Background

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

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 online advertising, algorithmic marketing, and data science analytics that help power our incubated portfolio companies from inception to profitability and liquidity.

Research and Affiliations

I'm a Computer Science Professor and a Data Science Fellow at BU. I'm a member of the Networks Research group and the DBLab at BU, both of which hold open weekly talk series. Please join us! I also hold appointments as Fellow at the Hariri Institute and a courtesy appointment in the Department of Marketing in BU Questrom.

My academic research is supported in part by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Hariri Institute at Boston University, and by a Google Faculty Research Award.

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 IPO'd in July '18. (Nasdaq: EVER)

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

Teaching

• CS 591 - The Data Science of Electronic Commerce (next taught Fall '19) [link is to the 2015 syllabus, new syllabus coming in August]
• 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 591 - Networks and Markets: Theory and Applications (Fall '16)
• 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)