Sichang He (Steven) sichangh@usc.edu
Ph.D. Student in Computer Science GitHub & YouTube @SichangHe
University of Southern California Website
Education
University of Southern California (USC) Aug. 2024 – present Los Angeles, USA
Ph.D. student in Computer Science Advisor: Dr. Harsha V. Madhyastha
– Research focus: User-facing measurements and enhancements of the Web.
– Selected courses with projects:
∗ Advanced Computer Networking (A+): JSphere: measure webpages’ browser API calls to classify JavaScript.
Duke Kunshan University (DKU) & Duke University Dual Degree Aug. 2020 – May 2024
B.S. in Data Science (by DKU) & Kunshan, China &
B.S. in Interdisciplinary Studies
(Subplan: Data Science, by Duke) Durham, NC
– In addition to studies in Data Science, completed many courses in Computer Science and Mathematics, effectively
emulating a triple major.
– Selected courses with projects:
∗ Computer Network Architecture (A+): async TCP server and client in Elixir and CLI REPL shell in Rust.
∗ Data Acquisition and Visualization (A): Poster using D3.js, Svelte, and TypeScript.
∗ Computer Organization and Programming (A+, at Duke): Binary search tree in MIPS assembly and ring buffer
in C; fifth place in PizzaCalc assembly length optimization competition (68 lines).
∗ Numerical Analysis (A+); Intro Abstract Algebra (at Duke), Complex Analysis (A).
– Achieved full grade on all five courses at Duke University in the Fall 2022 semester.
Zhixin High School Aug. 2017 – Jun. 2020 Guangzhou, China
– Chemistry Olympiad competition team; Biology Olympiad competition team.
Conference Publication
[1] Sichang He, Italo Cunha, and Ethan Katz-Bassett. “RPSLyzer: Characterization and Verification of
Policies in Internet Routing Registries”. In: Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Internet Measurement Conference.
Nov. 2024. url: https://github.com/SichangHe/internet_route_verification/releases/tag/imc-
camera-ready.
[2] Sichang He, Beilong Tang, Boyan Zhang, Jiaqi Shao, Xiaomin Ouyang, Daniel Nata Nugraha, and
Bing Luo. “FedKit: Enabling Cross-Platform Federated Learning for Android and iOS”. In: IEEE INFOCOM
2024-IEEE Conference on Computer Communications Workshops (INFOCOM WKSHPS). May 2024. url:
http://www.arxiv.org/pdf/2402.10464.
Research Experience
Research Assistant Aug. 2024 – present
Networked Systems Lab, USC Advisor: Dr. Harsha V. Madhyastha
– Thoroughly surveyed systems research problems stemming from AI-generated text and images.
Independent Researcher on Internet Route Verification Apr. 2023 – May 2024
Independent research, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil (Remote) Advisor: Dr. Italo Cunha
– Designed and implemented an efficient and comprehensive parser for the Routing Policy Specification Language
(RPSL), a language used in the Internet Route Registry to document public interdomain routing policies, guide
public peering, and aid routing issue troubleshooting.
∗ Studied and complied with RPSL semantics in RFCs, covering over 99% of all real-world RPSL use cases.
∗ Optimized the parser to interpret and verify hundreds of millions of routes per hour.
Sichang He (Steven) - University of Southern California Page 1 of 3
– Employed the RPSL parser to verify observed interdomain routes; analyzed verification reports and identified com-
mon RPSL usage patterns and usage mistakes.
∗ Provided tooling to verify routes against the RPSL, helping improve interdomain routing security.
∗ Identified and implemented checks for 9 potential reasons why routes fail to match the relevant RPSL.
Research Assistant for Mobile Federated Learning (FL) Project Mar. 2023 – May. 2024
The FedCampus Team, EdgeIntelligence Lab, DKU Advisor: Dr. Bing Luo
– Authored FedKit, open-source SDKs to streamline real-world FL experiments across Android and iOS devices,
enabling training shared ML models collaboratively without sharing private data on smartphones.
∗ Contributed to the Flower FL framework: revamped the Android example; helped correct the iOS example.
– Led and managed the systems development for the FedCampus Android/iOS app, leveraging personal health data
from over 100 participants to conduct real-world FL and federated analytics experiments on DKU campus.
∗ Supervised and mentored four undergrads and one M. Eng. student in mobile and web development.
∗ Investigated and led core technology adoption, including Flower, Kotlin, and Flutter, facilitating development.
Research Assistant for Search Engine Research Project Dec. 2021 – May 2023
The Search So Team, DKU Advisor: Dr. Jiang Long
– Developed a feature-rich open source web scraper in async Rust to scrape DKU sites, intranet, and Duke sites.
– Improved backend HTML processing, frontend interface, and version control.
Presentation
[1] Bing Luo and Sichang He. FedCampus: a Privacy-preserving Data Platform for Smart Campus with
Federated Learning and Analytics. Flower AI Summit, 2024. Mar. 2024. url: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=K7yu2jvu_t8.
Teaching Experience
Teaching Assistant, Introduction to Programming, DKU Nov. 2021 – Mar. 2022
– Hosted weekly lab sessions; created the course’s first video tutorial on development environment setup.
Math & CompSci. Tutor, Academic Resource Center, DKU May 2021 – May 2022
– Obtained CRLA’s International Tutor Training Program Certification, Level I .
Awards
• Senior Scholar-Athlete Award through the Running Club, DKU Athletics (Apr. 2024)
• Silver Medal, International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) 2022 DKU Team (Oct. 2022)
Developed the team wiki independently; helped non-technical members adopt Git; validated protein designs with
modeling software.
• Dean’s List (Spring 2021) & Dean’s List with Distinction (Fall 2021, Fall 2022, Spring 2023), DKU
• Chancellor’s Scholarship & UGRD Entrance Scholarship, DKU (merit-based, Fall 2020 – Spring 2024)
Side Projects
Open Source Developer & Maintainer of mdBook-KaTeX Nov. 2022 – present
Math expression preprocessor for mdBook written in Rust; over 90,000+ downloads on crates.io GitHub
– Took over maintainership by publishing a fork when it was unmaintained.
– Fixed numerous bugs and developed new features, resolving more than 20 GitHub issues others had opened.
– Improved speed by over 10 times by adopting parallelism and avoiding repeated rendering.
Author of Open Source Web Forum Using Ruby on Rails Jun. 2022 – Aug. 2022
– Featured infinitely nested comments; deployed on Heroku.
Sichang He (Steven) - University of Southern California Page 2 of 3
Outreach
• Chinese Editor & Translator at DKU Intersections Journal Jun. 2021 – Aug. 2021
Co-translated three English articles into Chinese; reviewed and edited multiple articles and Intersections’ website.
Skills
Natural Language Mandarin (native), Cantonese (fluent).
Programming Language
– Invested and proficient: Rust, Python, Elixir, JavaScript.
– Used in projects: Kotlin, Dart, Swift, Ruby, Java, Lua, TypeScript, Svelte, HTML, CSS, C, SQL, Racket, L
A
T
E
X.
– Familiar: C++, Fish, Bash, Julia, Go, Erlang, Gleam, VimScript, Elisp, Mathematica, MATLAB, Scala, R.
Computer Software
– Selected frameworks/libraries: Playwright, Django, Phoenix Framework, Tokio, Tailwindcss, D3.js.
– Selected development experience: SSH, Tmux, Neovim, Docker, Kubernetes, Evcxr, Arch Linux, Hackintosh.
Sichang He (Steven) - University of Southern California Page 3 of 3
