Shaddi Hasan
I am an assistant professor of computer science at Virginia Tech. My research interests are in networks, information and communication technologies for development (ICTD), HCI, and distributed systems.
My research addresses fundamental scale and flexibility challenges faced by service provider networks. I build operational, deployable systems to democratize access networks and evaluate them through real-world deployments and fieldwork, informed by qualitative research with users and network operators. In doing so, my work both enables new classes of service providers to exist and expands the frontiers of the Internet beyond what is achievable today, providing more equitable access to communications, especially in rural and developing regions. My research has appeared in venues such as ICTD, SIGCOMM, and NSDI. I have received an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and paper awards at NSDI, ACM DEV, and IEEE DySPAN.
This year, I am actively recruiting motivated PhD and MS students with interests in networking (particularly mobile networks) and ICTD. In addition, I have opportunities for motivated Virginia Tech undergraduates interested in research.
- Prospective MS and PhD students: Please apply to the Virginia Tech CS program through the normal channels, and mention my name in your application.
- Current Virginia Tech students: Please send me email describing your research interests along with your CV/resume.
Prior to Virginia Tech, I completed my PhD (2019) at UC Berkeley, advised by Eric Brewer, and my BS (2010) from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where I worked with Kevin Jeffay and Jay Aikat. In 2014, I co-founded Endaga (press), which was acquired by Facebook in 2015; I worked with Facebook Connectivity until 2021, where I helped start the Magma project.
I am lucky to work with a number of excellent students as part of the Systems, People, Infrastructure, and Networks (SPIN) Lab.
- Demetrius Davis (PhD)
- Wesley Woo (PhD)
- Tauhid Nabi (PhD)
- Jamous Bitrick (MS)
Our group alumni:
- Zahra Yazdani (BS 2023; next PhD student Georgia Tech )
- Molly Hickman (MS 2022; next nLine)
Here's my CV.
Selected Publications
-
What's my Daily Value? Interpretation of Network Performance Metrics in Broadband Consumer Labels
Wesley Woo and Shaddi Hasan
SNIP2+, September 2023
[pdf] -
Building Flexible, Low-Cost Wireless Access Networks with Magma
Shaddi Hasan, Amar Padmanabhan, Bruce Davie, Jennifer Rexford, Ulas Kozat, Hunter Gatewood, Shruti Sanadhya, Nick Yurchenko, Tariq Al-Khasib, Oriol Batalla, Marie Bremner, Andrei Lee, Evgeniy Makeev, Scott Moeller, Alex Rodriguez, Pravin Shelar, Karthik Subraveti, Sudhi Kandi, Alejandro Xoconostle, Praveen Kumar Ramakrishnan, Xiaochen Tian, and Anoop Tomar
NSDI, April 2023 (Community Award)
[pdf] [talk] [slides] [project site] [code] -
LOCA: A Location-Oblivious Cellular Architecture
Zhihong Luo, Silvery Fu, Natacha Crooks, Shaddi Hasan, Christian Maciocco, Sylvia Ratnasamy, and Scott Shenker
NSDI, April 2023
[pdf] -
Democratizing Cellular Access with CellBricks
Zhihong Luo, Silvery Fu, Mark Theis, Shaddi Hasan, Sylvia Ratnasamy, and Scott Shenker
SIGCOMM, August 2021
[pdf] [project site] [code] -
Scaling Community Cellular Networks with CommunityCellularManager
Shaddi Hasan, Mary Claire Barela, Matthew Johnson, Eric Brewer, and Kurtis Heimerl
NSDI, February 2019 (Community Award)
[pdf] [slides] [code] [talk] -
An Investigation of Phone Upgrades in Remote Community Cellular Networks
Kushal Shah, Philip Martinez, Emre Tepedelenlioglu, Shaddi Hasan, Cedric Festin, Joshua Blumenstock, Josephine Dionisio, and Kurtis Heimerl
ICTD, November 2017
[pdf] -
Macroscopically Sustainable Networking: On Internet Quines
Barath Raghavan and Shaddi Hasan
LIMITS, June 2016
[pdf] -
The Challenges of Scaling WISPs
Shaddi Hasan, Yahel Ben-David, Max Bittman, and Barath Raghavan.
ACM DEV, December 2015 (Best Paper Award)
[pdf] [slides] [code] -
GSM Whitespaces: An Opportunity for Rural Cellular Service
Shaddi Hasan, Kurtis Heimerl, Kate Harrison, Kashif Ali, Sean Roberts, Anant Sahai, and Eric Brewer.
IEEE DySPAN, April 2014 (Best Paper Award)
[pdf] [slides] [code] -
An Experiment in Reducing Cellular Base Station Power Draw With Virtual Coverage
Kurtis Heimerl, Shaddi Hasan, Kashif Ali, Eric Brewer, and Tapan Parikh.
ACM DEV, December 2013
[pdf] -
Local, Sustainable, Small-Scale Cellular Networks
Kurtis Heimerl, Shaddi Hasan, Kashif Ali, Eric Brewer, and Tapan Parikh.
ICTD, December 2013
[pdf] -
Building Dissent Networks: Towards Effective Countermeasures against Large-Scale Communications Blackouts
Shaddi Hasan, Yahel Ben-David, Giulia Fanti, Eric Brewer, and Scott Shenker.
USENIX FOCI, August 2013
[pdf] [slides] [talk] -
Making Middleboxes Someone Else's Problem: Network Processing as a Cloud Service
Justine Sherry, Shaddi Hasan, Colin Scott, Arvind Krishnamurthy, Sylvia Ratnasamy, and Vyas Sekar.
SIGCOMM, August 2012
[pdf] -
Towards Traffic Benchmarks for Empirical Networking Research: The Role of Connection Structure in Traffic Workload Modeling
Jay Aikat, Shaddi Hasan, Kevin Jeffay, and F. D. Smith.
MASCOTS, August 2012
[pdf]
Teaching
Fall 2023: CS4254/5565: Network Architecture and Programming
Spring 2023: CS5566: Network Architecture and Protocols II
Fall 2022: CS4254/5565: Network Architecture and Programming
Spring 2021: CS6204: Computing and Social Good
Fall 2021: CS4254: Network Architecture and Programming
Software
I put most everything I write on Github. Magma is an open-source distributed LTE core network and platform for building open and flexible access networks that I helped start at Facebook. I am one of the core developers of Community Cellular Manager (github), the software we developed at Endaga and Facebook for running community cellular networks. I used to maintain Orangemesh, a web-based mesh network management tool.
I host maps of spectrum availability for the EBS Tribal Priority Filing Window. Talk to my friends at MuralNet to learn more!
Contact
620 Drillfield Drive
1140 Torgersen Hall
Blacksburg, VA 24061
KJ4VNL
How to say my name
My name is pronounced "SHA-dee" (IPA: /ʃædi/), which rhymes with "daddy" or "caddy". In particular, it does not rhyme with "shoddy", "shady", or "shad-eye".