Prelude: History
Born to a pair of immigrants -- one
descended from a long line of Rabbis and doctors, the other from
a family of thespians -- the protaganist of the play, one Philip
Levis, tries to follow these parental academic and intellectual
examples from an early age. His first
efforts gravitate towards his own fickle interests, rather than
those set by his instructors: their assessments of his academic
performance are correspondingly dismal. His transcripts aside, this personal
pursuit of knowledge does not go unnoticed by a rather
forward-looking institution,
where he receives an Sc.B. with honors in Computer Science and
Biology in May of 1999, guided by Leslie Kaelbling (who
then embarks north to be the research
director of MIT's CSAIL).
With a fond farewell to New England, he heads west to attend
the doctoral program in Computer Science at the University of Colorado at
Boulder, where he works under Professor Grunwald's inclusive umbrella of systems,
and co-teaches the undergraduate operating systems
course.
After two years, Master's degree in hand, he heads
further west, to attend the doctorate program in
Computer Science at UC Berkeley. Finding
Phil's hair color (purple) amusing, Professor
Culler offers him
a summer research assistant position to work in the TinyOS group.
The play begins with Phil implementing a beaconless routing
protocol for TinyOS, reaches its climax with his development
of the Maté virtual machine, and concludes with a graduation
ceremony in the Spring of 2005. The second play in the series,
detailing Phil's travails and challenges in his quest to obtain
tenure at Stanford University, will be published soon.
Act I: Published Works
- Joseph Polastre, Jonathan Hui, Philip Levis, Jerry Zhao, David Culler, Scott Shenker, and Ion Stoica
A Unifying Link Abstraction for Wireless Sensor Networks. To appear in Proceedings of the Third ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensory Systems (SenSys), 2005.
In preparation.
- Branislav Kusy, Prabal Dutta, Philip Levis, Miklos Maroti, Akos Ledeczi, and David Culler
Elapsed Time on Arrival: A simple and versatile primitive for canonical time synchronization services. International Journal of Ad hoc and Ubiquitous Computing, Vol, 2, No. 1, 2006.
- David Culler, Prabal Dutta, Cheng Tien Eee, Rodrigo Fonseca, Jonathan Hui, Philip Levis, Joseph Polastre, Scott Shenker, Ion Stoica, Gilman Tolle, and Jerry Zhao
"Towards a Sensor Network Architecture: Lowering the Waistline." To appear in Proceedings of the Tenth Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems (HotOS X), 2005.
- David Gay, Philip Levis, and David Culler
"Software Design Patterns for TinyOS." To appear in Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN/SIGBED 2005 Conference on Languages, Compilers, and Tools for Embedded Systems (LCTES'05).
- Philip Levis, David Gay, and David Culler
"Active Sensor Networks." To appear in Proceedings of the Second USENIX/ACM Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI 2005).
- Philip Levis and David Culler
"The Firecracker Protocol." In Proceedings of the 11th ACM SIGOPS European Workshop.
- Philip Levis, Neil Patel, David Culler, and Scott Shenker
"Trickle: A Self-Regulating Algorithm for Code Propagation and Maintenance in Wireless Sensor Networks." In Proceedings of the First USENIX/ACM Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI 2004). Received best paper award.
- Philip Levis, Sam Madden, David Gay, Joe Polastre, Robert Szewczyk, Alec Woo, Eric Brewer and David Culler
"The Emergence of Networking Abstractions and Techniques in TinyOS." In Proceedings of the First USENIX/ACM Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI 2004).
- Philip Levis, Nelson Lee, Matt Welsh, and David Culler
"TOSSIM: Accurate and Scalable Simulation of Entire TinyOS Applications." In Proceedings of the First ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems (SenSys 2003).
- David Gay, Philip Levis, Robert von Behren, Matt Welsh, Eric Brewer, and David Culler
"The nesC Language: A Holistic Approach to Network Embedded Systems." In Proceedings of the ACM SIGPLAN 2003 Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation (PLDI).
- Philip Levis and David Culler
"Maté: A Tiny Virtual Machine for Sensor Networks." In Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS X), 2002.
