Alexander S. Yip

I graduated with a PhD in 2009. Previously, I was a PhD student in MIT CSAIL's Parallel and Distributed Operating Systems group. I worked primarily with Robert T. Morris and Nickolai Zeldovich. I am interested in Web security, Web platforms, cloud computing, distributed computing, and performance.

In addition to computer science research, I have been involved with a number of other activities and projects over the years.

Contact

Email:

Refereed Publications

Network Virtualization in Multi-tenant Datacenters.
Teemu Koponen, Keith Amidon, Peter Balland, Martin Casado, Anupam Chanda, Bryan Fulton, Igor Ganichev, Jesse Gross, Natasha Gude, Paul Ingram, Ethan Jackson, Andrew Lambeth, Romain Lenglet, Shih-Hao Li, Amar Padmanabhan, Justin Pettit, Ben Pfaff, and Rajiv Ramanathan, VMware; Scott Shenker, International Computer Science Institute and the University of California, Berkeley; Alan Shieh, Jeremy Stribling, Pankaj Thakkar, Dan Wendlandt, Alexander Yip, and Ronghua Zhang, VMware.
Proceedings of the 11th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI 2014).
Seattle, WA, USA. Apr, 2014.

Improving Application Security with Data Flow Assertions.
Alexander Yip, Xi Wang, Nickolai Zeldovich, M. Frans Kaashoek.
Proceedings of the 22nd ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP 2009).
Big Sky, MT, USA. October 2009.

Privacy-Preserving Browser-Side Scripting With BFlow.
Alexander Yip, Neha Narula, Maxwell Krohn, Robert Morris.
Proceedings of the ACM EuroSys Conference (EuroSys 2009).
Nuremberg, Germany. March 2009.

A World Wide Web Without Walls.
Maxwell Krohn, Alexander Yip, Micah Brodsky, Robert Morris, Michael Walfish.
6th ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks (HotNets 2007).
Atlanta, GA, USA. November 2007.

Information Flow Control for Standard OS Abstractions.
Maxwell Krohn, Alexander Yip, Micah Brodsky, Natan Cliffer, M. Frans Kaashoek, Eddie Kohler, Robert Morris.
Proceedings of the 21st ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP 2007).
Stevenson, Washington, USA. October 2007.

Pastwatch: a Distributed Version Control System.
Alexander Yip, Benjie Chen, Robert Morris.
Proceedings of the 4th USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI 2006).
San Jose, CA, USA. May, 2006.

Multiprocessor Support for Event-Driven Programs.
Nickolai Zeldovich and Alexander Yip and Frank Dabek and Robert Morris and David Mazieres and M. Frans Kaashoek
Proceedings of the 2003 USENIX Annual Technical Conference (USENIX 2003).
San Antonio, TX, USA. June 2003.

Theses and Tech Reports

Improving Web Site Security with Data Flow Management.
Alexander Yip.
Ph.D. thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, September 2009.

Toward Secure Services from Untrusted Developers.
Micah Brodsky, Petros Efstathopoulos, M. Frans Kaashoek, Eddie Kohler, Maxwell Krohn, David Mazieres, Robert Morris, Steve VanDeBogart, and Alexander Yip.
MIT CSAIL TR-2007-041.

NATRON: Overlay Routing to Oblivious Destinations.
Alexander Yip.
Master's thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, August 2002.

Teaching

Semester	Class	Position
Spring 2007	6.033	Section Instructor
Fall 2003	6.829	Teaching Assistant
Spring 2002	6.033	Head Teaching Assistant

Non-research

I enjoy building, fixing, and modifying all sorts of things, including cars, houses, cameras, bicycles. This has lead to involvement with a number of projects including:

Maya Pedal is an NGO based in Guatemala building pedal powered machines called bicimaquinas for the third world. I worked with a group at MIT that is collaborating with MayaPedal working to improved the design and manufacture of bicimaquinas. I also worked with the team on the Bicilavadora, a pedal powered clothes washing machine designed to reduce the time women spend washing laundry by hand in developing countries. We entered the MIT IDEAS competition and our proposal ultimately won the top honor for international projects which helped fund a number of trips where our team travelled to MayaPedal and worked on both the efficiency and bicilavadora projects. Photos from my visit in 2005
Bicycle framebuilding is a hobby I picked up on my own. I taught myself how to braze, bought some tubes, and built a commuting fixed gear frame that I ride almost every day. I am currently building second frame for long distance riding, but progress is sporadic.
In another life, I was the team secretary for MIT's solar car team where our team raced at World Solar Rallye 1998 in Akita, Japan and the Dream Cup Solar Car Race 1998 in Suzuka, Japan. We won 3rd and 5th place respectively.

I also like photography and occasionally write in my blog.

Particularly Useful Blog Entries:

Modifying a Nikon K3 focus screen for use in a D70s DSLR. This procedure works for all kinds of cameras including the D40, D50, D60, D80, etc.
A DIY Howto for changing the struts and strut mounts in a 1991-2001 Toyota Camry. Probably helps for a lot of other years and cars as well.