Peter M. Chen

Peter M. Chen is the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) at the University of Michigan, part of the College of Engineering. He leads research in operating systems, distributed systems, and persistent memory technologies. His work includes foundational contributions to virtualization (e.g., ReVirt), reliable memory systems (Rio), and non-volatile memory semantics. He is a member of the Software Systems Lab and collaborates with the Computer Engineering Lab.

Education and affiliations: Ph.D. in Computer Science (implied through career trajectory), affiliated with EECS and multiple labs at U-M. His research interests span speculative execution, security in distributed systems, and high-performance storage. He has advised over 20 graduate students, many of whom have contributed to seminal papers in systems research.

Awards include the Arthur F. Thurnau Professorship and multiple best paper awards at top conferences like OSDI and SOSP. His work on ReVirt pioneered virtual machine logging for intrusion analysis, and Rio revolutionized reliable memory caching. Current projects focus on persistent memory programming models and wear management in NVM technologies.

Key grants and teams: Active in NSF-funded projects on persistent memory systems and security. Collaborates with industry through partnerships in cloud computing and mobile systems optimization. His lab develops open-source tools like Rio and Vista, emphasizing practical system implementations alongside theoretical contributions.