Jing Li

Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science
Ying Wu College of Computing
New Jersey Institute of Technology

Office: GITC 4106, University Heights, Newark, NJ 07102
E-mail: jingli AT njit DOT edu

My research encompasses a broad area of real-time systems, parallel computing, cyber-physical systems, and reinforcement learning for system design and optimization. I am particularly interested in developing theoretical foundations and practical platforms for executing parallel applications with temporal objectives, such as the applications in autonomous cyber-physical systems and interactive online cloud services. My work develops provably good and practically efficient platforms that provide quality of service guarantees to applications while preserving scalability on large-scale parallel systems. My recent interest also includes developing reinforcement learning frameworks for various system design tasks with huge search space, such as resource allocation in systems, traffic signal control, and circuit design automation.

I received my Ph.D. at Washington University in St. Louis in 2017, where I was advised by Professor Chenyang Lu and Kunal Agrawal.

• Positions available for self-motivated PhD students: I am interested in working with both strong theory students and strong system students. If you are interested in my research and working with me, please include some samples of your work when contacting me.
• I will serve as the Track 2 Deputy Chair of 29th IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS 2023) on May 9-12, 2023.
• I will serve on the TPC of RTAS 2023, DATE 2023, and AAAI 2023.
• I received the Outstanding Achievement in Research from Ying Wu College of Computing at NJIT in 2022.
• I served as the Registrations Chair of 43rd IEEE Real Time Systems Symposium (RTSS 2022) on Dec 5-8, 2022.
• I served on the TPC of RTSS 2022, RTAS 2022, DAC 2022, PPoPP 2022, and HiPC 2022.
• I served as the Publicity Co-Chair of 28th IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS 2022) on May 4-6, 2022.
• I served on the TPC of RTSS 2021, DAC 2021, and SPAA 2021.
• I co-chaired the 7th International Workshop on Mixed Criticality Systems on Dec 3rd 2019, affiliated with the Real Time Systems Symposium (RTSS 2019).
• I served on the TPC of RTSS 2020 and ICESS 2020.
• I attended the Workshop on Mathematical Challenges in Scheduling Theory in Oct 2019 at Tsinghua Sanya International Mathematical Forum (TSIMF), China.
• I served on the TPC of RTAS 2020, and ICCCN 2020.
• I attended the Annual Summit on Women and IT as one of the representatives at NJIT, organized by National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT), May 2019.
• I attended the Dagstuhl Seminar of Analysis, Design, and Control of Predictable Interconnected Systems in March 2019 in Dagstuhl, Germany.
• I served on the TPC of EMSOFT 2019, ESA 2019, RTAS 2019, ICCCN 2019 and ISORC 2019.
• Our paper titled "Reservation-Based Federated Scheduling for Parallel Real-Time Tasks" received Outstanding Paper Award at RTSS 2018. Congrats!
• I attended the Aussois Seminar of New Challenges in Scheduling Theory in April 2018 in Aussois, France.
• My thesis titled "Parallel Real-Time Scheduling for Latency-Critical Applications" received the Turner Dissertation Award at Washington University in St Louis in 2017.
• I am excited to join the Department of Computer Science at New Jersey Institute of Technology as an assistant professor.

• Ph.D. in Computer Science, Washington University in St. Louis (Summer 2017)
• Thesis: Parallel Real-Time Scheduling for Latency-Critical Applications
• Advisors: Chenyang Lu, Kunal Agrawal
• M.S. in Computer Science, Washington University in St. Louis (2014)
• Thesis: Global EDF Scheduling for Parallel Real-Time Tasks 
• B.S. in Computer Science, Harbin Institute of Technology, China (2011)

Research Interests:

• Real-Time and Cyber-Physical Systems
• Parallel Computing
• Reinforcement Learning for System Design and Optimization
• Scheduling and Operations Research

Current Projects:

• Enabling Efficient Real-Time Systems upon Multiple Parallel Resources [NSF CRII:CSR]
• Model-based Reinforcement Learning with Active Learning for Converter Design [ARPA-E, IBM]

Research Experience:

• Parallel Real-Time Scheduling for AI-Enhanced Systems
• Establish new scheduling paradigm for systems with complex interactions among real-time tasks using AI algorithms
• Develop theoretical foundations to enable parallel real-time systems to utilize multiple resources efficiently
• Design system methodologies and mechanisms to effectively handle the interdependencies between tasks and multiple resources
• Devise the formulation of the holistic performance modeling and optimization in AI-Enhanced Systems

• Reinforcement Learning for System Design, Scheduling, and Optimization
• Develop reinforcement learning framework for scheduling in complex systems
• Extend the reinforcement learning framework for solving general mixed integer optimization
• Apply active learning to improve the efficiency of the optimization
• Design effective parallelization methods for reinforcement learning

• Scheduling Parallel Jobs in Interactive Cloud Services
• Research Intern, Microsoft Research, Redmond, USA (06/2014 to 09/2014)
• Mentors: Sameh Elnikety, Yuxiong He, Kathryn McKinley
• Design a new parallel scheduling strategy to improve tail latency of jobs
• Implement the scheduler in a parallel runtime system (Intel Thread Building Block)
• Reduce tail latency on real-world workloads (Bing search and finance server workloads) 

• Parallel Real-Time Scheduling Theory and System
• Research Assistant, Washington University in St. Louis (01/2012 to 08/2017)
• Develop theoretical techniques for analyzing real-time schedulers for parallel tasks
• Prove best known theoretical bounds for well known real-time schedulers 
• Design novel scheduling strategies with provably better performances for various scenarios
• Implement practically efficient schedulers in middleware systems to run parallel real-time applications written in widely used parallel languages (OpenMP and Cilk Plus)

• Online Scheduling Problem for Parallel Jobs
• Research Assistant, Washington University in St. Louis (06/2014 to 08/2017)
• Propose online schedulers for parallel jobs with various temporal objectives
• Analyze and proving performance bounds for proposed schedulers
• Improve schedulers to reduce overheads while maintaining comparable theoretical performances
• Implement practical schedulers in a parallel runtime system (Cilk Plus) 

Google Scholar Profile

2023

• W. Du, J. Ye, J. Gu, J. Li, H. Wei, and G. Wang. SafeLight: A Reinforcement Learning Method toward Collision-free Traffic Signal Control. AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI'23), February 2023.  
• Z. Wang, J. Zhao, K. Agrawal, H. Liu, M. Xu, and J. Li. Provably Good Randomized Strategies for Data Placement in Distributed Key-Value Stores. ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming (PPoPP'23), March 2023.  

2022

• W. Jia, J. Zhang, J. Shan, J. Li, and X. Ding. Achieving Low Latency in Public Edges by Hiding Workloads Mutual Interference. ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing (SoCC'22), pp. 477-492. November 2022.  
• S. Fan, S. Zhang, J. Liu, N. Cao, X. Guo, J. Li, and X. Zhang. Power Converter Circuit Design Automation using Parallel Monte Carlo Tree Search. ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems (TODAES), July 2022.  
• Z. Wang, C. Xu, K. Agrawal, and J. Li. Adaptive Scheduling of Multiprogrammed Dynamic-Multithreading Applications. Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing (JPDC), vol. 162, pp. 76-88, April 2022.  
• J. Bian, A. Arafat, H. Xiong, J. Li, L. Li, H. Chen, J. Wang, D. Dou, and Z. Guo. Machine Learning in Real-Time Internet of Things (IoT) Systems: A Survey. IEEE Internet of Things Journal (IOTJ), 9(11), pp. 8364-8386, March 2022.  
• L. Nie, C. Fan, S. Lin, L. Zhang, Y. Li, and J. Li. Holistic Resource Allocation under Federated Scheduling for Parallel Real-Time Tasks. ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS), 21(1), pp.1-29, January 2022.  

