Team

Information for team members

Calendar
Our group has a google calendar where all meetings are listed. This is the NU compilers calendar.
If you do not have access to it, send an email to Simone.

Chat and mailing list
Our group uses the Northwestern University Compilers slack channel to communicate.
Also, our group uses the mailing list nucompilers@googlegroups.com.
Finally, we use the following google calendar for our event (link). You have automatically access to it when you join our google group.
If you do not have access to them, send an email to Simone.

Lab
Our group shares the lab 3304/08 in Mudd with Prof. Nikos Hardavellas group.
If you do not have access to it, send an email to Simone specifying your Wildcard ID and employee ID.

Servers
Our group uses condor to organize the servers of our cluster Zythos. The login node is peroni.cs.northwestern.edu and it is the only node you can access directly. All nodes are connected via NFS and they have (almost) identical software installed.

Before using the cluster, you need to familiarize with our guideline, which you can find it by cloning the git repository at /project/zythos/zythos.git stored in the cluster.


          $ git clone /project/zythos/zythos.git

To have an account on Zythos, send an email to Simone specifying your Net ID.

Ongoing collaborations within Northwestern
Our group is part of the Northwestern University Parallelism group (NUP).
The NUP calendar includes all meetings (time, location, purpose) related to the group.
If you do not have access to it, send an email to Simone.

Our group is also part of the Center for Deep Learning.
If you are interested, send an email to Simone.

Our group is also part of the Northwestern Time Squeezing group (TS).
The TS calendar includes all meetings (time, location, purpose) related to the group.
If you are interested, send an email to Simone.

Ongoing collaborations outside Northwestern
Our group collaborates with the Liberty research group at Princeton, which is run by Prof. David I. August.
If you are interested to join this collaboration, then send an email to Simone.

Our group also collaborates with the research group of Prof. Timothy M. Jones at University of Cambridge.
If you are interested to join this collaboration, then send an email to Simone.

Our group also collaborates with the HExSA research Lab at Illinois Tech, which is run by Prof. Kyle C. Hale.
If you are interested to join this collaboration, then send an email to Simone.

Current Ph.D. student mentees

Enrico A. Deiana
Katarzyna Dunajewski
Brian Homerding
Tommy McMichen

Current master and undergraduate student mentees

Master students	Please contact me if you are interested to do research in compilers
Undergraduate students	Souradip Ghosh Drew Kersnar Lukas Gross David O’Sullivan

Alumni

Ph.D. students	No one yet, but hopefully someone will join this list soon
Master students	Zhenqing Hu Yian Su Ettore M. G. Trainiti Jordan Timmerman Michael Leonard Shrivant Bhartia
Undergraduate students	Angelo Matni Nathan John Shelly Sasha Weiss

Useful links and information

Advice for Ph.D. students in Computer Science

Trees, maps, and theorems: great book about becoming an efficient communicator for Engineers.

Advice for Ph.D. students in Computer Science at Northwestern

CS 496: Fabian Bustamante teaches an amazing class all incoming Ph.D. students should take.
CSPAC: self-organized group to represent Ph.D. students of Northwestern.
Graduate study manual: additional and specific requirements for Ph.D. students in system are described in Section 4.1
Northwestern CS class catalog: classes you should consider taking to have a peek on other areas of Computer Science.
Student resources: find here opportunities you can take advantage of while you are a Ph.D. student
Orientation: here you can find information about being a Ph.D. student at Northwestern, deadlines, and an F.A.Q..

Advice for Ph.D. students in Computer Science in compilers at Northwestern

CS 322: Take this introductory class to learn (and build) modern back-end and front-end compilers.
Warning: this is a hard and intense class.
CS 323: Take this introductory class to learn (and build) modern middle-end compilers.
Warning: this is a hard and intense class.
CS 397/497: Take this class to learn the latest research in compilers.

Advice for Ph.D. students in systems at Northwestern
Next are my personal advice to anyone that wants to pursue a Ph.D. in systems.

Never forget Edison: Genius is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration.
Practice your organisational skills and time management.
Never forget the worst feedback you can get is your work is great! . Corollary: learn how to take criticisms.
Tools are your friends: become an expert in using state-of-the-art tools to develop, debug, profile, test, and integrate your solutions.
Listen to your advisor: we have more experience in common pitfalls (especially true for system research).
Also, do not forget we are here to help you succeed. Your success is our success.
Do not be blind: do not accept what others (including your advisor) suggest without convincing yourself about their validity.
If you are not sure about the reasons behind a certain suggestion, ask!
This is your Ph.D.: always listen to your advisor while embracing the fact this is your Ph.D.; put yourself inside the ideas/designs you will follow through the program.
The work behind your Ph.D. thesis should reflect you, your mind, your skills, and your values.
Do not wait to do research: start doing research the first day you arrive at Northwestern. Take classes while you do research.
Be prepared to work hard: a Ph.D. is not a regular job, it is more like a vocation to expand the human knowledge in a specific field. You will have a lot of flexibility, but very likely you won’t do 9 to 5 like in most jobs.
Expect to fail, but fail fast, so you will have the time to succeed.
Be confident: a Ph.D. is hard (it is the highest level of education for a reason), which will lead you to have a roller coaster of emotions throughout the program. Sometimes you might feel it is too much and that you cannot do it.
Stay confident: you have been selected by a committee to join our Ph.D. program for a reason.
We see great potential in you and we think you will succeed.
Stay confident and believe in yourself.

Simone Campanoni