Aaron Yi DING, PhD

Assistant Professor, TU Delft
Adjunct Professor, University of Helsinki
Cyber-Physical Intelligence (CPI) Lab

Email: Aaron.Ding (at) tudelft.nl
Address: P.O. Box 5015, ESS, TU Delft
Jaffalaan 5, 2600GA Delft, Netherlands

Bio

Aaron Ding is a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in the Department of Engineering Systems and Services (ESS) at TU Delft and Adjunct Professor (Dosentti) in Computer Science at University of Helsinki. He is leading the Cyber-Physical Intelligence (CPI) Lab at ESS with over 12 years of R&D experience across EU, UK and USA. Prior to joining TU Delft, he has worked at TU Munich with Jörg Ott, at Columbia University with Henning Schulzrinne, at University of Cambridge with Jon Crowcroft, and at University of Helsinki with Sasu Tarkoma and Markku Kojo. He obtained his MSc and PhD both with distinction from the Department of Computer Science (Birthplace of Linux) at University of Helsinki. Part of his PhD programme was carried out at University of Cambridge and at Columbia University. His PhD is supervised by Prof. Sasu Tarkoma and Prof. Jon Crowcroft (Cambridge).

Aaron's research focuses on edge computing, IoT architecture and data-driven networking services. He is a two-time recipient of the esteemed Nokia Foundation Scholarships, and awarded "Staff Member of the Year" by the Department of Computer Science at University of Helsinki. He was awarded the Best Paper of ACM EdgeSys, the ACM SIGCOMM Best of CCR and PhD fellowships from the Academy of Finland and University of Helsinki. Being an active member of ACM, IEEE and IETF, Aaron is the founder of ACM EdgeSys and Associate Editor for IEEE Open Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems. He has co-chaired IEEE HotPOST and ACM MobiSys PhD Workshop, and served on the Board of IEEE ComSoc YP, on Executive Committee of IEEE Finland, and on IETF NomCom, responsible for nominating and selecting the IETF leadership for global Internet standardization. He is also the co-founder of FCN workshops, a joint initiative to promote active collaborations between top European and Asian research institutes, including Cambridge, Delft, Helsinki, Leuven, London, Munich, Oslo, Stockholm, Vienna, EPFL, MPI, IMDEA, HKUST, Tsinghua, Peking, Fudan, and Chinese Academy of Science (CAS).

Updates

Appointed Adjunct Professor (Dosentti / Privatdozent) at University of Helsinki

FCN 2020 will be hosted in August at TU Delft, Netherlands

Co-Chair for ACM EdgeSys 2020, Crete, Greece

Co-Chair of Travel Grant for ACM MobiCom 2020, London, UK

Chair of Finance for ACM MobiSys 2020, Toronto, Canada

Editorial Board for IEEE Open Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems (IEEE OJ-ITS)

Executive Committee for Power Web Institute at TU Delft

Awarded funding for project 5G Field Lab (press release)

Awarded funding for project Trust IoT Edge Computing (selection rate 21/65)

Keynote Speaker at CompSys 2019, Kaap Doorn, Netherlands

Best Paper Award for our work on Edge Service Chaining

Best Presentation Award at IEEE INFOCOM, Honolulu, USA

Recent Publications

ECCO and DevLoc both accepted to ACM/IEEE IoTDI 2020 (Premier Conference on IoT)
TLoc: Transfer Learning on Telco Data at IEEE TMC (#1 Journal of Mobile Computing)
IoT-KEEPER: Detecting Malicious IoT Network Activity at the Edge at IEEE TNSM (Impact Factor: 4.682)
Capturing Pedestrian/Cyclist Spatiotemporal Properties in Cities at IEEE ITSM (Impact Factor: 3.294)
Multi-dimensional Mobility Prediction at ACM MSWiM 2019 (acceptance rate 29%, A-Rank Conference)
LocalVLC for Augmenting IoT Services at IEEE WoWMoM 2019 (acceptance rate 17.8%, A-Rank)
Edge Communication with Visible Light and Ultrasound at IEEE ICC 2019 (39% of 2590 submissions, A-Rank)
Wireless Edge Analytics at IEEE INFOCOM 2018 (19.2% of 1606 submissions, A-Rank)
Lightweight Virtulization for IoT Edge Computing at IEEE Network (Impact Factor: 7.503)
Security and Privacy in D2D Communication at IEEE COMST (#1 Impact Journal of Computer Science - IF 22.973)

