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., transport protocols, network architecture) and the empirical study of Internet platforms (such as Airbnb, Groupon, and Yelp).

Entrepreneurial: As founding Chief Scientist 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 beyond.

In the News

• 3/5/17: Presented our work on "app of the day" Appstore promotions at the 2017 Winter Conference on Business Analytics.
  
  
• 1/27/17: Had a great time chairing a panel of industry experts at Boston University Data Science Day!
  
  
• 1/25/17: Presented at the TYPES panel at CPDP 2017, Brussels. CPDP = Computers, Privacy and Data Protection.
  
  
• 11/21/16: Our paper on Airbnb's impact on the hotel industry is accepted at the Journal of Marketing Research (JMR).
  It also recently made the list of the top 10 most frequently downloaded papers from SSRN in 2016.
  
  
• 11/17/16: IMC '16 is in the books. Thanks to the 180+ of you who came to Santa Monica, and especially to the presenters, who made the 46-paper technical program + WIP session so engaging!
  
  
• 10/27/16: Quoted on NPR's Marketplace on a piece regarding Twitter's recent layoffs and revenue slowdown.
  
  
• 10/27/16: Presented our work on Airbnb at the Tufts Computer Science colloquium.
  
  
• 10/24/16: Presented our work on Airbnb at the weekly seminar series at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard.
  
  

Research and Affiliations

I'm a member of the BU/CS Networks Research group and a Fellow at the Hariri Institute, both of which hold open weekly talk series. Please join us!

My academic research is currently 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 Big Data optimization problem. A great example of a successful launch from Cogo Labs using this technology is EverQuote, the Cambridge-based auto insurance marketplace.

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

Teaching

• CS 330 - Intro to Algorithms (Spring '17)
• CS 591 - Networks and Markets: Theory and Applications (Fall '16)
• CS 131 - Combinatoric Structures (Last taught: Spring '15)
• CS 112 - Intro to Data Structures (Spring '12)
• CS 455/655 - Computer Networks (Fall '10)
• CS 559 - Algorithmic Aspects of Computer Networks (Spring '10)
• CS 591 - Electronic Commerce (Fall '15)
• CS 697 - Computer Science Graduate Initiation Course (Spring '10)