John W. Byers

Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science
Boston University
111 Cummington St., Boston, MA, 02215

E-mail: byers @ cs . bu . edu
URL: www.cs.bu.edu/~byers
Office: MCS 270
Office Hours: Mon 9:30 - 11, Thurs 3:30 - 5.
Telephone: (617) 353-8925
FAX: (617) 353-6457
Department: (617) 353-8919
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  B.A.   Computer Science, Economics, Mathematics - Cornell University, 1991.
  Ph.D.   Computer Science - University of California, Berkeley, 1997.

  Bio and CV:   Short bio. CV.

  Research Interests:   Algorithmic aspects of computer networking, Internet content delivery, and pay-per-click advertising.

  Publications

  Upcoming Professional Activities:
        TPC Member, NSDI 2010.

  Work in Industry:
        Chief Scientist, Adverplex, Inc.

  Courses I Teach:
        CS 112 - Intro to Data Structures (Spring '09).
        CS 330 - Intro to Algorithms (Fall '09).
        CS 455/655 - Computer Networks (last taught Fall '08).
        CS 559 - Algorithmic Aspects of Computer Networks (next scheduled Spring '10).
        CS 591 - Sensor Networks Seminar (last co-taught Fall '03).
        CS 697 - Computer Science Graduate Initiation Course (last taught Fall '04).

  NRG:   The Networks Reading Group (NRG) meets in the BU-CS Grad Lounge, time TBD for Fall 2009. All are welcome.


Research

My main research interests are in designing, analyzing and implementing algorithms to serve as enabling technologies for problems in networking and for data management applications. I'm part of the WING networking group (4 BU-CS faculty, 20 Ph.D. students) and I collaborate with several members of the Database Lab @ BU.

At Adverplex, I work on a completely different problem domain: the computational and algorithmic aspects of pay-per-click advertising.

My theoretical interests range from combinatorial optimization to mathematical modeling to statistical analysis of massive datasets.

I've also collected a few useful pointers to helpful advice for prospective or current graduate students.
I regret that it may not be possible for me to respond to individual requests regarding graduate admissions.

My research is currently supported in part by an NSF NeTS award. Prior work was supported in part by NSF CAREER award, an NSF/ANI Special Projects in Networking award, an NSF ITR grant, and a grant from the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation.