Nabeel Nasir

PhD Candidate in Computer Science

Link Lab

University of Virginia

I am a sixth year PhD candidate advised by Prof. Bradford Campbell in the Link Lab. My research aims to democratize Edge Computing for the Internet of Things (IoT) by distributing workloads on inexpensive edge hardware, and to empower users in shared IoT environments with better control over their data privacy.

I am passionate about becoming an educator, and I am currently on the job market seeking Teaching Track faculty positions!

I have facilitated learning for over 750 students through my roles as an Instructor of Record, a GTA, and a mentor for high school and undergraduate students. I am a UVA Engineering Teaching Fellow, a UVA CS department Outstanding Graduate Teaching awardee, and a UVA All-University Graduate Teaching Award nominee. I have previously worked in the industry as a software engineer for over 3 years.

News

October 6, 2023: I am now certified as a Tomorrow's Professor Today (TPT) by the Center for Teaching Excellence at UVA! I completed 40+ hours of teaching-focused workshops and 10+ hours of teaching as part of the requirements (Tier 1 and Tier 2).
October 2, 2023: I am thrilled to share that our paper was accepted at ACM SIGCSE TS 2024 in the Experience Reports and Tools (ERT) track.
September 26, 2023: I am honored to receive the UVA Engineering Endowed Graduate Fellowship, awarded for academic excellence and demonstrated scholarship. You can find my research statement here.
August 17, 2023: I facilitated a 90-min discussion session on Teaching as a Graduate Student, an orientation session for GTAs by Center of Teaching Excellence (CTE). Had a great discussion with 14 fellow graduate students from UVA.
August 12, 2023: I am excited to announce that I'm a Reviewer for ACM SIGCSE TS 2024!
August 8, 2023: I participated in a 5-day workshop on Public Speaking by Prof. Cady Garey, organized by UVA Engineering. Cady made it super fun and I had a great time with the cohort!
May 4, 2023: I wrapped up the Wireless for IoT course which I co-taught with Prof. Brad Campbell. I had an amazing experience with designing and teaching the course! Check out the cool IoT wireless projects our students created here.
May 3, 2023: I attended the 10th Annual Innovations in Pedagogy Summit, UVA, April 2023.
May 3, 2023: I won the CS department’s Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award!
Apr 24, 2023: I was nominated by the CS department for an All-University Teaching Award at UVA! Thank you Prof. Brad Campbell, Prof. Nathan Brunelle, and Dr. Neal Magee for your support.
March 31, 2023: I gave a talk on UVA Engineering’s Teaching Fellowship Program (TFP) and My Co-Teaching Experience at the Link Lab, UVA.
January 3-13, 2023: I attended c3Design, a course design workshop offered by the Center for Teaching Excellence, UVA.
December 5, 2022: I presented our paper “NexusEdge: Leveraging IoT Gateways for a Decentralized Edge Computing Platform” at the 7th ACM/IEEE Symposium on Edge Computing (ACM/IEEE SEC) at Seattle, WA.
November 21, 2022: I received the UVA Engineering Teaching Fellowship! I will be co-teaching an upper level undergrad course CS/ECE 4501: Wireless for the Internet of Things (IoT) in Spring 2023.
October 25, 2022: I taught a classroom activity on “Introduction to Sorting Algorithms” as part of the Micro-teaching workshop organized by Center for Teaching Excellence. Thank you Prof. Joe Fore for mentoring me.
October 13, 2022: I demonstrated my work on the “Edge Computing and IoT for the Living Link Lab” at the Industry-Graduate Student Reception as part of the Link Lab Research Day, 2022.
November 14, 2021: I presented a poster on our work “Enabling Elasticity on the Edge using Heterogeneous Gateways” at ACM SenSys ‘21.
November 14, 2021: I presented a condensed version of my thesis titled “Untangling the Cloud from Edge Computing for IoT” at the ACM SenSys/BuildSys ‘21 PhD Forum. I won the Best Presentation award!
December 10, 2020: I gave a flash talk on “NexusEdge: Edge Computing Platform over Distributed Gateways” at the Link Lab Student Flash Talks, UVA.
November 13, 2019: I demonstrated my work on “An Architecture for Edge Computing over Underutilized Gateways” at ACM SenSys ‘19, New York.
March 21, 2019: I demonstrated my work on “Edge Computing Platform over Underutilized Gateways” at the Link Lab Open House, UVA.
August, 2018: I am excited to start my PhD in the Link Lab!

Experience

Research

I was introduced to academic research during my master's degree at IIT Bombay. I was advised by Prof. Krithi Ramamritham and I worked in the Smart Energy Informatics Lab where we had an amazing team! We designed a sensor fusion based occupancy detection system and investigated the impact of occupancy on energy usage.

Industry

I have worked at Adobe Systems as an Android developer for the Lightroom and Photoshop Mix mobile photography apps. I've also worked at EnLite Research, a startup focused on reducing electricity usage in office spaces and improving user comfort.

