Steven H. Low

Last updated
Steven Low
Alma mater Cornell University, University of California, Berkeley
Known forMathematical modeling of Networking, Congestion control, Power systems
Scientific career
Fields Computer Science, Electrical Engineering
Institutions California Institute of Technology
Doctoral advisor Pravin Varaiya

Steven H. Low is a Professor of the Computing and Mathematical Sciences Department and the Electrical Engineering Department at the California Institute of Technology. He is known for his work on the theory and mathematical modeling of Internet congestion control, algorithms, and optimization in power systems. [1]

Contents

Academic biography

Low received his BS in electrical engineering from Cornell University in 1987, and PhD in electrical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley under the supervision of Pravin Varaiya in 1992. He was with AT&T Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ, from 1992 to 1996, the University of Melbourne, Australia, from 1996 to 2000, and joined Caltech in 2000.

Research

Low pioneered a mathematical theory of large-scale networks under end-to-end congestion control such as the Internet, with implications on resource allocation, routing, and network architecture. [2] [3] He and his research team designed a new congestion control algorithm called FAST TCP based on this mathematical theory, [4] built a unique testbed WAN-in-Lab and worked with high-energy physicists (HEP) at Caltech, CERN and around the world to break world records on data transfer. His work is instrumental in changing the focus of congestion control research and land speed record contests from parameter tuning to algorithm design and analysis.

Through a startup called FastSoft, his team actively pursued the deployment of their research which has been accelerating the world's largest content distribution and social networks as well as other Fortune 500 companies.

Upon returning to Caltech after Fastsoft, his research began to focus on the control and optimization of distributed energy resources for future smart grids. [5] [6]

Awards and honors

Low is an IEEE Fellow, [7] a co-recipient of an R&D 100 Award, [8] and IEEE prize papers awards. He has been a Chair/Honorary/Guest/Adjunct Professor with Zhejiang University, China, National Taipei University of Technology, Taiwan, Shanghai Jiaotong University, China, and Swinburne University of Technology, Australia.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mathematical optimization</span> Study of mathematical algorithms for optimization problems

Mathematical optimization or mathematical programming is the selection of a best element, with regard to some criterion, from some set of available alternatives. It is generally divided into two subfields: discrete optimization and continuous optimization. Optimization problems arise in all quantitative disciplines from computer science and engineering to operations research and economics, and the development of solution methods has been of interest in mathematics for centuries.

Network congestion in data networking and queueing theory is the reduced quality of service that occurs when a network node or link is carrying more data than it can handle. Typical effects include queueing delay, packet loss or the blocking of new connections. A consequence of congestion is that an incremental increase in offered load leads either only to a small increase or even a decrease in network throughput.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Random early detection</span> Algorithm

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Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) uses a congestion control algorithm that includes various aspects of an additive increase/multiplicative decrease (AIMD) scheme, along with other schemes including slow start and congestion window (CWND), to achieve congestion avoidance. The TCP congestion-avoidance algorithm is the primary basis for congestion control in the Internet. Per the end-to-end principle, congestion control is largely a function of internet hosts, not the network itself. There are several variations and versions of the algorithm implemented in protocol stacks of operating systems of computers that connect to the Internet.

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Bandwidth management is the process of measuring and controlling the communications on a network link, to avoid filling the link to capacity or overfilling the link, which would result in network congestion and poor performance of the network. Bandwidth is described by bit rate and measured in units of bits per second (bit/s) or bytes per second (B/s).

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References

  1. "AitF: Algorithmic challenges in smart grids: control, optimization & learning, National Science Foundation".
  2. Low, S.H.; Lapsely, D.E. (1999), "Optimization flow control, I: basic algorithm and convergence", IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, 7 (6): 861–874, CiteSeerX   10.1.1.556.6354 , doi:10.1109/90.811451, S2CID   8841558
  3. Chiang, Mung; Low, Steven H.; Calderbank, A. Robert; Doyle, John C. (2007), "Layering as optimization decomposition: a mathematical theory of network architectures" (PDF), Proceedings of the IEEE, 95: 255–312, doi:10.1109/JPROC.2006.887322, S2CID   5772960
  4. Wei, David X.; Jin, Cheng; Low, Steven H.; Hegde, Sanjay (2006), "FAST TCP: motivation, architecture, algorithms, performance" (PDF), IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, 14 (6): 1246–1259, doi:10.1109/TNET.2006.886335, S2CID   719180
  5. Low, Steven H. (2014), "Convex relaxation of optimal power flow: Part I", IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems, 1: 15–27, arXiv: 1405.0766 , doi:10.1109/TCNS.2014.2309732, S2CID   8670101
  6. Low, Steven H. (2014), "Convex relaxation of optimal power flow: Part II", IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems, 1 (2): 177–189, arXiv: 1405.0814 , doi:10.1109/TCNS.2014.2323634, S2CID   8720592
  7. IEEE Fellow Directory
  8. Steven Low CV