SANDS lab

We develop techniques and algorithms for building and managing key networked systems that are worthy of society’s trust. Our core interests lie in improving the modern computing environment where distributed systems and computer networks are a pervasive component.

  • We focus on bridging the gap between the abstractions that users (i.e., software developers, cloud providers, or network operators) need and what a performant, scalable, dependable and deployable system can achieve in practice.
  • We build prototypes that directly improve the lives of real users.
  • We seek solutions based on theoretically grounded arguments while also gaining insights into constraints and trade-offs in the design space.

Our goal is to enrich the human knowledge of how to build future-proof systems that can stand the test of time.

News

  • Aug'23: Chen-Yu (Elton) has defended his PhD thesis titled “Tackling the Communication Bottlenecks of Distributed Deep Learning Training Workloads” and will next join Bytedance (USA). Congratulations!
  • Mar'23: Arnaud has defended his PhD thesis titled “Verification and Privacy Techniques for Improving the Trustworthiness of Neural Networks” and will next join Nokia Bell Labs. Congratulations!
  • LineFS wins the Best Paper Award at SOSP'21.
  • Rethinking gradient sparsification as total error minimization accepted as spotlight paper (top 3%) at NeurIPS'21.
  • We organize a tutorial on Network-Accelerated Distributed Deep Learning at SIGCOMM'21.
  • In our NSDI'21 paper we demonstrated how to accelerate distributed ML via in-network aggregation with SwitchML. In our upcoming SIGCOMM'21 paper introducing OmniReduce, we are advancing streaming aggregation to leverage the sparsity of large models’ gradient vectors to accelerate training.
  • In the GRACE project, we survey popular gradient compression techniques for distributed deep learning and perform a comprehensive comparative evaluation. Read our ICDCS'21 paper.

Contact

Projects

SIDCo

An Efficient Statistical-Based Gradient Compression Technique for Distributed Training Systems

OmniReduce

Efficient Sparse Collective Communication

GRACE

GRAdient ComprEssion for distributed deep learning

FairFL

A Systems Approach to Tackling Fairness in Federated Learning

DC2

Delay-aware Communication Control for Distributed ML

SwitchML

Scaling Distributed Machine Learning with In-Network Aggregation

DAIET

In-Network Computation is a Dumb Idea Whose Time Has Come

Previous major projects focusing on SDN and programmable networks include:

Group

Faculty

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Marco Canini

Associate Professor of Computer Science

Distributed Systems, Networking, Machine Learning, Cloud Computing

Research Staff

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Amandio Faustino

Research Software Engineer

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Mubarak Ojewale

Postdoc

Students

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Achref Rebai

MS/PhD Student

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Boris Radovic

PhD Student

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Jihao Xin

PhD Student

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Juyi Lin

MS/PhD Student

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Mohammed K. Aljahdali

PhD Student

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Norah Alballa

PhD Student

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Salma Kharrat

PhD Student

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Tongzhou Gu

MS/PhD Student

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Vladyslav Shumanskyy

PhD Student

Alumni

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Ahmed M. Abdelmoniem Sayed

Alumni

Postdoc 2019, Research Scientist 2020-2021, now Assistant Professor at QMUL

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Amedeo Sapio

Alumni

Postdoc 2018-19, now Software Engineer at Intel

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Arnaud Dethise

PhD Student

PhD 2023, now Research Scientist at Nokia Bell Labs

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Atal Sahu

Alumni

MS 2020, now Data Scientist at Regology

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Chen-Yu Ho

PhD Student

PhD 2023, joining Bytedance (USA)

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Dan Levin

Alumni

PhD 2014, co-founder and CEO of Stacktile GmbH

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Fatimah Zohra

Alumni

MS 2020, now PhD Student at KAUST

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Hassan Alsibyani

Alumni

MS 2018, now Technical Lead at Wasphi

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Jiawei Fei

Alumni

PhD with the sponsorship from China Scholarship Council (CSC) 2021

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Lalith Suresh

Alumni

PhD 2016, now Researcher at VMware Research

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Marco Chiesa

Alumni

Postdoc 2015-2017, now Associate Professor at KTH

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M. Bilal

Alumni

PhD 2022, now Senior Engineer at Unbabel

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Omar Alama

Alumni

Research Software Engineer 2020-21, now MSc in CE student at CMU

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Omar Zawawi

Alumni

MS 2023, now Software Engineer at Mozn

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Thanh Dang Nguyen

Alumni

Postdoc 2015-16, now Research Engineer at University of Chicago

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Waleed Reda

Alumni

PhD 2022, now Postdoctoral Researcher at Microsoft Research

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Yousef Alowayed

Alumni

MS 2018, now Software Engineer at Google

Open Positions

I’m always looking for bright and enthusiastic people to join my group. If you are looking to do a PhD with me, thank you for your interest, but please read this first. If you don’t I will know, and I’m afraid I will have to ignore your message.