04/19/23

Having Fun in Research

Yuanyuan Zhou

04/19/23

Research is a Job!

You need to be responsible You cannot cook your own results

Research should aim to make impact Not just papers

Research pays RAs ---- sorry, pay is a little too low Professor---pay reasonable Research scientist in a research lab Patent commercialized …

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Research > a Job

What are the special characteristics demanded in research? Hint: what is demanded in playing a computer game? Your curiosity Your passion Your focus Your patience

May take 2-3 years Your obsess (your persistence)

Sometimes it does not work Rejections (10-20% acceptance rate)

Do you have all?

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A table to relieve your stress

Enjoy yourself Not Enjoy yourself

Succeed(getting tenure, promotion, fame, etc)

Great! Not too bad (at least you succeed!)

Not succeed Not too bad(at least you enjoy youself)

BAD!!!!

To avoid the only bad combination, you should just enjoy yourself! Because this is under your control, whether succeed or not in somedegree also depends on others’ subjective evaluation!

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Selecting Fun Research Areas

Match your interest/passionCommon mistakes

Limit yourself only within your comfortable zone Something unknown must be fun Consider only the ultimate research goal but

ignoreResearch realityResearch methodologyYou need to enjoy the journey

Consider only job opportunities Follow the trend --- hot areas

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Adventurous in Your Research

Research is to find out the unknownAdventure in research

Propose new (maybe weird) solutions Jump into a new area unknown to you

Adventurous in research is fun Not bored You can bring a fresh air into a direction Likely to yield unexpected results

Your start a new direction!

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My Own Experience

1992-1993: Database (Peking Univ) 1993-1994: Mathematics & Internal medicine

( Univ. of Virginia) 1994-1995: Computational biology (Princeton) 1995-1999: Distributed systems (Princeton) 1999-2002: Storage Systems (NEC Lab) 2002-Now: Software reliability, Energy

management (UIUC) Future: ?????

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Problem-Driven Research

Identifying problems is more important than finding solutions

Define the boundaries of your problem carefully “Nobody will be impressed if you set the bar

too low and jump over it. Nobody will be impressed if you set the bar too high and don’t jump over it.” (Dave Redell)

Don’t try to “solve the world” or “boil the ocean”.

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Picking Fun Research Problems

Criteria (agree with Lui & previous speakers) Exciting and interesting area Important problems in area Activities suitable to you (theory vs systems)

Take time to understand the problem Catch up background Get your own insights Hands-on: repeating the most recent,

authoritative work in this direction to understand the limitations from YOUR own perspective!

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Defining the Solution

Make the problem concrete Start with particulars, then generalize

Know what makes the problem hard “Why couldn’t you just...”

Identify the standard of success How will you know when you are done? How to distinguish a good solution from a less-

good solution?

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Looking for Solutions

Don’t limit to your comfortable zone

Broaden your eyes Talk with researchers from other

fields Attend talks in other fields

Don’t let fear of failure stop you

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My Own “Gutsy” Solutions Pushing bug detection support into

hardware Attended Ravi Iyer’s class at UIUC Attended Darko Marinov’s class at UIUC

Combining data mining into compiler’s program analysis Attended Jiawei’s data mining class

Combining NLP into program analysis analysis Reading some textbook

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Conduct Research in a Fun Way

Feasibility analysis Find out the potential in a quick way

Talk with other people Get feedback

Divide and Conquer See progress along the way

Be proud of your ideas!

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Team Research is More Fun

Team discussion is stimulating You handle the up-and-downs

together Less pressure

Work party

Who likes to play games in a team? Internet games Poker

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Eight Ways to Destroy the Fun of Team Research?

Fight for credits/author orderNot supportiveOver-defensiveCommand each otherNo communicationBlame each otherPassive waiting for tasksNo compromise

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Tell Your Fun Findings to Others

Write a paperPublish it at

workshops/conferencesPresent it at a conference

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Writing is Fun

Writing helps you refine ideas That’s why writing should be done in

parallel with the design, implementation and experiments

Writing helps you communicate ideas In most cases you will find out that you,

your teammates and your adviser have totally different views of the project (the idea, etc)

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Add Fun Analogies in your Presentation

Explain boring technical things in an easy-to-understand manner Demonstrate your key insights

Make your talk more lively Throw jokes

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Analogy Examples

The analogies used in my job talk

The analogy used in my recent talks

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Multi-level Server Cache Hierarchy

Database ServersFile Servers

Database ClientsFile Clients

Storage Servers

…

(4GB – 32GB) (1GB – 64GB)

NetworkNetwor

k

Storage Server Cache

Database Server Cache

Client Cache

(64MB – 128MB) << ~No need for inclusion property

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Multi-level Server Caching

misses

Least Recently Used (LRU)

LRU?Database or

File server

Cache

Storage server

Cache

in cache?accesses

hits

Database Servers Storage Systems

(Lower level)File Servers(Higher level)

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Analogy: Storage Box (Basement)

Assumption for analogy: item = boxQuestion: do you keep the box? If you have a basement, you can keep all the

boxes

Basement(lower-level)

Living room

(higher-level)

pizzaDELL

Traditional Client-Server Cache Hierarchy

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Analogy: Storage Box (Closet)

If you just have a closet, you may keep only the box for your holiday decorations!

Closet(lower-level)

Living room

(higher-level)

Database-Storage Server Cache Hierarchy

hot accesscold access

hot miss

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But If You Use LRU for Your Closet…

Your closet will be full of garbage!

Basement(lower-level)

Living room

(higher-level)

pizza

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Atomicity Violation Bugs

Programmers want atomicity They assume some code regions are

‘atomic’ Lock/transaction are ways to ensure

atomicity Incorrect implementation causes

atomicity violations

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Challenges of Atomicity Violation Detection

program BUG!

Infer programmer’s atomicity

intention

Detect violation to

the atomicity intention

How?How?

How to represent programmers atomicity intention?

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An Analogy ---Don’t Disturb Assumption:

I work on some tasks everyday and some are repetitive

Preparing lectures Writing proposal Playing computer games Thinking or day-dreaming…

Some tasks cannot be interrupted (e.g. playing games)

I don’t tell students explicitly about what can or cannot be interrupted----too embarrassing…

Question: Can my students automatically figure out what tasks

can be interrupted?

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Infer Professor’s “Atomicity” Desire

Finding Clues: When a task is interrupted unwillingly, the professor is a little mad, dis-oriented and cannot wait to get backInfer this task needs to be “atomic”

Otherwise, happy to be interrupted

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Research Impacts

Papers on top conferences Best paper award---even better

Visibility Discussed in other institutes’ seminars Other people know about your work

Inspire other research projects # of Citations

Start a new research directionUsed in real systems

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Final Words: Enjoy Your Research

If you are not having fun in research now, ask yourself Are you working on an area that you

feel passionate? Are you working on a fun problem? Are you doing it alone? Have you seen any promising results? Do you see the impact of your research?