Melissa Pan

Melissa Pan

CS PhD @ Berkeley Sky Lab

About Me

Hello! I’m a first-year Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley, advised by Prof. Matei Zaharia and affiliated with the Sky Computing Lab. My research focuses on sustainability as a first-order optimization objective alongside efficiency in large-scale machine learning and data center systems. Broadly, I’m interested in:

  1. Machine learning systems
  2. Data center computing
  3. Distributed systems

Before coming to Berkeley, I completed my Master’s degree at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), where I was very fortunate to work with Prof. Akshitha Sriraman. My Master’s research centered on developing sustainable resource management techniques for microservices in hyperscale data centers.

I graduated from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering. While there, I was advised by Prof. Steve Mann on wearables for prosopagnosia. In between my academic pursuits, I spent ~3 years as a software engineer at IBM working on Db2 database core engine development, specifically on availability features such as backup, restore, and recovery.

Please feel free reach out for research, collaborations, or a casual chat, especially if you are a junior, disadvantaged, or underrepresented student. The best way to reach me is via email: [melissapan]@berkeley.edu

CV: PDF here, up to Dec 2024.

News

  • Oct ‘24 Presented at SOSP24 poster session, and SYSDW workshop!
  • Aug ‘24 Joined UC Berkeley EECS!
  • May ‘24 Worked on graph optimization in edge TPU at Google.
  • May ‘24 Graduated from CMU MSECE!
  • May ‘23 Worked on graph optimization in DTensor at Google.
  • Jan ‘23 I started my graduate study at CMU!

Hobbies/interests

  • 🧗‍♀️ I love bouldering: I am a solid V2 climber, my current goal is to climb a V4 route!
  • ☕️ My favourite drinks are Iced Americano and Iced Matcha 🍵. I also like making latte art, pattern progress: blob (100%), solid heart (85%), rosetta (20%), ??? (100%).
  • 🐶 I love my dog, her name is Paofu. She holds all six level of certifications on behavours and tricks 🎓
  • I use emoji exccessively.

Last Update: Dec 2024