Ken

Ken Barr

I am a software engineer at Google in Cambridge, MA on a team responsible for Google's CDN (content delivery network). I have also worked as an engineer in the Performance group at VMware in Cambridge, MA. I received my Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where I was a member of the SCALE group led by Professor Krste Asanovic. My research interests include fast simulation of shared memory multiprocessors, energy efficient systems, performance analysis/visualization, and hardware/software integration.

Contact

email: email address image
LinkedIn Profile

Publications / Talks

I've compiled a list of my publications and talks based on work done at VMware, Intel, MIT, and Michigan.

Education

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
    PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Sep. 2006
    Intel Ph.D. Fellow, 2004-2005
  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
    SM in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Sep. 2002
  • University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
    [Block M]
    BSE in Computer Engineering - summa cum laude, April 2000

Internships and Work Experience

  • VMware

    I worked in the Core Performance group at VMware, Inc. in Cambridge, MA. The group studies the performance of the monitor and the vmkernel. I am interested in memory resource management, and I have done work with SAP and VDI performance. Most recently, my focus was on developing tools and benchmarks for studying virtualization on embedded devices.

  • Intel Corporation

    I spent Summer 2004 with Joel Emer and the VSSAD group. I modified the ASIM simulation framework to run on a parallel host (PDF).

    During the summers of 1998-1999, I worked in Frank Hady's group in the Intel Architecture Lab's (IAL) Platform Architecture Lab and Internet Systems Lab.

  • The Dow Chemical Company (Information Systems)

    Designed and implemented a disk-space forecasting tool which reduced costs by eliminating unnecessary speculative purchase of mainframe storage. Wrote Visual Basic utilities to parse and import data from an IBM mainframe for use in Microsoft Access and Excel.

  • While at Michigan, I worked at CAEN, CampCAEN, and the Millennium Project.

Teaching

  • I led tutorials, came up with test and homework questions, and held office hours as a teaching assistant for Computer System Architecture (MIT course 6.823)
  • From 2002-2005, I served as one of the core organizers for 6.186, Mobile Autonomous Systems Lab. MASLab gives me a chance to mentor and learn from teams as they spend four weeks building incredible autonomous robots. Relying on computer vision, having no prereqs, and allowing immense freedom of design makes MASLab unique among robotics contests.
  • I have guided/jump-started/mentored several UROP/MEng students with our group's tester baseboard and with measuring energy in the lab. This, more than most projects, has taught me the value of note-taking and documentation.
  • As a senior at Michigan, I spent a term in the EECS Learning Center as a tutor for EECS 100. This experience was a wakeup call during which I realized the difficulty and importance of teaching fundamental concepts and making sure they are understood by all students.
  • I've taught C programming at Michigan's CampCAEN, a computer camp for high schoolers. It's been exciting to see my students go on to become counselors and EECS majors.
  • As an undergrad, I led several 1-hour workshops demonstrating the use of Maple and Mathematica math software under the auspices of CAEN.

Solutions

People occasionally come to me seeking help with

Coursework

A list of relevant coursework and projects.