CURRICULUM VITAE NAME ---- PRASHANTH PAPPU CONTACT ------- Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Washington University in St. Louis. One Brookings Drive, Campus Box 1045. St. Louis MO 63130. Phone (Office): 314 935 4306 Phone (Mobile): 314 409 2775 Web: http://www.arl.wustl.edu/~prashant Email: prashant@arl.wustl.edu EDUCATION --------- Ph.D. in Computer Science. Washington University in St. Louis (Expected Aug 2004) St. Louis, MO M.S. in Computer Science. Washington University in St. Louis (May 2002) St. Louis, MO B.Tech in Computer Science & Engineering. Indian Institute of Technology (I.I.T), Madras (May 1999) Chennai, India RESEARCH INTERESTS ------------------ Very broadly, my research interests include networking and multimedia systems, resource management and performance analysis. I've worked in projects involving design, analysis and implementation of algorithms with sound theoretical foundations. Currently, I'm working on issues related to the design of high performance, high capacity programmable routers as a research assistant to Dr. Jon Turner at Washington University in St. Louis. RESEARCH EXPERIENCE ------------------- a) Research assistant in Applied Research Laboratory (ARL). Advisor: Dr. Jon Turner Washington University in St. Louis (Aug 1999 - Present) St. Louis, MO * DISTRIBUTED SCHEDULING Distributed Scheduling (DS), introduced and comprehensively studied in my doctoral thesis, is a scalable mechanism to regulate the flow of traffic through high capacity, multistage, buffered switching systems to maintain their throughput even in extreme traffic conditions. Results include a) First provably work conserving distributed schedulers for buffered, multistage switches with speedups of 2 or more. b) Practical heuristic variants demonstrated to work well (through simulations) for speedups > 1.5. c) Implementation of proposed algorithms in the Multi-Service Router (MSR) developed at Washington University. * STRESS RESISTANT CROSSBAR SCHEDULING ALGORITHMS In this work, we demonstrated the poor performance of commercially used crossbar scheduling algorithms under inadmissible traffic conditions like those frequently encountered in IP networks. We also presented new stress resistant algorithms (using Lowest Layer Selection (LLS) and Odd-Even sort heuristics) that are simple enough to implement in high speed routers and still maintain their throughput in adverse traffic conditions. * ESTIMATION BASED FAIR QUEUING (EFQ) Estimation based Fair Queuing (EFQ), introduced in my master's thesis, is a novel network processor scheduling algorithm for use in programmable routers. The algorithm exploits the regularity in processing requirements of flows serviced by a programmable router to provide them with tight bandwidth and delay guarantees. b) Research assistant in Laboratory for Computer Communications and Applications (LCA). Advisor: Dr. Jean-Pierre Hubaux Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) (May 1998 - Aug 1998) Lausanne, Switzerland * QUEUING & DROPPING STRATEGIES FOR VoIP TRAFFIC Voice over IP (VoIP) traffic have stringent delay and jitter requirements. During my stint at EPFL, Switzerland, I designed and implemented (in a Linux based router) non-intuitive queuing and dropping policies that significantly improve the end-user quality of voice traffic transported through congested IP networks. c) Research assistant in Networking and Multimedia Systems (NMS) laboratory. Advisor: Dr. S.V. Raghavan Indian Institute of Technology (I.I.T), Madras (Aug 1998 - May 1999) Chennai, India * AUTOMATIC SEMANTIC ANNOTATION OF WEB PAGES In my bachelor's project, I developed and implemented algorithms for automatically identifying types of web (HTML) pages (e.g. resumes) and annotating their content with semantic tags (RDF/XML) to enable complex searches on web content. WORK EXPERIENCE --------------- a) Summer internship as a system architect for content delivery servers. Jibe Networks, Inc. (May 2002 - Aug 2002) San Mateo, CA * BANDWIDTH ESTIMATION IN IP NETWORKS Push based content delivery servers that pro-actively deliver content to end systems, need accurate bandwidth estimates of various IP links to avoid congesting them. At Jibe Networks Inc, I designed and implemented a bandwidth estimation module which uses several new ideas to work with various commercial routers and protocols to get accurate bandwidth estimates of any IP links in diverse traffic conditions. b) Independent software developer. Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) (Aug 1998 - Dec 1998) Bangalore, India * FAULT TREE ANALYSIS SOFTWARE In this project, I developed a Java based Fault Tree Analysis software that interprets aeronautical system design data to create Fault Trees for various aircrafts. This extensively used software can accept as input, the symptoms of various system malfunctions and can estimate the most probable causes to identify the faulty components. TEACHING EXPERIENCE ------------------- a) Teaching assistant to Dr. Jon Turner for "CS577: Design and analysis of switching systems". Washington University in St. Louis. (Jan 2003 - May 2003) St. Louis, MO b) Teaching assistant to Dr. S.V. Raghavan and Dr. Hema Murthy for "CS110: Introduction to computing". Indian Institute of Technology (I.I.T), Madras (Aug 1998 - Aug 1999) Chennai, India PUBLICATIONS & TALKS -------------------- THESES ------ 1. Prashanth Pappu, "Scheduling algorithms for combined input and output queued (CIOQ) switches". Ph.D. THESIS, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Washington Univeristy in St.Louis (under preparation). 