2021

• J. Li, K. Agrawal, and C. Lu. Parallel Real-Time Scheduling. In: Tian YC., Levy D.C. (eds), Handbook of Real-Time Computing. Springer, 2021.  
• S. Fan, N. Cao, S. Zhang, J. Li, X. Guo, and X. Zhang. From Specification to Topology: Automatic Power Converter Design via Reinforcement Learning. IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design Proceedings (ICCAD'21), November 2021.  

2020

• K. Agrawal, S. Baruah, Z. Guo, J. Li, and S. Vaidhun. Hard-Real-Time Routing in Probabilistic Graphs to Minimize Expected Delay. IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS'20), December 2020.  
• Z. Wang, C. Xu, K. Agrawal, and J. Li. AMCilk: A Framework for Multiprogrammed Parallel Workloads. IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing, Data, and Analytics (HiPC'20), December 2020.  
• K. Agrawal, S. Baruah, Z. Guo, and J. Li. The Safe and Effective Application of Probabilistic Techniques in Safety-Critical Systems. IEEE/ACM International Conference on Computer-Aided Design Proceedings (ICCAD'20), November 2020.  
• L. Ben Yamin, J. Li, K. Sarpatwar, B. Schieber, and H. Shachnai. Maximizing Throughput in Flow Shop Real-Time Scheduling. International Conference on Approximation Algorithms for Combinatorial Optimization Problems (APPROX'20), August 2020.  
• J. Sun, J. Li, Z. Guo, A. Zou, X. Zhang, K. Agrawal, and S. Baruah, Real-Time Scheduling upon a Host-Centric Acceleration Architecture with Data Offloading, IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS'20), April 2020.  
• K. Agrawal, S. Baruah, P. Ekberg and J. Li, Optimal Scheduling of Measurement-Based Parallel Real-Time Tasks. Real-Time Systems (RTS), vol. 56, no. 3, pp. 247-253. Springer, March 2020.  
• X. Ni, J. Li, M. Yu, W. Zhou, and K. Wu. Generalizable Resource Allocation in Stream Processing via Deep Reinforcement Learning. AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI'20), February 2020.  
• W. Zhang, E. Bai, and J. Li. Speeding up the Schedulability Analysis and Priority Assignment of Sporadic Tasks under Uniprocessor FPNS. IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics (TII), vol. 16, no. 10, pp. 6382-6392, January 2020.  

2019

• K. Agrawal, I. Lee, J. Li, K. Lu, and B. Moseley, Practically Efficient Scheduler for Minimizing Average Flow Time of Parallel Jobs, IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS'19), May 2019. 
• J. Orr, C. Gill, K. Agrawal, J. Li, and S. Baruah, Elastic Scheduling for Parallel Real-Time Systems, Leibniz Transactions on Embedded Systems (LITES), vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 05:1-14, May 2019.  

2018

• N. Ueter, G. Bruggen, J-J Chen, J. Li, and K. Agrawal, Reservation-Based Federated Scheduling for Parallel Real-Time Tasks, IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS'18), December 2018. Outstanding Paper Award 
• S. Dinh, J. Li, K. Agrawal, C. Gill, and C. Lu, Blocking Analysis for Spin Locks in Real-Time Parallel Tasks, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS), 29(4): 789-802, April 2018. 
• K. Agrawal, J. Li, K. Lu, and B. Moseley, Scheduling Parallelizable Jobs Online to Maximize Throughput, Latin American Symposium on Theoretical Informatics (LATIN'18), April 2018. 

