Overview

I graduated with a PhD (2011) in Computer Science at Harvard University.  My research was on market-based resource allocation for dynamic systems (e.g. cloud/utility/grid computing, testbeds, sensor networks), considering especially the interactions among self-interested agents who share the systems.  My thesis topic is Online Mechanism Design for Distributed Systems. I designed online mechanisms so agents have no/little incentive to game the system both on a value and time basis, saving time and complexity. I also worked on designing virtual currency to apply policies. My advisors were the awesome Prof. David Parkes (EconCS group) and Prof. Margo Seltzer (SYRAH group).  Jim Waldo from Sun Labs was the 3rd person on my thesis committee. Lastly, I got my MBA in New Venture and Product Development from MIT Sloan, BS in CS from Northeastern, and was co-founder and COO of Interactive Constructs, a 65-people educational technology company founded in 1996 (and sold to Follett in 2006) that enabled innovative K-12 and Higher Ed technology products for publishers such as Scholastic, Harcourt, and Pearson.

My personal website is at www.chaki.com. Since graduation I have joined MTV Networks as their SVP of Product for MTV+VH1 Digital.


Market-Based Systems

Two Auction-Based Resource Allocation Environments: Design and Experience
Alvin AuYoung, Phil Buonadonna, Brent N. Chun, Chaki Ng, David C. Parkes, Jeff Shneidman, Alex C. Snoeren, and Amin Vahdat.
In Market Oriented Grid and Utility Computing, Rajmukar Buyya and Kris Bubendorfer (eds.), Chapter 23, Wiley, 2009.
(PDF)

EGG: An Extensible and Economics-Inspired Open Grid Computing Platform
John Brunelle, Peter Hurst, John Huth, Laura Kang, Chaki Ng, David Parkes, Margo Seltzer, Jim Shank, and Saul Youssef.
GECON'06 (June 2006, Singapore).
(PDF)

Addressing Strategic Behavior in a Deployed Microeconomic Resource Allocator
Chaki Ng, Philip Buonadonna, Brent N. Chun, Alex C. Snoeren, and Amin Vahdat.
3rd Workshop on the Economics of Peer to Peer Systems (August 2005, Philadelphia, PA).
(PDF) | Talk (PPT)

Computational Risk Management for Building Highly Reliable Network Services
Brent N. Chun, Philip Buonadonna, and Chaki Ng.
1st Workshop on Hot Topics in System Dependability (June 2005, Yokohama, Japan).
(PDF) | Talk (PPT)

Why Markets Could (But Don't Currently) Solve Resource Allocation Problems in Systems
Jeffrey Shneidman, Chaki Ng, David Parkes, Alvin AuYoung, Alex C. Snoeren, Amin Vahdat, and Brent N. Chun.
10th USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems (June 2005, Sante Fe, NM).
(PDF)

Mirage: A Microeconomic Resource Allocation System for SensorNet Testbeds
Brent N. Chun, Philip Buonadonna, Alvin AuYoung, Chaki Ng, David C. Parkes, Jeffrey Shneidman, Alex C. Snoeren, and Amin Vahdat.
2nd IEEE Workshop on Embedded Networked Sensors (May 2005, Sydney, Australia).
(PDF)

Storage Systems

Provenance-Aware Sensor Data Storage    
Jonathan Ledlie, Chaki Ng, David Holland, Kiran-Kumar Muniswamy-Reddy, Uri Braun, and Margo Seltzer.
NetDB 2005 (April 2005, Tokyo, Japan).
(PDF)

Mechanism Design

Strategyproof Computing: Systems Infrastructures for Self-Interested Parties    
Chaki Ng, David Parkes, and Margo Seltzer.
1st Workshop on the Economics of Peer-to-Peer Systems (June 2003, Berkeley, CA). 
(PDF)

Virtual Worlds: Fast and Strategyproof Auctions for Dynamic Resource Allocation
Chaki Ng, David Parkes, and Margo Seltzer.
ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce (June 2003, San Diego, CA),
(PDF) | Poster (PDF)

Error-Correcting Codes

Concatenated Codes for Deletion Channels
Johnny Chen, Michael Mitzenmacher, Chaki Ng, Nedeljko Varnica.
2003 IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (June 2003, Yokohama, Japan).
(PDF) | Abstract (PDF)

Sensor Networks

MoteTrack - location detection system using TinyOS motes.

Unpublished Work

SHARE: Computational Resource Exchange (PDF)

Computational Mechanism Design: Towards Online Mechanisms (PDF)

Contact
chaki at eecs dot harvard dot edu
Harvard Address: 33 Oxford Street, Cambridge, MA 02138

data center automation, autonomic computing, utility computing, economics, finance, resource allocation, mechanism design, grid computing, virtualization