- Dirk Grunwald, Philip Levis, Charles B. Morrey III, and Michael Neufeld
"Policies for Dynamic Clock Scheduling." In Proceedings of the 4th Symposium on Operating System Design and Implementation (OSDI 2000).
Act II: Other Works
- David Culler, Prabal Dutta, Cheng Tien Eee, Rodrigo Fonseca, Jonathan Hui, Philip Levis, Joseph Polastre, Scott Shenker, Ion Stoica, Gillman Tolle, and Jerry Zhao
Towards a Sensor Network Architecture: Lowering the Waistline. SN Architecture Workshop, April 15, 2005.
- Philip Levis
"Maté: Programming Sensor Networks with Application Specific Virtual Machines." Release 2.0, September 2004.
- David Gay, Philip Levis, and David Culler
"Software Design Patterns for TinyOS." UC Berkeley Tech Report UCB//CSD-04-1350, September 2004.
- Philip Levis, David Gay, and David Culler
"Bridging the Gap: Programming Sensor Networks with Application Specific Virtual Machines." UC Berkeley Tech Report UCB//CSD-04-1343, August 2004.
- Philip Levis, Neil Patel, Scott Shenker, and David Culler
"Trickle: A Self-Regulating Algorithm for Code Propagation and Maintenance in Wireless Sensor Networks." UC Berkeley Tech Report UCB//CSD-03-1290, November 2003.
- Philip Levis
"Robotic Navigation Using Landmarks." Honors Thesis, Brown University. May, 1999.
Act III: Performances
- "CS199-9: Sensor Network Systems."
UC Berkeley Computer Science Division, Fall 2004.
- "CSCI3753: Operating Systems."
CU Boulder Computer Science Department, Spring 2001.
- "Active Sensor Networks."
NSDI 2005.
- "Data Dissemination in Wireless Sensor Networks."
NSDI 2004.
- "TOSSIM: Accurate and Scalable Simulation of Entire TinyOS Applications."
SenSys 2003.
- "Maté: A Tiny Virtual Machine for Sensor Networks."
ASPLOS X, 2002.
- "Towards a Sensor Network Architecture."
HotOS X, 2005.
- "The Firecracker Protocol."
SIGOPS European Workshop, 2004.
- "OSKI: Beginnings of a nesC Component Architecture Proposal for TinyOS 2.0."
NEST Meeting, July 30, 2004.
- "The Internet vs. Sensor Nets."
ICSI, May 5, 2004.
- "Rapid and Safe Programming of In-situ Sensor Networks."
Qualifying Examination Proposal, Jan. 26, 2004.
- "Trickle: Code Propagation and Maintenance in Wireless Sensor Networks."
Harvard SYRAH Meeting, Oct. 24, 2003.
- "Evaluating Sensor Network Protocols."
ICSI, Jan. 22, 2003.
- "Maté: A Tiny Virtual Machine for Sensor Networks."
Brown University Computer Science Department, July 2002.
Act IV: Personal Information
- Themes: Operating
Systems, Sensor
Networks, Programming,
T.S. Eliot,
their intersection, C.G. Jung, James Joyce, mountain biking, and making fun of his
undergraduate roomate, Gideon
Mann. He plans (hopes?) to graduate with a Ph.D. in the Spring of 2005.
- Scenes:
HotOS X, SOSP 20, SenSys 2005, NSDI 2006.
- Cast: David Culler, David Gay, Eric Brewer, Neil Patel, Rob Szewczyk, Joe Polastre, and Nelson Lee.
- Backstage: His father is a professor of
petri nets; scarred at a young age by
Design/CPN, Phil
has avoided them with extreme prejudice in all of his own
work.
Epilogue: Quote
"Class has a certain grace," Ms. Briard said. "Just because you can go
to Chanel and buy a dress does not mean you have class. A person who just
pays their bills on time can have class."
-- "Old Nantucket Wealthy Meets the New," New York Times, June 5, 2005.
NB: The design of this page was inspired by that of Antonio Carzaniga.
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