When Bits meet Joules: A view from data center operations' perspective

The past decade has witnessed the rapid advancement and great success of information technologies. At the same time, new energy technologies including the smart grid and renewables have gained significant momentum. Now we are in a unique position to enable the two technologies to work together and spark new innovations.

In this talk, we will use data center as an example to illustrate the importance of the co-design of information technologies and new energy technologies. Specifically, we will focus on how to design cost-saving power management strategies for Internet data center operations. We will conclude the discussion with future work and directions.

Bio

Xue (Steve) Liu is a William Dawson Scholar and an Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science at McGill University. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science (with multiple distinctions) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has also worked as the Samuel R. Thompson Chaired Associate Professor in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and at HP Labs in Palo Alto, California. His research interests are in computing systems and communication networks, cyber-physical systems, and smart energy technologies. His research appeared in top venues including Mobicom,S&P (Oakland), Infocom, ACM Multimedia, ICNP, RTSS, RTAS, ICCPS, KDD, ICDE etc, and received several best paper awards.

Dr. Liu's research has been reported by news media including the New York Times, IDG/Computer World, The Register, Business Insider, Huffington Post, CBC, NewScientist, MIT Technology Review's Blog etc. He is a recipient of the Outstanding Young Canadian Computer Science Researcher Prizes from the Canadian Association of Computer Science, and a recipient of the Tomlinson Scientist Award from McGill University.

He has served on the editorial boards of IEEE Transactions of Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS), IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology (TVT), and IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials (COMST).