Publication List

Travel Agenda

Research Interests

"If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be called research." -- Albert Einstein

Edge Computing and Artificial Intelligence for IoT
Distributed Data Analytics
IoT Communication and Services
Protocol Design and Standardization for 6G

Academic Appointments

Delft University of Technology, Delft, NL - NL Engineering #1, Netherlands #1

Assistant Professor
2018 ~ present

Technical University of Munich, Munich, DE - DE Engineering #1, Germany #1

Project Lead, Postdoc, Guest Researcher
2016 ~ present

University of Helsinki, Helsinki, FI - Birthplace of Linux

, Finland #1

Adjunct Professor, Postdoc, Project Manager and Researcher
2007 ~ present

Columbia University, New York (Manhattan), USA - USA #3

Nokia Foundation Scholar, 2014
Advised by Prof. Henning Schulzrinne (ACM Fellow, IEEE Fellow, CTO of FCC, Internet Hall of Fame)

University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK - UK #1

Nokia Foundation Scholar, 2013
Advised by Prof. Jon Crowcroft (ACM Fellow, IEEE Fellow, Royal Society Fellow, my PhD advisor in Cambridge)

Awards and Honors

Docentship (permanent) - University of Helsinki, 2020

Best Paper Award - ACM EdgeSys, 2019

Best Presentation Award - IEEE INFOCOM, 2018

Representative of Scientific Staff for 5-Year Faculty Evaluation, TU Munich, 2017

International PostDoc Sponsorship, TU Munich, 2016

Chancellor and Graduate School Grants (30K EUR) for research visits and conference trips, 2010-2015

PhD Fellowships (60K EUR) - Academy of Finland and University of Helsinki, 2012-2014

Best Paper Award - ACM SIGCOMM "Best of CCR" (featured on ACM Computing Review), 2014

Columbia IRT Alumni - Columbia University, 2014

Cambridge NetOS Alumni - University of Cambridge, 2013

"Staff Member of The Year" Award - Computer Science Department, University of Helsinki, 2013

Cover Story on ACATIIMI, the Finnish national magazine of academia, 2013

** Nokia Foundation Scholarships (10K EUR), 2012, 2013

** Nokia Foundation Scholarship can be granted at most 2 times to the same person

Full List of Awards

Advised Students

Very proud to work with them

Michiel Huisman (Delft): awarded distinction (Cum Lauda) MSc degree

Gianluca Limon (Delft): now at Hilti Corporation, Switzerland

Nick Rakas (Delft): now at ABN AMRO Bank, NL

Jakob Serlier (Delft): BSc honor program, now at Carnegie Mellon University

Michael Haus (Munich): co-advised with Prof. Ott, focusing on private proximity services

Vittorio Cozzolino (Munich): co-advised with Prof. Ott, focusing on edge systems for IoT

Leonardo Tonetto (Munich): co-advised with Prof. Ott, focusing on mobile data analytics

Thomas Paul (Munich): focusing on transport security for QUIC

Ibbad Hafeez (Helsinki): awarded 4-year PhD scholarships, now at F-Secure

Yanhe Liu (Helsinki): now at Sina Weibo Beijing -- the dominant online social network (aka Twitter of China)

Lauri Suomalainen (Helsinki): now full stack hacking at Klinik Healthcare Solutions Helsinki

Emad Nikkhouy (Helsinki): now at ICE AB/GmbH Berlin

Noora Joensuu (Helsinki): now at Softability Helsinki

Tomi Ronimus (Helsinki): now at HiQ Helsinki, one of the most historic companies in Finnish IT sector

Peng Liu (Helsinki): now at Tuxera Helsinki -- with his CES award winning App

Yonghao Li (Helsinki): in a cool startup -- check the review from The Verge

Interested in joining us? Check the openings of CPI Lab.

Delft is Cool

After moving to Delft, my wife and I have discovered a lot of fun here. Comparing to Munich and Helsinki (both we really love), Delft is cozy, compact, artistic and culture dignifying. It features many bridges, river passages, and a soothing atmosphere, very much like Cambridge. While comparing with New York City, Delft is relatively quiet and peaceful, but of no less energy -- thanks to all the young and entrepreneurial students in this famous university town.

Some of my photo collections: Life at TU Delft