Praveen Kumar

I work on networking systems, with a focus on datacenter and end-host networking, at Google. Prior to Google, I earned a PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University advised by Nate Foster. My PhD dissertation was on building predictable networks.

News
05-2022 Awarded the 2022 Cornell Computer Science PhD Dissertation Award. 🌟
02-2022 Selected as winner of the ACM SIGCOMM Doctoral Dissertation Award. 🌟
11-2021 I’ll be joining Google and working with the NetInfra and SRG teams.
09-2021 Defended my Ph.D. at Cornell Computer Science.

Research Interest

My research focuses on building robust and scalable networks that ensure predictable performance despite unpredictable operating conditions. Applications today require networks to provide increasingly strict performance guarantees and not just high performance. However, networks continue to provide best-effort performance based on the design principles of the early Internet. To bridge this gap, my research takes a multi-disciplinary approach spanning architecture, PL, systems, and theory to build holistic networking solutions—from low-level hardware to high-level abstractions and algorithms.

Publications

  1. Toward Predictable Networks. Praveen Kumar.
    Ph.D. Dissertation. Cornell University. 2021.
    ACM SIGCOMM Doctoral Dissertation Award.
    Cornell Computer Science PhD Dissertation Award.
    [ dissertation ]
  2. Composing Dataplane Programs with μP4. Hardik Soni, Myriana Rifai, Praveen Kumar, Ryan Doenges, and Nate Foster. In ACM SIGCOMM 2020.
    [ paper | code ]
  3. PicNIC: Predictable Virtualized NIC. Praveen Kumar, Nandita Dukkipati, Nathan Lewis, Yi Cui, Yaogong Wang, Chonggang Li, Valas Valancius, Jake Adriaens, Steve Gribble, Nate Foster, and Amin Vahdat. In ACM SIGCOMM 2019.
    ACM SIGCOMM 2019 Best Student Paper Award.
    [ paper ]
  4. Scalable Verification of Probabilistic Networks. Steffen Smolka, Praveen Kumar, David M Kahn, Nate Foster, Justin Hsu, Dexter Kozen, and Alexandra Silva. In PLDI 2019.
    [ paper | code ]
  5. Semi-Oblivious Traffic Engineering: The Road Not Taken. Praveen Kumar, Yang Yuan, Chris Yu, Nate Foster, Robert Kleinberg, Petr Lapukhov, Chiun Lin Lim, and Robert Soulé. In USENIX NSDI 2018.
    [ paper | code ]
  6. YATES: Rapid Prototyping for Traffic Engineering Systems. Praveen Kumar, Chris Yu, Yang Yuan, Nate Foster, Robert Kleinberg, and Robert Soulé. In ACM SOSR 2018.
    [ paper | code ]
  7. Cantor Meets Scott: Semantic Foundations for Probabilistic Networks. Steffen Smolka, Praveen Kumar, Nate Foster, Dexter Kozen, and Alexandra Silva. In POPL 2017.
    [ paper | code ]

Service

Program Committee: SIGCOMM 2024