Lei Yang

About me

I recently finished my PhD in Computer Science at MIT, advised by Mohammad Alizadeh. I was part of the Networks and Mobile Systems Group (NMS) of MIT CSAIL. My thesis is on efficient consensus and synchronization for distributed systems. I received my SM from MIT in 2020 and my BS in Computer Science from Peking University in 2018.

I love designing and building systems that are robust, performant, and easy to use. My current research focuses on computer network problems in the setting of blockchain. Some examples are Prism, a cryptocurrency that supports more than 80,000 transactions per second; DispersedLedger, a framework that hardens existing BFT state machine replication protocols against fluctuating network bandwidth; and Rateless IBLTs, a family of universal rateless codes for reconciling set differences. I have also published on the security aspects of blockchain protocols. My work is supported by generous gifts from the Ethereum Foundation.

Occasionally, I write about what I do in my blog. When away from the keyboard, I enjoy hiking, cycling, sailing and travelling. Plus, I am a licensed amateur radio operator. My callsign is KC1NOR.

What’s New

I finished my PhD.

Practical Rateless Set Reconciliation (joint work with Yossi Gilad and Mohammad Alizadeh) will appear in SIGCOMM 2024. Preprint and code are available.