Vishesh Khemani (he/him/his)

Assistant Teaching Professor

Vishesh Khemani (he/him/his)

Assistant Teaching Professor

Dr. Vishesh Khemani received his doctorate in Theoretical Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a student and postdoc, he researched computational physics, quantum field theory and particle physics. He transitioned into software engineering and worked on the frontiers of large-scale distributed systems at Amazon and Google for two decades. His portfolio includes AWS S3 and Google Maps, Cloud, and Caching. He has now found his calling in teaching computer science. He draws on his industry experience to connect theory to practice, and on his interdisciplinary experience to position computer science as a core competency. He blogs at medium.com.

Education

  • Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
    • Ph.D. – Theoretical Physics
  • Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
    • B.A. – Computer Science and Physics

Courses

  • CSS 132 Computer Programming for Engineers I
  • CSS 133 Computer Programming for Engineers II
  • CSS 142 Computer Programming I
  • CSS 143 Computer Programming II
  • CSS 422 Hardware and Computer Organization

Teaching Interests

Computer Programming, Data Structures and Algorithms, Software Engineering, Theory of Computation, Distributed Systems

Research and Scholarship Interests

Education tools, software engineering tools and practices, reliable large-scale multi-tenant services, distributed systems

Creative Interests

Writing, Guitar, Photography

Conference Papers

  • Slicer: Auto-Sharding for Datacenter Applications, OSDI ‘16
  • Breather solutions in field theories, Workshop on Continuous Advances in QCD 2004
  • Quantum solitons in the electroweak theory, 6th Workshop on Quantum Field Theory under the Influence of External Conditions (QFEXT03)

Peer-reviewed publications

  • Numerical investigation of monopole chains, J.Phys.A 38 (2005)
  • An Oscillon in the SU(2) gauged Higgs model, Phys.Rev.D 72 (2005)
  • 2+1 dimensional Georgi-Glashow instantons in Weyl gauge, J.Phys.A 38 (2005)
  • Quantum QED flux tubes in 2+1 and 3+1 dimensions, Nucl.Phys.B 707 (2005)
  • The Dirichlet Casimir problem, Nucl.Phys.B 677 (2004)
  • Heavy fermion quantum effects in SU(2)(L) gauge theory, Nucl.Phys.B 665 (2003)
  • Casimir energies in light of quantum field theory, Phys.Lett.B 572 (2003)
  • Calculating vacuum energies in renormalizable quantum field theories: A New approach to the Casimir problem, Nucl.Phys.B 645 (2002)

Essays

  • Towards Data Science
  • Believe Rationally (Bayesian Inference)
  • Make Good Decisions (Probability)
  • Where’s Waldo (Search Algorithms In The Physical World)
  • Your Friends Have More Friends Than You (Graph Theory)
  • A Better Way To Vote (Markov Chains)
  • Erasure Coding For The Masses
  • Cantor’s Paradise
  • A Simple Introduction To Chaotic Systems
  • A Layperson’s Guide To Quantum Effects
  • A Finite Number of Numbers (Finite Fields)
  • To 3D And Beyond (Kaluza Klein Particles)
  • A Wager, Rolling Restarts, And Euler’s Number
  • The Speed Of Light (Special Relativity)
  • Number Of Numbers: Infinite Weirdness
  • Weighted auto-sharing: WO US US11838356B2 Google Llc
  • Global computing interface: WO US US9292319B2 Google Inc.
  • Resource management: US US8862743B1 Google Inc.
  • Determining computing-related resources to use based on client-specified constraints: US US20150149642A1 Amazon Technologies, Inc.