Distributed Computing Column, Volume 42, Issue 3, pp 80-101, September 2011. [PDF]

• Binbin Chen and Haifeng Yu, "Secure Aggregation with Malicious Node Revocation in Sensor Networks." Proceedings of International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS'11), June 2011. [PDF].

• Haifeng Yu, Phillip B. Gibbons, and Chenwei Shi, "Brief Announcement: Sustaining Collaboration in Multicast despite Rational Collusion." Proceedings of the ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC'11), June 2011. [PDF].

• Haifeng Yu, "Secure and Highly-Available Aggregation Queries in Large-Scale Sensor Networks via Set Sampling." Distributed Computing, Volume 23, Issue 5, pp. 373-394, April 2011.

• Binbin Chen, Ziling Zhou, Yuda Zhao, and Haifeng Yu, "Efficient Error Estimating Coding: Feasibility and Applications." Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM Conference , August 2010. Awarded Best Paper. (Acceptance rate: 33 out of 276) [PDF]. Updated Technical Report.

• Haifeng Yu, Phillip B. Gibbons, Michael Kaminsky, and Feng Xiao, "SybilLimit: A Near-Optimal Social Network Defense against Sybil Attacks." IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (ToN), Volume 18, Issue 3, pp. 885-898, June 2010.

• Suman Nath, Haifeng Yu, and Haowen Chan, "Secure Outsourced Aggregation via One-way Chains." Proceedings of the ACM SIGMOD Conference (SIGMOD'09) , June 2009. [PDF].

• Haifeng Yu, Chenwei Shi, Michael Kaminsky, Phillip B. Gibbons, and Feng Xiao, "DSybil: Optimal Sybil-Resistance for Recommendation Systems." Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland'09), May 2009. (Acceptance rate: 26 out of 254). [PDF]. Full version available as [Technical Report]. [Talk Slides].

• Haifeng Yu, "Secure and Highly-Available Aggregation Queries in Large-Scale Sensor Networks via Set Sampling." Proceedings of the 8th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN'09), April 2009. Awarded Best Paper. (Acceptance rate: 21 out of 117). [PDF]. Full version available as [Technical Report]. [Talk Slides].

• Haifeng Yu and Phillip B. Gibbons, "Optimal Inter-Object Correlation When Replicating for Availability." Distributed Computing, Volume 21, Number 5, February, 2009. (Special issue for PODC'07). [PDF].

• Haifeng Yu, Michael Kaminsky, Phillip B. Gibbons, and Abraham Flaxman, "SybilGuard: Defending Against Sybil Attacks via Social Networks." IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (ToN), Volume 16, Issue 3, pp. 576-589, June 2008. [PDF].

• Haifeng Yu, "Defending Against Sybil Attacks via Social Networks." One-hour talk I gave on SybilLimit in May 2008. [Talk slides]

• Haifeng Yu, Phillip B. Gibbons, Michael Kaminsky, and Feng Xiao, "SybilLimit: A Near-Optimal Social Network Defense against Sybil Attacks." Proceedings of the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (Oakland'08), May 2008. (Acceptance rate: 28 out of 249). [PDF]. Full version available as Technical Report [TRA2/08]. [PDF]. [Conference talk slides]

• Haifeng Yu, Phillip B. Gibbons, and Michael Kaminsky, "Brief Announcement: Toward an Optimal Social Network Defense against Sybil Attacks." Proceedings of the 26th ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC'07), August 2007. [PDF].

• Haifeng Yu, "Brief Announcement: DoS-Resilient Secure Aggregation Queries in Sensor Networks." Proceedings of the 26th ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC'07), August 2007. [PDF].

• Haifeng Yu and Phillip B. Gibbons, "Optimal Inter-Object Correlation When Replicating for Availability." Proceedings of the 26th ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC'07), August 2007. (Acceptance rate: 32 out of 204). [PDF]. [Talk Slides].

• Jeffrey Pang, Phillip B. Gibbons, Michael Kaminsky, Srinivasan Seshan, and Haifeng Yu, "Defragmenting DHT-based Distributed File Systems." Proceedings of International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS'07), June 2007. (Acceptance rate: 71 out of 528).

• Amit Manjhi, Phillip B. Gibbons, Anastassia Ailamaki, Charles Garrod, Bruce M. Maggs, Todd C. Mowry, Christopher Olston, Anthony Tomasic, and Haifeng Yu, "Invalidation Clues for Database Scalability Services." Proceedings of International Conference on Data Engineering (ICDE'07), April 2007. (Acceptance rate: 122 out of 659).

• Haifeng Yu, Michael Kaminsky, Phillip B. Gibbons, and Abraham Flaxman, "SybilGuard: Defending Against Sybil Attacks via Social Networks." Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM Conference , September 2006. (Acceptance rate: 37 out of 298) [PDF]. Paper's SIGCOMM'06 public review by Thomas Anderson. [PDF]. (This paper is fast tracked to Transcations on Networking by SIGCOMM).