2. Prashanth Pappu, "Scheduling issues in programmable routers". M.S. THESIS, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Washington University in St. louis, May 2002. 3. Prashanth Pappu, "Web as a knowledge database". BACHELOR'S THESIS, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology (I.I.T) Madras, May 1999. REFEREED PUBLICATIONS --------------------- 1. Prashanth Pappu, Jonathan Turner and Ken Wong, "Work-Conserving Distributed Schedulers for Terabit Routers". In ACM SIGCOMM 2004, Portland, OR, USA 2. Prashanth Pappu and Jonathan Turner, "Stress Resistant Scheduling Algorithms for CIOQ Switches". In ICNP 2003, Nov 4-7 2003, Atlanta, USA. 3. Prashanth Pappu, Jyoti Parwatikar, Jonathan Turner and Ken Wong, "Distributed Queuing in Scalable High Performance Routers". In IEEE Infocom 2003, San Francisco, USA. 4. Tilman Wolf, Prashanth Pappu and Mark Franklin, "Predictive Scheduling of Network Processors". In Computer Networks, vol. 31, no.5, pp.601-621, April 2003. 5. Sumi Choi, John Dehart, Ralph Keller, Fred Kuhns, John Lockwood, Prashanth Pappu, Jyoti Parwatikar W. David Richard, Ed Spitznagel, David Taylor, Jonathan Turner and Ken Wong, "Design of a High Performance Dynamically Extensible Router". In DARPA Active Networks Conference and Exposition (DANCE), May 29-31 2002, San Francisco, USA. 6. Prashanth Pappu and Tilman Wolf, "Scheduling Processing Resources in Programmable Routers". In IEEE Infocom 2002, New York, USA SELECT TECHNICAL REPORTS ------------------------ 1. Prashanth Pappu, Jonathan Turner and Ken Wong, "Work Conserving Distributed Schedulers for Terabit Routers", Washington University, Department of Computer Science, Technical Report WUCS-04-06, February, 2004. 2. Fred Kuhns, John Dehart, Ralph Keller, John Lockwood, Prashanth Pappu, Jyoti Parwatikar, Ed Spitznagel, Dave Richards, Dave Taylor, Jon Turner, and Ken Wong, "Implementation of an Open Multi-Service Router", Washington University, Department of Computer Science, Technical Report WUCS-01-20, August, 2001 SELECT TALKS ------------ 1. Prashanth Pappu, "Distributed Queuing for Scalable High Performance Routers". Apr 2003, at IEEE Infocom 2003, San Francisco, USA. 2. Prashanth Pappu, "Stress Resistant Scheduling Algorithms for CIOQ switches". Feb 2003, at Graduate Student Colloquium, Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Washington University in St. Louis. 3. Prashanth Pappu, "Scheduling processing resources in programmable routers", Jun 2002, at IEEE Infocom 2002, New York, USA. ACADEMIC HONORS --------------- 1. Second in State Mathematics Olympiad, Andhra Pradesh, India. (1993) 2. Finalist in All India Physics Olympiad, India. (1995) 3. Ranked 20th (among over 100,000 candidates) in Joint Entrance Exam (JEE) for admission to Indian Institute of Technology (I.I.T). (1995) 4. Merit award for 20 best incoming students to I.I.T, Madras. (1995) 5. Institute merit certificate for computerizing the student union electoral process in I.I.T, Madras. (1997) MISCELLANY ---------- PROFESSIONAL SERVICES --------------------- Reviewer for IEEE Infocom 2003, 2004, SIGCOMM 2004. PLATFORMS & PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES --------------------------------- Windows, Solaris, Linux, NetBSD, C, C++, Java, Perl, VHDL, Modsim, HTML, XML. ORGANIZATIONAL -------------- 1. Student secretary of Association of Graduate Engineering Students (AGES), Washington University in St. Louis. (2002-03) 2. Coordinator for various cultural activities at I.I.T, Madras. (1997-99) AVOCATIONS ---------- Post-modern literature, progressive jazz, deep house, cryptic crosswords, (half) marathons. REFERENCES ---------- a) Dr. Jonathan S. Turner Director, Applied Research Laboratory (ARL) Computer Science & Engineering Department. Campus Box 1045, One Brookings Drive. Washington University in St. Louis. St. Louis, MO. 63130-4899 Email: Jon.Turner@wustl.edu Office: 314 935 8552 b) Dr. Roger Chamberlain Associate Professor Computer Communications & Research Center Department Computer Science & Engineering Campus Box 1115, One Brookings Drive. Washington University in St. Louis St. Louis, MO. 63130-4899 Email: roger@wustl.edu Office: 314 935 5708 c) Dr. Dan Decasper Co-founder & CEO Jibe Networks Inc. 3W 37th Ave #17 San Mateo, CA 94403 Email: ddd@jibe.biz Office: 650 743 2518 d) Dr. S. V. Raghavan Professor Department of Computer Science & Engineering Indian Institute of Technology (I.I.T), Madras Chennai 600036. India. Email: svr@cs.iitm.ernet.in Office: +91 44 22578355