Kai Li
Kai Li, the Paul M. Wythes ’55 P’86 and Marcia R. Wythes P’86 Professor in Computer Science at Princeton, joined the Princeton faculty in 1986. Over his career, he has contributed to several areas in computer science, including distributed systems, computer architecture, storage systems and machine learning.
In distributed systems, Li was one of the earliest advocates for using compute clusters to solve large-scale problems in parallel. He proposed the first system that allow users to program using a shared-memory programming model on computer clusters. In computer architecture, Li led the development of a user-level communication mechanism, which later evolved into the Remote Direct Memory Access networking standard widely used in modern data centers.
In storage systems, Li pioneered deduplication storage systems for efficient backup and remote data replication, revolutionizing data protection by eliminating reliance on tape-based systems. In machine learning, he contributed to the development of ImageNet, a computer vision database which sparked a revolution in deep learning.
Li has received numerous honors and awards, including eight most influential or test-of-time paper awards. He has been elected a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery, a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Li received his doctorate from Yale, a master’s degree from the University of Science and Technology of China and a bachelor’s degree from Jilin University in China.