2017

• J. Li, D. Ferry, S. Ahuja, K. Agrawal, C. Gill, and C. Lu, Mixed-criticality federated scheduling for parallel real-time tasks. Real-Time Systems (RTS), 53(5), pp.760-811, September 2017. 
• K. Agrawal, J. Li, K. Lu, and B. Moseley, Brief Announcement: Scheduling Parallelizable Jobs Online to Maximize Throughput, ACM Symposium on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA'17), July 2017. 
• X. Hu, R. Dor, S. Bosch, A. Khoong, J. Li, S. Stark, and C. Lu, Challenges in Studying Falls of Community-dwelling Older Adults in the Real World, IEEE International Conference on Smart Computing (SMARTCOMP'17), May 2017. (Invited Paper) 

2016

• J. Li, S. Dinh, K. Kieselbach, K. Agrawal, C. Gill, and C. Lu, Randomized Work Stealing for Large Scale Soft Real-time Systems, IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS'16), December 2016. 
• K. Agrawal, J. Li, K. Lu, and B. Moseley, Scheduling Parallelizable Jobs Online to Minimize Maximum Flow Time, ACM Symposium on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA'16), July 2016. 
• J. Li, D. Ferry, S. Ahuja, K. Agrawal, C. Gill, and C. Lu, Mixed-Criticality Federated Scheduling for Parallel Real-Time Tasks, IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS'16), April 2016. Outstanding Paper Award 
• J. Li, Y. He, S. Elnikety, K.S. McKinley, K. Agrawal, A. Lee, and C. Lu, Work Stealing for Interactive Services to Meet Target Latency, ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming (PPoPP'16), March 2016. 
• K. Agrawal, J. Li, K. Lu, and B. Moseley, Scheduling Parallel DAG Jobs Online to Minimize Average Flow Time, ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA'16), January 2016. 

2015

• J. Li, Z. Luo, D. Ferry, K. Agrawal, C. Gill, and C. Lu, Global EDF Scheduling for Parallel Real-Time Tasks, Real-Time Systems (RTS), 51(4): 395-439, July 2015. 

2014

• J. Li, K. Agrawal, C. Gill, and C. Lu, Federated Scheduling for Stochastic Parallel Real- time Tasks, IEEE International Conference on Embedded and Real-Time Computing Systems and Applications (RTCSA'14), August 2014. 
• J. Li, J-J Chen, K. Agrawal, C. Lu, C. Gill, and A. Saifullah, Analysis of Federated and Global Scheduling for Parallel Real-Time Tasks, Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS'14), July 2014. 
• A. Saifullah, D. Ferry, J. Li, K. Agrawal, C. Lu, and C. Gill, Parallel Real-Time Scheduling of DAGs, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS), 25(12): 3242- 3252, December 2014. 

2013

• J. Li, K. Agrawal, C. Lu, and C. Gill, Analysis of Global EDF for Parallel Tasks, Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS'13), July 2013. Outstanding Paper Award 
• D. Ferry, J. Li, M. Mahadevan, K. Agrawal, C. Gill, and C. Lu, A Real-Time Scheduling Service for Parallel Tasks, IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS'13), April 2013. 
• A. Saifullah, J. Li, K. Agrawal, C. Lu, and C. Gill, Multi-core Real-Time Scheduling for Generalized Parallel Task Models, Real-Time Systems (RTS), Issue 4, pages 404-435, July 2013. 

Awards

• Outstanding Achievement in Research, Ying Wu College of Computing, NJIT, 2022
• Outstanding Paper Award, Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS 2018)
• Turner Dissertation Award, Washington University in St Louis, 2017
• Outstanding Paper Award, Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS 2016)
• Outstanding Paper Award, Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS 2013)

Selected Participant

• TSIMF Workshop on New Challenges in Scheduling Theory, Sanya, China, 2019
• Dagstuhl Seminar of Analysis, Design, and Control of Predictable Interconnected Systems, Germany, 2019
• Aussois Seminar of New Challenges in Scheduling Theory, Aussois, France, 2018
• Dagstuhl Seminar of Mixed Criticality on Multicore/Manycore Platforms, Germany, 2017
• Rising Stars in EECS workshop, Carnegie Mellon University, USA, 2016
• Heidelberg Laureate Forum, Heidelberg, Germany, 2014

