I am a first-year PhD student in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. I previously earned my master’s degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto.

My research interests broadly span computer systems, security and computer architecture. I am currently working with Prof. Neil Zhao on the topic of microservice security. Previously, I worked on improving the reliability of cloud system management under the supervision of Prof. Tianyin Xu.

Experience

• University of Texas Austin (Aug 2025 - present)
  • Graduate Research Assistant
• Xlab (April 2024 - April 2025)
  • Research Intern
• Advanced Micro and Nanosystems Laboratory (Aug 2021 - April 2023)
  • Undergrad Research Assistant

Publications

• [ NSDI’26 ] Who Watches the Watchers? On the Reliability of Softwarizing Cloud Application Management
  Jiawei Tyler Gu, Zhen Tang, Yiming Su, Bogdan A. Stoica, Xudong Sun, William X. Zheng, Yue Zhang, Akond Rahman, Chen Wang, and Tianyin Xu
  In Proceedings of the 23rd USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI’26), Renton, WA, May, 2026
  [ pdf ] [ project ]
• [ ;login: ] Acto: Push-Button End-to-End Testing for Operation Correctness of Kubernetes Operators
  Jiawei Tyler Gu, Xudong Sun, Zhen Tang, Chen Wang, Mandana Vaziri, Owolabi Legunsen, and Tianyin Xu
  USENIX ;login:, Aug. 2024.
  [ web ] [ project ]

Education

• University of Texas at Austin Aug 2025 - present
  • Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Aug 2023 - Jan 2025
  • Master of Computer Science
• University of Toronto - St. George Sep 2019 - Jun 2023
  • Honours Bachelor of Science with High Distinction
  • Dean’s List Scholar

Misc

I enjoy playing games and watching anime!