Austin T. Li

I’m a second-year Computer Science PhD student at Cornell University where I am advised by Lorenzo Alvisi. I am broadly interested in distributed systems, cloud computing, and the challenges in creating efficient, durable, consistent, and fault tolerant systems. I previously completed my Bachelor’s and Master’s in Computer Science at Princeton University, where I worked with Amit Levy and Wyatt Lloyd. Outside research, I like to play soccer, pickleball, and read. You can find a copy of my CV here.

My current research focuses on building a robust and flexible framework for safety in Byzantine transactional systems. In particular, the presence of Byzantine clients in BFT systems is often ignored or simply relegated to the problem of authentication. Such a solution is clearly inadequate for situations where authorized clients decide to act maliciously. Thus, my current research aims to build a system that provides a general framework for safe interactive transactions while maintaining performance.