The Department of Electrical Engineering

I model, analyze, and design communication networks. Together with collaborators around the world, my research group has established the first analytic foundation for designing network architectures in a first-principled, top-down approach, using optimization decomposition theory to best allocate functionalities. We have also developed and applied optimization-based methodologies (including distributed, non-convex, stochastic, combinatorial, and robust optimization) to critical problems in video distribution, congestion control, bandwidth allocation, routing, scheduling, power control, and spectrum management. We have solved several important open problems, including problems of joint power control and rate allocation in wireless networks, autonomous spectrum balancing in “green” DSL, congestion control over networks with heterogeneous congestion signals, achieving optimal traffic engineering in the Internet by link-state routing, achieving peer-to-peer streaming capacity by polynomial-time complexity algorithms, and stability region of optimization over non-convex and time-varying constraint sets. (For more information, please see selected publications: www.princeton.edu/~chiangm/publicationsselect.html) 

 

These projects have resulted in several paper awards and multiple research awards including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. Many of the results have been integrated in a new course in Optimization of Networks, which won a National Science Foundation combined research and curriculum development award and has now been adopted at about 10 universities around the world. Several of these advances in theory have also been transferred to commercial adoption by industry, leading to awards including TR35 (Technology Review Young Innovators Under 35).

More recently, I have also worked on the socio-economic dimensions of networking. I laid down an axiomatic foundation for quantifying fairness and distributive justice, collaborated with industry and government agencies on pricing access networks to enable universal broadband coverage, and led a team of engineers, sociologists, and political scientists to study the interactions between social and technological networks.
 

Built on the duo-core of relevance and rigor, in 2009 I established the EDGE Lab (http://scenic.princeton.edu), which bridges the prevalent and undesirable gaps between the theory and practice of networking. Through EDGE Lab we build systems designed by proven theorems and prove theorems about the built-out systems. For example, we have recently released an online social network that helped develop and validate the theory of pricing information in social groups; implemented the first provably utility-optimal, zero-message-passing scheduling algorithms in 802.11 wireless networks; and attained over 1 Mbps sustained throughput in global P2P streaming of real-time video.