Zhewen Yang （Lucas）

21218
Baltimore
USA

Email: zyang122 AT jh DOT edu & zhewenyang AT outlook DOT com

LinkedIn

About Me

Hi! I am Zhewen, nice to meet you!

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Joining HKUST (Hong kong) this July as a research assistant, will work on video streaming and network systems.

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Now actively seeking Ph.D. positions in systems (25 Spring, 25 Fall etc.), if you are interested in hiring an experienced and self-motivated candidate, please do not hesitate and contact me so we can talk!


My name is Zhewen Yang (杨哲闻), I know it is hard to pronounce, so you can also call me Lucas. I was born in China, a beautiful country with amazing peoples.

I'm currently a graduate student in Computer Science at Johns Hopkins University, located in Baltimore, MD.

Before coming to the United States, I earned my bachelor's degree in Computer Science (Honors Science Program) from Xi'an Jiaotong University in China. During my gap year, I was fortunate enough to spend time at Nanjing University, where I worked on research projects in the State Key Laboratory for Novel Software Technology under the supervision of Professor Chen Tian.

At JHU, I am also studying Computer Science major. Also, I'm pursuing my interests in computer systems, particularly in distributed systems and networking systems. I have participated researches under the guidance of Professor Ryan Huang on Distributed Systems and Professor Scott Shenker on Network Architecture. And now I have joined HKUST work with Prof. Zili Meng on video streaming and network systems related projects. If you're interested in collaborating with me or have any exciting ideas, please don't hesitate to contact me via email! I'll graduate from my Master's program soon, and I am looking for a PhD program opportunity now!

Apart from my academic interests, I'm a passionate sports and pop Culture enthusiast as well as a sports fan. I am a fan of OBJ (Odell Beckham jr.), ZO2 (Lonzo Ball) and Sho-time (Shohei Ohtani). I am also a huge Sci-Fi fan who addicted to Star Wars. I love music (although I can not play a single instrument), I love music from David Tao and the weeknd.
Thank you for taking the time to learn a bit more about me. Let's connect and see how we can make the world a better place through technology and our shared interests!

Check out my CV here!

Education

Johns Hopkings University

Maters of Engineering
Computer Science

Baltimore, MD

Xi'an Jiaotong University (China)

Bachelor of Engineering
Computer Science and Technology (Honors Science Program)

Xi'an, China

Experience

Research Assistant

The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology

Advisor: Prof. Zili Meng (HKUST)
Study and analyze the frontier video steaming and networking solution for high-quality transmission.
Participating in developing the next-generation lossless video streaming framework. (ongoing project)
Now preparing a paper submission on USENIX NSDI 2025

Lab Intern

University of Michigan

Advisor: Prof. Ryan Huang (UMich) and Prof. Chang Lou (UVA)
Help building a system to detect the silence failures in distributed systems (Still working on this, so I can not talk much about it here)
Now preparing a paper submission on USENIX OSDI 2024

Lab Intern

University of California, Berkeley

Advisor: Prof. Scott Shenker (UCB)
Help building a new network architecture that make network service more reasonable and reliable (Same, still working on this, so I can not talk much about it here)

Research Assistant

Nanjing University, China

Advisor: Prof. Chen Tian (Nanjing University)
Publication: "Norma: Towards Practical Network Load Testing." Published on USENIX NSDI, 2023 (3rd student author)
Project: Bandwidth Allocation Among Tenants with QoS (Quality of Service) System Development and Research in Datacenter Networks (A paper post on arXiv by me)

Teaching Assistant

Nanjing University, China

Being a TA of the Computer Network course (teaching by Prof. Chen Tian) at Nanjing University
Designed and implied the course HWs and exams

Software Developer Intern

Baidu, Inc., China

Designed and developed end-to-end solutions, including site acceleration, continuous delivery, capacity management, elastic computing, failure analysis, traffic distribution, and performance tuning
Designed programs of 500+ lines using C++ and Java to conduct maintenance of the Baidu Voice Assistant system and network during the Chinese New Year peak network usage period, and reduced error rate by 10%-20%
Pitched the program to the company and successfully incorporated it into DuerOs, a popular smart home appliance

Student Researcher

Xi'an Jiaotong University

As a intern researcher in ANTS Lab with the guidance of Prof. Peng Zhang and Prof. Hao Li
Did studies and research works on topics of networking verification

Exchange Student

University of California, Berkeley, CA

Fully funded by Xi'an Jiaotong University to be in the Berkeley International Study Program
Courses: Introduction to Database, Machine Structures, Numerical Analysis

Summer School Student

University of Alberta, Canada

Fully funded by Xi'an Jiaotong University to be in the International Undergraduate Summer Enrichment Program in Mathematics
Took lectures and finished a statistical machine learning project

Publications

ProNet: Network-level Bandwidth Sharing among Tenants in Cloud [arXiv]
Still working on it for future conferences

An effective video transmission method to improve video quality with lower delay* (*Not the actual name of the paper)
Submission made to the 22nd USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI 25), under review.

Will be more in the future!

Conference Presentations

Yang, Z. (2023, April 19). Norma: Towards Practical Network Load Testing [Conference presentation]. 20th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI 23), BOSTON, MA, USA

Will be more in the future!

Teaching & Mentoring Experiences

Computer Networks

Teaching Assistant Nanjing University

Nanjing, CN


Prepared lectures, lab sessions on SDN, and programmable network topics for over 50 sophomore-junior undergrads
Hosted several office hours for students on assignment and exam revise
Participated in the design and graded course assessments to ensure students understood materials and stayed on track