I was born in Kunming, the Spring City of China. My father was an engineer and my mother was an editor of a technical journal. Under their influence, I started loving physics since I was a kid.

I almost selected the Department of Physics of Nanjing University for my college study, but I finally went to the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC) in Chengdu, as I was more interested in practical R&D instead of theoretical discovery. In 1996, I obtained the B.S. degree in electronic engineering. Then I chose to continue my further study in the Institute of Communication and Information Engineering, and to work in the National Key Lab of Broadband Optical Fiber Transmission and Communication Networks of UESTC as a research assistant at the same time. We started to use the Internet since 1996 because of research requirements, and I was lucky to become one of the first group of people in China to enjoy this revolutionary technology. I was deeply attracted by it and just wanted to know how it worked, so we might be able to figure out how to make it work better—that happened to be my major.

Under the supervision of Prof. Lemin Li and Dr. Hairong Sun, we did some projects on ATM switches, DSL/HFC access networks, and SONET/SDH optical networks. In 1998, I chose to do my PhD study at the National Key Lab. Since TCP/IP gradually became the dominating network protocol in the Internet, I started to focus on TCP/IP related topics.

In order to do simulations for TCP/IP research, I picked ns simulator and started to use Linux and open source software. I believe the maximum benefit resulting from the open source culture is the greatest possibility for users to customize their software, to improve the performance based on their exact requirements, to test bleeding-edge technologies, and to have huge DIY fun.

Following several years of hard work made by the entire team, some of our research results got recognized. I won "May 4" Scholarship provided by China Student Union and became one of the top 10 students in China in 2000. I obtained my first PhD degree in 2002. After that, I came to the University of Florida to study wireless communication networks and to gain more research experience.

From 2002 to 2006, under the supervision of Prof. Yuguang M. Fang, I expanded my research topics to TCP/IP related buffer management, access control, congestion control, pricing and economics of networks. During the study at UF, I felt blessed to get to know many professors and labmates who offered me great help. I was also lucky to meet Masha, a caring and smart lady, who became my wife.

In December 2006, I received my second PhD degree. Now I work as a software engineer in San Jose.

To balance my life, I enjoy reading, traveling, watching movies, and learning photography during my leisure time.

My wife and I are now living in Walnut Creek, California.