Philosophy

Research Philosophy

Having done research in academia, at industrial research labs, and in the high-pressure environment of a startup, I have come to form some deeply held beliefs about the nature and role of academic research. I believe that academic research ought to be long-term, risky, and high pay-off. By long-term, I mean that the research ought to be applicable not in the immediate future, but in five to ten years, and therefore mostly unconstrained by the marketplace. This is the type of research that cannot, and should not, be undertaken by startups and research labs.

However, this long-term aspect of the research ought be balanced by making the research risky and high pay-off. By this I mean that the research should have the potential to have a huge impact in academia and industry, even if there is a substantial risk of failure. It is precisely these characteristics that add unique value to academic research, and that I intend to bring to my research agenda.

Within this overall context, my research goal is to build a body of work in the general area of systems that spans the divide between theory and practice. I believe that computer science research has tended to be either too theoretical, ignoring practical limitations, or too practical, trying `kitchen recipes' to solve problems, without much thought to the underlying theoretical bases. Yet theory has much to inform practitioners, and I have found that hands-on systems building is the only way to validate the assumptions of any theoretical framework. In the course of my career, I hope to create a body of work both theoretically well-founded and readily applicable to real-world problems.

My current work lies at the intersection of computer networking and energy systems.