Yixue Zhao

University of Southern California

PhD Candidate

Yixue Zhao is a Ph.D. candidate in the Computer Science Department at the University of Southern California, advised by Dr. Nenad Medvidović in the area of Software Engineering. Her primary research interest is to improve user experience by reducing user-perceived latency in mobile apps. Besides her dissertation work, Yixue has a broad research interest including Program Analysis, Software Architecture, Software Testing, and Open Science. In her Ph.D., she received Microsoft Research Dissertation Grant, WiSE Merit Award, Best Research Assistant Award, Jenny Wang Excellence in Teaching Award, MOBILESoft Student Research Competition Gold Medal, and multiple Travel Grants. Yixue is actively involved in various professional activities and academic organizations, such as YRP Mentorship Program, Women in Computing Club, and conference organizing committees. Prior to her Ph.D., Yixue received her Bachelor’s degree in Software Engineering at Harbin Institute of Technology in China in 2014.

Research Abstract:

Mobile devices have become the dominant computing platform and this trend is reflected in the billions of mobile devices and millions of mobile apps today. At the same time, user-perceived latency caused by network transfers remains a significant problem since mobile apps fetch data from the Internet constantly via unreliable wireless network. To tackle the network latency problem in mobile apps, my research focuses on prefetching and caching techniques as they can bypass the performance bottleneck and enable immediate response from a local store. However, such fundamental techniques are largely overlooked in the emerging mobile-app domain. Thus, my dissertation aims to establish the foundation for prefetching and caching techniques in the mobile-app domain by exploring the prefetching and caching opportunities in practice, and proposing a set of novel techniques that are suitable for mobile apps in order to reduce user-perceived latency.