Fan Lai

About Me

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Prior to UIUC, I worked at Systems Research@Google and Meta AI, focusing on practical systems for GenAI. I obtained my Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2023.

Research Interests: Machine Learning & Systems, Cloud Computing, and Networked Systems

My research brings together machine learning, systems, and computer networking to develop practical systems for efficient ML and data analytics in the cloud and up to the planetary scale. My systems have been adopted by big companies including Meta, LinkedIn, and Cisco.

Prospective student: I am looking for highly self-motivated MS & PhD students and (remote) interns who are excited about ML and Systems research. Join us to work on exciting projects together!

News

[02/2024] FedTrans (personalized on-device ML) accepted to MLSys'2024
[10/2023] Wins David J. Kuck CSE Dissertation Prize!
[09/2023] Auxo (clustered federated learning) accepted to SoCC'2023
[05/2023] Selected as ML and Systems Rising Stars!
[03/2023] AdaEmbed (efficient large model pruning) accepted to OSDI'2023!
[03/2023] Fed-ensemble (personalized federated learning) accepted to IEEE ASE'2023
[03/2023] Win the Towner Prize for Distinguished Academic Achievement!
[01/2023] CCS (efficient ML training) accepted to ICLR'2023
[01/2023] Egeria (efficient ML training) accepted to EuroSys'2023

Recent Publications

(Full List)

FedTrans: Efficient Federated Learning via Multi-Model Transformation
Yuxuan Zhu, Jiachen Liu, Mosharaf Chowdhury, Fan Lai
MLSys 2024
AdaEmbed: Adaptive Embedding for Large-Scale Recommendation Models
Fan Lai, Wei Zhang, Rui Liu, William Tsai, Xiaohan Wei, Yuxi Hu, Sabin Devkota, Jianyu Huang, Jongsoo Park, Xing Liu, Zeliang Chen, Ellie Wen, Paul Rivera, Jie You, Jason Chen, Mosharaf Chowdhury
OSDI 2023

Deployed at Meta
ModelKeeper: Accelerating DNN Training via Automated Training Warmup
Fan Lai, Yinwei Dai, Harsha V. Madhyastha, Mosharaf Chowdhury
NSDI 2023 [code]
Egeria: Efficient DNN Training with Knowledge-Guided Layer Freezing
Yiding Wang, Decang Sun, Kai Chen, Fan Lai, Mosharaf Chowdhury
EuroSys 2023
Coverage-centric Coreset Selection for High Pruning Rates
Haizhong Zheng, Rui Liu, Fan Lai, Atul Prakash
ICLR 2023
Auxo: Heterogeneity-Mitigating Federated Learning via Scalable Client Clustering
Jiachen Liu, Fan Lai, Yinwei Dai, Aditya Akella, Harsha Madhyastha, Mosharaf Chowdhury
SoCC 2023
Fed-ensemble: Ensemble Models in Federated Learning for Improved Generalization and Uncertainty Quantification
Naichen Shi, Fan Lai, Raed Al Kontar, Mosharaf Chowdhury
IEEE Transactions on ASE 2023
FedScale: Benchmarking Model and System Performance of Federated Learning at Scale
Fan Lai, Yinwei Dai, Sanjay S. Singapuram, Jiachen Liu, Xiangfeng Zhu, Harsha V. Madhyastha, Mosharaf Chowdhury
ICML 2022 [code]

Deployed at LinkedIn

Best Paper Award
@SOSP ResilientFL, 2021
Oort: Efficient Federated Learning via Guided Participant Selection
Fan Lai, Xiangfeng Zhu, Harsha V. Madhyastha, Mosharaf Chowdhury
OSDI 2021 [code]

Adopted by Cisco

Distinguished Artifact Award
Sol: Fast Distributed Computation Over Slow Networks
Fan Lai, Jie You, Xiangfeng Zhu, Harsha V. Madhyastha, Mosharaf Chowdhury
NSDI 2020 [code]

Students

In the past, I have been very fortunate to do research with many wonderful students at SymbioticLab.

Xiangfeng Zhu (UM BSc → UW PhD student)
Yinwei Dai (UM MSc → Princeton PhD student)
Yile Gu (UM MSc → UW PhD student)
Yuxuan Zhu (UM BSc → UIUC PhD student)
Chengsong Zhang (UM BSc → UIUC MSCS student)
Xuye He (UM BSc → CMU Master's)

Professional Service

Technical Program Committee
- 2025: OSDI, NSDI, EuroSys
- 2024: ATC, APSys, HotInfra
- 2023: DistributedML, FL workshop@ICML
Reviewer for NeurIPS, ICML, CVPR