Venkat Arun

Venkat Arun is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, within the Cockrell School of Engineering. He previously completed his PhD at MIT under the supervision of Hari Balakrishnan and Mohammad Alizadeh, focusing on networking, systems, and formal methods.

Education:

• Bachelor's Degree, IIT Guwahati
• PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Research Interests:
Dr. Arun's research bridges the gap between practical heuristics in computer systems and formal proofs of their performance. He specializes in congestion control, formal verification of network protocols, privacy-preserving systems, and wireless networking. His work develops tools to mathematically prove the behavior of real-world algorithms under real-world conditions, ensuring robustness and fairness.

Publication Trends:
His recent publications, appearing in venues like ACM SIGCOMM, USENIX NSDI, and NDSS, focus on formally analyzing and improving congestion control (e.g., BBR, Copa), developing verification frameworks (CCAC, CCmatic), designing privacy-preserving reporting systems (SAE), and optimizing real-time communication. A recurring theme is using formal methods to uncover hidden flaws in widely deployed heuristics and designing better alternatives.

Scientific Awards:

• Best Student Paper Award, ACM SIGCOMM 2022
• Best Paper Award, NDSS 2020

Advising and Grants:
As a new faculty member, Dr. Arun is beginning to build his research group and advise graduate students. While specific grant details are not listed in the provided text, his impactful research and industrial adoption (e.g., by Facebook) suggest strong potential for securing research funding in networking and systems.

Labs and Teams:
During his PhD at MIT, he was part of a prominent networking research group led by Hari Balakrishnan and Mohammad Alizadeh. At UT Austin, he is establishing his own research lab focused on formal methods for systems, likely continuing collaborations with researchers from MIT, CMU, UT Austin, and industry labs like Facebook and Microsoft Research.