Benjamin Cassell

Ph.D. in Computer Science
Systems and Networking Group
Supervisor: Tim Brecht

David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
University of Waterloo
200 University Avenue West
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
N2L 3G1

Email: becassel AT uwaterloo DOT ca

About Me

I am a Ph.D. graduate from the University of Waterloo whose research interests include novel applications of networking technology, user-controlled privacy and utility management, distributed systems and storage, emerging technologies, improving disk throughput and other areas of systems performance, HTTP streaming video servers, real-time and embedded systems, and more. My Erdos number is 3 (Tim Brecht → Charlie Colbourn → Paul Erdos).

Education

• Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Waterloo (May 2012 - August 2019).
• Building efficient software to support content delivery services.
  Benjamin Cassell.
  University of Waterloo,
  Waterloo, Canada, August 2019.
  PDF Printer-Friendly BibTeX Talk UWSpace
• B.CS., with distinction - Dean's honours list, University of Waterloo (September 2007 - April 2012).

Teaching

• Instructional Apprentice (IA).
  CS 136: Elementary Algorithm Design and Data Abstraction (Winter 2018, Spring 2018).
  CS 350: Operating Systems (Winter 2014, Spring 2014, Fall 2014, Winter 2015, Fall 2015, Fall 2017).
• Teaching Assistant (TA).
  CS 350: Operating Systems (Spring 2012, Fall 2012, Fall 2013, Winter 2015).
  CS 452/652: Real-Time Programming (Winter 2013, Spring 2013, Spring 2015, Winter 2016, Spring 2016, Winter 2017, Spring 2017).

Publications

• RocketBufs: A framework for building efficient, in-memory, message-oriented middleware.
  Huy Hoang, Benjamin Cassell, Tim Brecht, and Samer Al-Kiswany.
  Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Distributed and Event-Based Systems (DEBS),
  Montreal, Canada, July 2020.
  PDF BibTeX ACM DL
• RocketStreams: A framework for the efficient dissemination of live streaming video.
  Benjamin Cassell, Huy Hoang, and Tim Brecht.
  Proceedings of the ACM SIGOPS Asia-Pacific Workshop on Systems (APSys),
  Hangzhou, China, August 2019.
  PDF BibTeX Talk ACM DL
• SpecRPC: A general framework for performing speculative remote procedure calls.
  Xinan Yan, Arturo Pie Joa, Bernard Wong, Benjamin Cassell, Tyler Szepesi, Malek Naouach, and Disney Lam.
  Proceedings of the ACM / IFIP International Middleware Conference,
  Rennes, France, December 2018.
  PDF BibTeX ACM DL
• RAMP: A lightweight RDMA abstraction for loosely coupled applications.
  Babar Naveed Memon, Xiayue Charles Lin, Arshia Mufti, Arthur Scott Wesley, Tim Brecht, Kenneth Salem, Bernard Wong, and Benjamin Cassell.
  Proceedings of the USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Cloud Computing (HotCloud),
  Boston, United States, July 2018.
  PDF BibTeX ACM DL
• Disk prefetching mechanisms for increasing HTTP streaming video server throughput.
  Benjamin Cassell, Tyler Szepesi, Jim Summers, Tim Brecht, Derek Eager, and Bernard Wong.
  Published in the ACM Transactions on Modeling and Performance Evaluation of Computing Systems (TOMPECS),
  April 2018.
  PDF BibTeX ACM DL
• Nessie: A decoupled, client-driven key-value store using RDMA.
  Benjamin Cassell, Tyler Szepesi, Bernard Wong, Tim Brecht, Jonathan Ma, and Xiaoyi Liu.
  Published in the IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS),
  December 2017.
  PDF BibTeX Appendix A Talk IEEE Xplore
• Using Libception to understand and improve HTTP streaming video server throughput.
  Tyler Szepesi, Benjamin Cassell, Tim Brecht, Derek Eager, Jim Summers, and Bernard Wong.
  Proceedings of the ACM / SPEC International Conference on Performance Engineering (ICPE),
  L'Aquila, Italy, April 2017.
  PDF BibTeX Talk ACM DL
• TussleOS: Managing privacy versus functionality trade-offs on IoT devices.
  Rayman Preet Singh, Benjamin Cassell, S. Keshav, and Tim Brecht.
  Published in the ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review (CCR),
  July 2016.
  PDF BibTeX ACM DL
• Mayflower: Improving distributed filesystem performance through SDN/filesystem co-design.
  Sajjad Rizvi, Xi Li, Bernard Wong, Fiodar Kazhamiaka, and Benjamin Cassell.
  Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS),
  Nara, Japan, June 2016.
  PDF BibTeX IEEE Xplore
• Automated control of aggressive prefetching for HTTP streaming video servers.
  Jim Summers, Tim Brecht, Derek Eager, Tyler Szepesi, Benjamin Cassell, and Bernard Wong.
  Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Systems and Storage (SYSTOR),
  Haifa, Israel, June 2014.
  PDF BibTeX ACM DL
• MicroFuge: A middleware approach to providing performance isolation in cloud storage systems.
  Akshay K. Singh, Xu Cui, Benjamin Cassell, Bernard Wong, and Khuzaima Daudjee.
  Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS),
  Madrid, Spain, June 2014.
  PDF BibTeX IEEE Xplore
• Designing a low-latency cuckoo hash table for write-intensive workloads using RDMA.
  Tyler Szepesi, Bernard Wong, Benjamin Cassell, and Tim Brecht.
  Proceedings of the Workshop on Rack-scale Computing (WRSC),
  Amsterdam, The Netherlands, April 2014.
  PDF BibTeX

Projects

• Nessie.
  The project page for the client-driven Nessie key-value store.
• Web APIs, Like Caterpillars, Are Temporary.
  A brief examination of the Twitter API and its evolution between versions.
  Research project for CS 846: Topics in Software Evolution.
  PDF
• A Cross-Language Analysis of Parsing Using Automatic Memoization.
  An exploration of which programming languages support true automatic memoization techniques.
  Research project for CS 842: Functional Parsing.
  PDF

Work

• Programmer / Analyst, High Performance Computing Solutions.
  Bank of Montreal Nesbitt Burns, Toronto, Ontario (January - April 2011, September - December 2011).
  Developed and maintained programs and databases used on the trading floor.
• Programmer / Systems Analyst, Information Management.
  Public Safety Canada, Ottawa, Ontario (September - December 2009, May - August 2010).
  Developed and maintained client and web software and databases.
• Programmer, Fixed Income Quantitative Research.
  Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan, Toronto, Ontario (January - April 2009).
  Developed, upgraded and maintained software and databases on the trading floor.
• Support Solution Representative.
  Data Deposit Box, Toronto, Ontario (April - August 2008).
  Helped administrate and advertise product, and performed technical support for clients.
• Customer Service Representative.
  Rogers Plus, Whitby, Ontario (July 2006 - September 2007).
  Worked till, handled account payments and sales (internet, mobile, phone, tickets), and helped with store maintenance.
• Host.
  Tim Hortons, Whitby, Ontario (June - September 2005).
  Worked till, kitchen, deli and drive-through. Everyone starts somewhere!