Background

Academic: As Professor of Computer Science at BU, my academic research centers on data-analytic and algorithmic challenges in two disciplines: the science of computer networking (e.g., protocol design, network architecture), and the empirical study of Internet platforms (such as Airbnb, Uber and Yelp).

Entrepreneurial: As founding Chief Scientist and Director at the Cogo Labs technology incubator (founded in 2005), I help research and design our own technology platform: we provide proprietary methods for algorithmic marketing, and data analytics that help power our incubated portfolio companies from inception to profitability and beyond. Cogo Labs was honored with a Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce Small Business of the Year award in 2019.

Research and Affiliations

I'm a Computer Science Professor and a founding member of the Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences (FCDS) at BU. I'm a member of the Networks Research group and the DBLab at BU. I also hold a courtesy appointment in the Department of Marketing in the Questrom School of Business.

My academic research is currently supported in part by grants from the National Science Foundation.

At Cogo Labs, I've been working on a fascinating problem domain since the company's founding: the algorithmic, data management, and systems-building challenges that arise on the buy side of pay-per-click advertising, a canonical data science optimization problem. One example of a successful launch from Cogo Labs using this technology is EverQuote, the Cambridge-based auto insurance marketplace, which had their IPO in Summer 2018 (Nasdaq: EVER).

I also support Mike Luby's latest venture, BitRipple: providing bulletproof transport protocols for applications running over challenged networks.
See the BitRipple demo for Metaverse applications.

Another interesting thing I'm doing lately is serving on the DARPA Information Science and Technology (ISAT) Study Group.

Teaching

• CS 237 - Probability in Computing, co-taught with Alina Ene (last taught Fall '22)
• CS 591 - Networks and Markets: Theory and Applications (last taught Fall '20)
• CS 591 - The Data Science of Electronic Commerce (last taught Fall '19)
• CS 131 - Combinatoric Structures (last co-taught Fall '18, with Babis Tsourakakis).
• CS 330 - Intro to Algorithms (last co-taught Spring '18, with Dora Erdos).
• CS 112 - Intro to Data Structures (last taught Spring '12)
• CS 455/655 - Computer Networks (last taught Fall '10)
• CS 559 - Algorithmic Aspects of Computer Networks (Spring '10)
• CS 697 - Computer Science Graduate Initiation Course (Spring '10)

Graduate Advising

I've also collected a few useful pointers to helpful advice (now dated) for prospective or current graduate students.