Tianyu Li
Research Assistant at Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolTianyu Li is a research-focused database engineer and PhD candidate at MIT CSAIL's Data Systems Group with ten years of hands-on experience building and productionizing core storage and backend systems. He has contributed to high-profile self-driving database projects (Peloton, NoisePage) and to Microsoft's FASTER, with work spanning low-level memory management, object pools, concurrency fixes, and implementation of an Azure Page Blob device. Tianyu blends research rigor and production sensibilities—improving CI/testing (Jenkins integrations, test framework plumbing), reorganizing protobufs, and hardening network thread termination—so his code often bridges prototypes and deployable systems. His background includes research internships at Microsoft and engineering internships at Google and Asana, plus multiple teaching roles at Carnegie Mellon, reflecting strong mentorship and communication alongside deep systems expertise. Based in Cambridge, MA, he brings a rare mix of database internals, storage engineering, and DevOps fluency to research-driven system building.
10 years of coding experience
1 year of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Computer Science, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Computer Science at Massachusetts Institute of TechnologySouthwest Weiyu Middle SchoolMaster of Science - MS, Computer Science, QPA 4.16, Master of Science - MS, Computer Science, QPA 4.16 at Carnegie Mellon University
English, Chinese
Github Skills (32)
c-language10
concurrent10
postgresql10
azure-storage10
key-value-store10
testing10
memory-management10
databases10
data-base10
data-structure10
java10
javas10
persistent10
dbm10
dotnet-core10
Programming languages (6)
Github contributions (5)
MIT-DB-Class/simple-db-hw-2021
Feb 2021 - May 2021
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:1 review, 20 commits, 2 PRs in 2 months
Contributions summary:Tianyu primarily contributed to the core functionality of a simple database system. Their work involved adding essential components such as the implementation of a basic test utility. They also made contributions to the data storage components including the creation of HeapPageID and LogFile. Several commit messages indicate the user's focus on building the data structures and testing the system.
cmu-db/noisepage
Jul 2018 - Dec 2019
Self-Driving Database Management System from Carnegie Mellon University
Role in this project:Back-end Developer / Database Engineer
Back-end Developer / Database EngineerContributions:1 review, 97 commits, 154 PRs in 1 year 4 months
Contributions summary:Tianyu's commits primarily focus on implementing and modifying core database components within the "noisepage" project. They refactored and migrated source code, particularly files related to common database functionalities, along with modifications to the .gitignore. The user introduced new implementations, such as object pools and related testing components, demonstrating an understanding of low-level memory management. Furthermore, the user updated and refactored existing codebase (changing the namespace and adding a strong typedef for performance).
management-systemdbmsdatabase-management-systemcarnegie-mellon-universityself-driving
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