Computer Science undergrad demonstrates research opportunities at Rice are virtually there for the asking

Junior, lead author Diego Ongaro to present at upcoming international computing conference
By Jennifer Evans

 

Feb. 15, 2008 -- Like most prospective Rice students, Diego Ongaro had plenty of options when it came to selecting a college. He had it narrowed down to Rice and The University of Texas-Austin, where he would be in an honors program for select computer science majors. But what appealed to him about Rice was its size.

"Even if you're in a small honors program, on a 60,000-person campus, I don't know what the chances are that you're going to really be unique or get a research opportunity after your first year," he said.

But at Rice, that’s exactly what he did. In the summer after his first year, the computer science major not only got the chance to participate in his professors’ research, he also became the lead author on the resulting research paper and will be presenting that paper at the upcoming International Conference on Virtual Execution Environments in Seattle.

“Diego’s a great example of what potential stars can do here at Rice as undergraduates,” said Associate Professor of Computer Science Alan Cox, who co-authored the paper with Ongaro and Scott Rixner, also an associate professor of computer science. Cox said while it’s not unusual for Rice undergraduates to participate in research, it is quite an accomplishment for such a student to do what Ongaro did: perform the lion’s share of the research, be the only student-author on the research paper and present it at a conference of scholars, researchers and industry experts from around the globe.

The opportunity was completely unexpected by Ongaro, who would often stay after his introductory programming class taught by Cox to ask questions and discuss related topics. A standout student in the class, Ongaro struck Cox as a good candidate for an internship working on his and Rixner’s research on virtualization, a hot technology wherein one computer appears to function as many. The technology that allows one to do more with less has been garnering tremendous attention due to its promise of increasing computing-resource utilization while reducing computing costs, power consumption, data-center space requirements and more.

“It was a little bit of a surprise to me when Alan sent me an e-mail offering me a research opportunity,” Ongaro said. “And one day in May, I showed up, was handed a computer and told to go for it.”

The problem Cox and Rixner pointed Ongaro toward was one of improving the network performance of applications running in a virtualized environment. The professors had observed that in a machine trying to support multiple applications at the same time, applications that were not only computing data but also communicating data would perform very poorly and unpredictably. Ongaro set about designing a series of experiments to isolate what was causing this behavior. He then conducted the experiments, analyzed the results and presented his findings to Cox and Rixner. The professors suggested several possible optimizations in light of the results, which Ongaro then implemented and evaluated.

“I didn’t really know what they’d have me doing,” Ongaro said. “I didn’t think I’d be doing anything interesting when I agreed to it; I thought I’d be running some tests. If you compare it to a lab, I thought I’d be the one cleaning up the supplies and putting stuff away.”

But it was so much more.

“He did it all himself,” Cox said. “We pointed him in the right direction, met with him on a regular basis to talk with him about the progress he was making, and then we figured out how to shape it into a paper.”

Ongaro will be presenting that paper, “Scheduling I/O in Virtual Machine Monitors,” at the International Conference on Virtual Execution Environments in March. He admits the prospect is a bit intimidating – being an undergrad presenting for the first time at his first conference to a roomful of industry and academic luminaries. But he’s grateful for the experience. “Given the opportunity to work here with Scott and Alan, that’s one of the things I really appreciated.”

 

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