Ke (David) is a research scientist in the Core Systems team at Facebook. His work focuses on improving the fault tolerance of Facebook's core infrastructure.
He earned his PhD in Computer Science and Engineering (advisor Prof. Z. Morley Mao) from University of Michigan.
His thesis focuses on testing performance, safety and security properties in mobile and emerging autonomous vehicle systems using systematic software analysis techniques, including runtime profiling, program analysis and formal methods.
He received an MPhil (Master of Philosophy) and bachelor degree (first-class honour) in Computer Science and Engineering from The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST).
His prior research also includes performance diagnosis and acceleration of Android systems, traffic engineering in software-defined networks, network and compute acceleration of cloud data centers.
Education
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering
2014.8 - 2019.5 EECS Department, CSE Division
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong
MPhil in Computer Science and Engineering
2011.9 - 2013.12 Department of Computer Science and Engineering
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong
BEng in Computer Science, Computer Engineering (first class honours)
2007.9 - 2011.6 Department of Computer Science and Engineering
Research Projects
Safeguarding autonomous vehicle software:
1) Developed automated program analysis and instrumentation infrastructure to verify and enforce safety policy compliance in autonomous vehicle software (e.g., Baidu Apollor, Autoware);
2) Developed customized program analysis infrastructure for autonomous vehicle software (e.g., Baidu Apollo, Autoware) to discover security vulnerability and policy-based defense solutions to mitigate attacks against autonomous vehicle systems. [EuroS&P 2020 paper]
Mobile performance diagnosis: Lightweight trace collection on mobile platforms and systematic, automated machine learning based characterization approach to facilitate root cause diagnosis of performance issues with mobile apps. [Internet-QoE 2016 paper], [MOBILESoft 2019 paper]
Hybrid SDN: Incremental deployment of SDN in enterprise and ISP network systems for centralized traffic engineering. [SOSR 2016 paper]
Tango: Accelerating mobile applications through flip-flop replication. [Homepage]
Soft Network: A software-based switching network for large-scale network emulation.
CASN: A cluster-area sensor network for cluster management and security enhancement in data centers. [MASS 2013 paper]
WSTCP: Wirelessly Assisted TCP for High-Bandwidth Data Center Networks. [MPhil Thesis]
VOLUME (Virtual On-Line Unified Memory Environment): A distributed virtual memory that unifies the physical memory and disk resources on many compute nodes and form a system-wide data substrate to support large-scale in-memory computation. [CloudCom'13 paper]
Layer Zero (L0): A general-purpose substrate for cloud computing. [Zhiqiang's PhD Thesis]
Mark Gordon, David Ke Hong, Peter Chen, Jason Flinn, Scott Mahlke, Z. Morley Mao. Accelerating Mobile Applications through Flip-Flop Replication (Best Paper Award).
In Proc. of the 13th International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys 2015). May 18-22, 2015. Florence, Italy.
Ashkan Nikravesh, David Ke Hong, Qi Alfred Chen, Harsha V. Madhyastha, Z. Morley Mao. QoE Inference Without Application Control.
In Proc. of the ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on QoE-based Analysis and Management of Data Communication Networks (Internet-QoE). Aug. 26, 2016. Florianópolis, Brazil.
The Michigan Translational Research and Commercialization (MTRAC) Award (Advanced Transportation Program), 2019
Rackham Travel Grant, 2017, 2019
MobiSys Best Paper Award, 2015
HKUST Research Travel Grant, 2013
HKUST Postgraduate Studentship, 2011 - 2013
First Class Honors Degree, 2011
University Scholarship, 2007 - 2011
Talks and Demos
PerfProbe: A Systematic, Cross-Layer Performance Diagnosis Framework for Mobile Platforms. Presentation at the 2019 IEEE/ACM 6th International Conference on Mobile Software Engineering and Systems (MOBILESoft 2019). May 25, 2019. Montréal, Canada. [Slides]
An Initial Investigation of Protocol Customization. Presentation at the ACM CCS Workshop on Forming an Ecosystem Around Software Transformation (FEAST 2017). Nov. 3, 2017. Dallas, TX. [Slides]
A Synergy of Wireless Sensor Networks and Data Center Systems. MPhil thesis defense at HKUST. Dec. 17, 2013. HKUST. [Abstract] [Slides]
A Synergy of the Wireless Sensor Network and the Data Center System. Presentation at the 10th IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad-hoc and Sensor Systems (MASS 2013). Oct. 14-16, 2013. Hangzhou, China. [Slides]
Layer Zero: An Efficient Platform for Cloud Computing. Demo at China Hi-Tech Fair 2012 (CHTF 2012). Nov. 16-21, 2012. Shenzhen, China. [Poster (in Chinese)]
Teaching
Ke worked as a teaching assistant or instructor for the following courses at HKUST and UMich.
Strategic CAD Labs Research Intern, Intel Corporation, Folsom, CA 05/2016 - 09/2016 - Developed an app and OS-layer runtime profiling and statistical characterization prototype to diagnose performance problems with Android apps and applied it to guide the performance problem analysis and fixing in popular Android apps - Published the work at the 6th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Mobile Software Engineering and Systems (MOBILESoft 2019)
HP Labs Networking Research Associate, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Palo Alto, CA, 06/2015 - 10/2015 - Designed a hybrid software-defined networking architecture for enterprise and ISP network systems - Published the work at the 2nd ACM Symposium on SDN Research (SOSR 2016)
Research Assistant, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, HKUST, 02/2013 - 05/2013 - Designed and implemented a secondary index for an exascale key-value storage system KV+ - Developed tutorials for Layer Zero and a web interface for KV+
Hall Tutor, Undergraduate Hall I, HKUST, 09/2011 - 12/2013 - Assisted the operational management of an undergraduate dorm - Organized various activities to promote cultural diversity in dorm life
Teaching Assistant, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, HKUST, 09/2011 - 05/2013 - Conducted tutorials and labs of various courses for CSE majors - Instructed linear algebra for freshmen in CSE department
Junior Research Assistant, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, HKUST, 07/2011 - 08/2011 - Administrated a Xen-based research cluster - Developed software VRS – a Xen-based virtual machine reservation system