• Haifeng Yu, Phillip B. Gibbons, and Suman Nath, "Availability of Multi-Object Operations." Proceedings of the Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI'06) , May 2006. Awarded Best Paper. (Acceptance rate: 28 out of 110) [PDF].

• Suman Nath, Haifeng Yu, Phillip B. Gibbons, and Srinivasan Seshan, "Subtleties in Tolerating Correlated Failures in Wide-area Storage Systems." Proceedings of the Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI'06) , May 2006. (Acceptance rate: 28 out of 110) [PDF].

• Scott Garriss, Michael Kaminsky, Michael Freedman, Brad Karp, David Mazieres, and Haifeng Yu, "RE: Reliable Email." Proceedings of the Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI'06) , May 2006. (Acceptance rate: 28 out of 110) [PDF].

• Haifeng Yu, "Signed Quorum Systems." Distributed Computing, Volume 18, Number 4 (Special issue for PODC'04), March 2006. [PDF].

• Haifeng Yu and Amin Vahdat, "The Costs and Limits of Availability for Replicated Services." ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS), Volume 24, Issue 1, February 2006.

• Haifeng Yu and Amin Vahdat, "Consistent and Automatic Replica Regeneration." ACM Transactions on Storage (TOS), Volume 1, Number 1, February 2005. [PDF].

• Praveen Yalagandula, Suman Nath, Haifeng Yu, Phillip B. Gibbons, and Srinivasan Seshan, "Beyond Availability: Towards a Deeper Understanding of Machine Failure Characteristics in Large Distributed Systems." Proceedings of the Workshop on Real, Large Distributed Systems (WORLDS '04) , December 2004. [PDF].

• Haifeng Yu, "Signed Quorum Systems." Proceedings of the 23rd ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC'04), July 2004. (Acceptance rate:39 out of 224) [PDF].

• Haifeng Yu and Amin Vahdat, "Consistent and Automatic Replica Regeneration." Proceedings of the Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI'04) , March 2004. (Acceptance rate: 27 out of 118) [PDF].

• Haifeng Yu, "Overcoming the Majority Barrier in Large-Scale Systems." Proceedings of the 17th International Symposium on Distributed Computing (DISC'03) , October 2003. (Acceptance rate: 25 out of 90) [PDF].

• Roger Barga, David Lomet, Stelios Paparizos, Haifeng Yu, and Sirish Chandrasekaran, "Persistent Applications via Automatic Recovery." Proceedings of the 17th International Database Engineering and Applications Symposium (IDEAS'03), July 2003.

• Haifeng Yu, " Roadmap of TACT publications ." June 2003. Read this first if you do not know which TACT paper you are looking for.

• Haifeng Yu and Amin Vahdat, "Design and Evaluation of a Conit-based Continuous Consistency Model for Replicated Services. " ACM Transactions on Computer Systems (TOCS), August 2002. [PDF]. This paper is the extended/combined version of the ICDCS'01 and OSDI'00 papers.

• Haifeng Yu and Amin Vahdat, "Minimal Replication Cost for Availability." Proceedings of the 21st ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing (PODC'02), July 2002. [PDF]. This paper discusses replica placement to achieve optimal availability under the TACT continuous consistency model.

• Haifeng Yu and Amin Vahdat, "The Costs and Limits of Availability for Replicated Services." Proceedings of the 18th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP'01), October 2001. (Acceptance rate: 17 out of 85) [PDF]. This paper derives the theoretical availability upper bound, and then compares the availability of real protocols against the upper bound.

• Haifeng Yu and Amin Vahdat, "Combining Generality and Practicality in a Conit-Based Continuous Consistency Model for Wide-Area Replication." Proceedings of the 21st International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS'01), April 2001. (Acceptance rate: 72 out of 212). [PDF]. This paper discusses the formal TACT continuous consistency model and its properties.

• Haifeng Yu and Amin Vahdat, "Design and Evaluation of a Continuous Consistency Model for Replicated Services." Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI'00), October 2000. (Acceptance rate: 24 out of 111). [PDF]. This paper discusses the TACT prototype design, implementation and evaluation.

• Haifeng Yu and Amin Vahdat, "Efficient Numerical Error Bounding for Replicated Network Services." 26th International Conference on Very Large Databases (VLDB'00), September 2000. (Acceptance rate: 53 out of 351). [PDF]. This paper proposes practical consistency protocols to bound numerical error in the TACT consistency model.

• Haifeng Yu and Amin Vahdat, "Building Replicated Internet Services Using TACT: A Toolkit for Tunable Availability and Consistency Tradeoffs." Second International Workshop on Advanced Issues of E-Commerce and Web-based Information Systems (WECWIS'00), June 2000.

• Haifeng Yu and Gershon Kedem, "DRAM-Page Based Prediction and Prefetching." International Conference on Computer Design (ICCD'00), September 2000.

  Acknowledgement: Some of my projects use the Emulab testbed, and I sincerely thank Emulab's support.