Program Committee Member:

• IEEE Real-Time and Embedded Technology and Applications Symposium (RTAS), 2019, 2020, 2022, and 2023
• AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), 2023
• Design, Automation, and Test in Europe Conference (DATE), 2023
• IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS), 2020, 2021, and 2022
• Design Automation Conference (DAC), 2021 and 2022
• ACM SIGPLAN Symposium on Principles and Practice of Parallel Programming (PPoPP), 2022
• IEEE International Conference on High Performance Computing, Data, and Analytics (HiPC), 2022
• ACM Symposium on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architectures (SPAA), 2021
• IEEE International Conference on Embedded Software and Systems (ICESS), 2020
• International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN), 2019 and 2020
• ACM/IEEE International Conference on Embedded Software (EMSOFT), 2019
• 28th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA), 2019
• International Symposium on Real-Time Computing (ISORC), 2019
• Brief Presentations (BP) session of RTAS, 2018 and 2019
• International Workshop on Next-Generation Operating Systems for Cyber-Physical Systems (NGOSCPS), 2019
• 11th Junior Researcher Workshop on Real-Time Computing, 2017
• Workshop on Mixed Criticality Systems, 2017

Program Organizer:

• Track 2 Deputy Chair, RTAS 2023
• Registrations Chair of RTSS 2022
• Publicity Co-Chair, RTAS 2022
• Co-Chair, RTAS Brief Presentations Track (WiP, WaP, and Demo), 2021
• Co-Chair, Workshop on Mixed Criticality Systems, 2018-2020

Session Chair:

• 39th IEEE Sarnoff Symposium Technical Session 6, 2018
• RTAS 2018 Brief Presentations and Demos, 2018
• ICCPS 2018 CPS Security Session, 2018

Invited Talks:

• The 40th IEEE Sarnoff Symposium, 2019
• HPC Workshop on Parallel Programming for Women in Science and Engineering, 2018

Journal Reviewer:

• Journals: TPDS, TOPC, TCAD, TC, RTS, TCPS, TECS, SPE, TIOT, JSA, JOSH

Others:

• NSF Panelist, 2019, 2021, and 2022
• NJIT representative, National Center for Women and Information Technology (NCWIT), 2019 - 2020
• Steering Committee, Workshop on Mixed Criticality Systems
• Information Director of ACM Transactions on Cyber-Physical Systems (TCPS)
• Guest Editor of Special Issue on Fault-Resilient Cyber-Physical Systems for TCPS

PhD Students:

• Haoshu Lu, joined in Fall 2021
• Shaoze Fan, joined in Fall 2019
• Wenlu Du (Co-advise with Grace Wang), joined in Fall 2019
• Yajuan Li (Co-advise with Marvin Nakayama), joined in Fall 2017, graduated in Summer 2022, and now lecturer at NJIT

MS and BS Students:

• Anish Gaikwad (MS Project), expected to graduate in 2023
• Iskandar Askarov (MS Thesis), graduated in 2021 (now Tech VP at at State Street Corp.)

Postdoctoral Researchers:

• Shun Zhang, 2020-2021 (now at IBM Research)
• Ningyuan Cao, 2020-2021 (now at University of Notre Dame)

Research Associates:

• Xiaochen Zhou, 2022-present
• Han Wang, 2022-present
• Yisi Sang, 2021-2022 (now at Apple)
• Xiaoxiao Chen, 2021-2022
• Jingyuan Peng, 2021
• Ruisi Su, 2020

• CS630 Operating Systems Design (Fall & Spring 2022, Fall & Spring 2021, Spring 2020, Spring 2019, Fall & Spring 2018)
• CS506 Foundations of Computer Science (Spring 2021)
• CS332 Principles of Operating (Spring 2020)
• CS241 Foundations of Computer Science I (Spring 2020)
• CS786 Special Topics: Parallel Computing for Multicore Systems (Fall 2017)