
Kaiyu Hou
侯开宇
Ph.D. in Computer Science
2233 Tech Dr, Room 3410
Computer Science Department
Northwestern University
Advisor: Prof. Yan Chen
[email protected]
Google Scholar
CV (PDF) Resume (PDF)
- 2022-04: I passed my Ph.D. thesis defense.
- 2021-10: QFaaS accepted on CoNEXT’21 as poster
- 2021-07: Awarded Terminal Year Cabell Fellowship
- 2021-05: I passed my Ph.D. thesis prospectus
- 2021-05: Formal Cellular Research accepted on MobiSys’21
- 2020-07: SecOption accepted on Sigcomm’20 as poster
- 2020-05: NFV Survey published on Internet Computing
- 2020-05: Won Outstanding Teaching Assistant award
- 2020-04: I officially became a Ph.D. candidate
- 2019-06: CellScope accepted on Sigcomm’19 as poster
- 2019-06: SDNKeeper published on Computer Networks
I completed my Ph.D. in the Computer Science Department at Northwestern University, advised by Prof. Yan Chen.
Research Interests: I have a broad interest in various aspects of cloud networks, networked systems, and network protocols. My current research focuses on network optimization of microservices, serverless based clouds. I am also working for introducing formal methods into network protocol verification.
Xi’an Jiaotong University

Shaanxi, China
Xi’an Jiaotong University

Shaanxi, China
Jun. 2021 – Sep. 2021
Jun. 2020 – Sep. 2020
Designed and implemented an enterprise-wide radio situational awareness system.
It passively and continuously collects Wi-Fi and Bluetooth traffics, and analysis device activities by AutoML.
Intern Game developer
Feb. 2014 – Apr. 2014
Now, I am still an amateur of independent game development. (Please visit flavedogame and have fun!)
- Discovering Emergency Call Pitfalls for Cellular Networks with Formal Methods
Kaiyu Hou*, You Li*, Yinbo Yu, Yan Chen, Hai Zhou (*equal contribution)
ACM 19th International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys), 2021.
Paper Slides ACM LibraryGitHub Talk Teaser
- SDNKeeper: Lightweight Resource Protection and Management System for SDN-based Cloud
Xue Leng, Kaiyu Hou, Yan Chen, Kai Bu, Libin Song
IEEE/ACM 26th International Symposium on Quality of Service (IWQoS), 2018.
Paper Slides IEEE LibraryGitHub
- SoftRing: Taming the Reactive Model for Software Defined Networks
Chengchen Hu, Kaiyu Hou* (1st student author), Hao Li, Ruilong Wang, Peng Zheng, Peng Zhang, Huanzhao Wang
IEEE 25th International Conference on Network Protocols (ICNP), 2017.
Paper Slides IEEE Library
- Towards A Fast Packet Inspection over Compressed HTTP Traffic
Xiuwen Sun, Kaiyu Hou, Hao Li, Chengchen Hu
IEEE/ACM 25th International Symposium on Quality of Service (IWQoS), 2017.
Paper Slides IEEE Library
- Accelerate and Secure Serverless Networks with QUIC
Kaiyu Hou, Sen Lin, Yan Chen, Vinod Yegneswaran
International Conference on Emerging Networking EXperiments and Technologies (CoNEXT, Poster), 2021.
Paper Poster ACM Library
- Network Protocol Safe Configuration Search in One Shot
You Li*, Kaiyu Hou*, Hai Zhou, Yan Chen (*equal contribution)
ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication Annual Conference (SIGCOMM, Poster), 2020.
Paper Poster Galary ACM Library
- CellScope: Automatically Specifying and Verifying Cellular Network Protocols
Yinbo Yu, You Li, Kaiyu Hou, Yan Chen, Hai Zhou, Jianfeng Yang
ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication Annual Conference (SIGCOMM, Poster), 2019.
Paper Poster Slides ACM Library
- State of the Art and Research Challenges in the Security Technologies of Network Function Virtualization
Xiaochun Wu, Kaiyu Hou, Xue Leng, Xing Li, Yinbo Yu, Bo Wu, Yan Chen
IEEE Internet Computing, 2020.
- A Lightweight Policy Enforcement System for Resource Protection and Management in the SDN-based Cloud
Xue Leng, Kaiyu Hou, Yan Chen, Kai Bu, Libin Song, You Li
Computer Networks, 2019.
- COIN: A fast packet inspection method over compressed traffic
Xiuwen Sun, Hao Li, Dan Zhao, Xingxing Lu, Kaiyu Hou, Chengchen Hu
Journal of Network and Computer Applications, 2019.