Lui Sha

Ph.D. Carnegie Mellon University, 1985

Research Statement

Processors, memory, storage, networking are becoming so small, powerful, and inexpensive that they give birth to a new generation of digital infrastructure, where computing, communication, sensing and control are tightly integrated. The system is connected to the Web, interfaced with electrical and mechanical actuators, and equipped with many types of miniaturized sensors, e.g., pressure, moisture, heat, audio and video sensors.

These systems will play a critical role in the operational control as well as in the enforcement of safety and security measures of our physical environment. We are developing the technologies to support the design, development and automatic management of this new generation of digital infrastructure:

• Dynamic Architecture: Design OS, middleware and application frameworks to support the automatic upgrade of software components without the need to shut down the system operation.
• Defect Tolerance and Survivability: Develop automatic system configuration and dependency management protocols to ensure that system stability and essential services will always be maintained in spite of errors in complex software components or the partial failure of physical components.
• Quality of Service: Co-design control, signal processing and resource management protocols to automatically optimize application performance with respect to available computing and networking resources.