Teaching

Instructor of Record

[Spring 2023] CS/ECE 4501: Wireless for the Internet of Things

Graduate Teaching Assistant

University of Virginia

[Spring 2022] CS 4457: Computer Networks
[Fall 2021] CS 4740: Cloud Computing
[Spring 2021] CS 4414: Operating Systems
[Fall 2020] CS 4457: Computer Networks

Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay

[Spring 2014] CS 308: Embedded Systems Lab
[Fall 2013] CS 684: Embedded Systems
[Spring 2013] CS 210: Digital Logic Design Lab
[Fall 2012] CS 101: Computer Programming Lab

Guest Lectures

[Fall 2023] Wireless Networking and Thread Lab, CS 4501/CS 6501: Smart and Healthy Buildings
[Fall 2022] Tutorial on Temi Robot, SYS 4582/CS 6501: Smart and Healthy Buildings
[Fall 2021] Lecture on IoT and Edge Computing, CS 4740: Cloud Computing
[Fall 2021] Tutorial on Temi Robot, CS 6501: CPS, Testbeds, and Policy

Publications

Experiences Teaching a Wireless for the Internet of Things Course Cooperatively at Multiple Universities (Accepted)
Nabeel Nasir, Viswajith Govinda Rajan, Pat Pannuto, Branden Ghena, and Bradford Campbell
Proceedings of the 55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE), 2024.

Sensing Indoor Lighting Environments and Analysing Dimension Reduction for Identification
Tushar K Routh, Nurani Saoda, Md Fazlay Rabbi Masum Billah, Nabeel Nasir, and Bradford Campbell
1st International Workshop on Advances in Environmental Sensing Systems for Smart Cities (EnvSys), 2023.

Low Power but High Energy: The Looming Costs of Billions of Smart Devices
Wenpeng Wang, Victor Ariel Leal Sobral, Md Fazlay Rabbi Masum Billah, Nurani Saoda, Nabeel Nasir, and Bradford Campbell
HotCarbon: 2nd Workshop on Sustainable Computer Systems, 2023.

NexusEdge: Leveraging IoT Gateways for a Decentralized Edge Computing Platform [slides] [github]
Nabeel Nasir, Victor Ariel Leal Sobral, Li-Pang Huang, and Bradford Campbell
7th ACM/IEEE Symposium on Edge Computing (ACM/IEEE SEC), 2022.

Enabling Elasticity on the Edge using Heterogeneous Gateways: Poster Abstract [poster]
Nabeel Nasir and Bradford Campbell
19th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems. ACM SenSys 2021.

Untangling the Cloud from Edge Computing for IoT: PhD Forum Abstract [slides]

Nabeel Nasir
19th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems. ACM SenSys 2021.

An Architecture for Edge Computing over Underutilized Gateways: Demo Abstract [poster]
Nabeel Nasir and Bradford Campbell
17th ACM Conference on Embedded Networked Sensor Systems. ACM SenSys 2019.

Fusing Sensors for Occupancy Sensing in Smart Buildings
Nabeel Nasir, Kartik Palani, Amandeep Chugh, Vivek Chil Prakash, Uddhav Arote, Anand P. Krishnan, and Krithi Ramamritham
11th International Conference on Distributed Computing and Internet Technology, ICDCIT 2015.

Putting Smart Meters to Work: Beyond the Usual
Kartik Palani, Nabeel Nasir, Vivek Chil Prakash, Amandeep Chugh, Rohit Gupta, and Krithi Ramamritham
5th ACM International Conference on Future Energy Systems. ACM e-Energy 2014.

Honors and Awards

Endowed Graduate Fellowship, UVA Engineering, 2023.
Outstanding Graduate Teaching Award, CS Department, University of Virginia, 2023.
Nomination by CS department, All-University Graduate Teaching Award, University of Virginia, 2023.
UVA Teaching Fellowship, School of Engineering and Applied Science, University of Virginia, 2023.
Best Presentation Award at the ACM SenSys/BuildSys PhD Forum, 2021.
NSF Student Travel Grants: ACM/IEEE SEC, 2022, ACM/IEEE SEC, 2021,and ACM SenSys, 2019.
Spot Award at Adobe for the work on the advanced editing palette feature in Lightroom Android, 2015.
2nd Place in Hack Day, annual hackathon of the Digital Imaging group at Adobe, 2015.
Ranked 81st among 156,780 candidates in the Graduate Aptitude Test in Engineering (GATE), India, 2012.

Service

Reviewer, ACM SIGCSE TS 2024 (55th ACM Technical Symposium on Computer Science Education), Portland, Oregon.
Mentor, Charlottesville High School, Charlottesville. Currently mentoring two senior high school students on their engineering capstone project. August 2023 - present.
Mentor, Computers4Kids (C4K), Charlottesville. Currently mentoring a middle school member on stop motion animation. Previously mentored three members on Python programming. July 2022 - present.
Volunteer, UVA. Designed and organized a Build an Internet workshop for middle school students at C4K, 2022.
Mentor, Freelance. Mentored a high school group in mobile app prototyping to present at TiE Young Entrepreneurs Global, UC Irvine, 2017.
Volunteer, Smart Energy Informatics Lab, IIT Bombay. Organized a Smart Energy Hackathon at IIT Bombay and mentored 50 students on their smart energy projects, 2014.

Miscellaneous

Apart from work, I love hiking, photography, playing table tennis, watching standup, and reading comics and books. Some of my favorite comic artists are Lunarbaboon, Liz Climo, Mr. Lovenstein, and 157 of Gemma.