SkyWalker: A Locality-Aware Cross-Region Load Balancer for LLM Inference
Tian Xia, Ziming Mao, Jamison Kerney, Ethan J. Jackson, Zhifei Li, Jiarong Xing, Scott Shenker, Ion Stoica
ML systems researcher with a builder lens
Zhifei Li
Incoming PhD student in Computer Science, Fall 2026
I'm an incoming PhD student in Computer Science starting in Fall 2026. I previously worked as a Visiting Student Researcher at Sky Computing Lab at UC Berkeley, advised by Ion Stoica, and also collaborated with Joseph E. Gonzalez and Matei Zaharia. I completed my B.S. in Computer Science (Turing Honors Class) at Renmin University of China.
I work broadly on machine learning systems, with interests in efficient infrastructure, training and inference systems, and the design of systems for emerging AI workloads.
Research Interests
- Machine learning systems
- Training and inference infrastructure
- Efficient systems for AI workloads
- Systems support for emerging AI applications
Selected Publications
View allSkyNomad: Cost-Effective Multi-Region Scheduling for Deadline-Sensitive Workloads on Spot Instances
Zhifei Li*, Tian Xia*, and others, Ion Stoica
LEANN: A Low-Storage Vector Index for Personal Devices
Yichuan Wang, Zhifei Li, Shu Liu, Yongji Wu, Ziming Mao, Yilong Zhao, Xiao Yan, Zhiying Xu, Yang Zhou, Ion Stoica, Sewon Min, Matei Zaharia, Joseph E. Gonzalez
Barbarians at the Gate: How AI is Upending Systems Research
Audrey Cheng*, Shu Liu*, Melissa Pan*, Zhifei Li, Bowen Wang, Alex Krentsel, Tian Xia, Mert Cemri, Jongseok Park, Shuo Yang, Jeff Chen, Aditya Desai, Jiarong Xing, Koushik Sen, Matei Zaharia, Ion Stoica
FrontierCS: The Next Frontier of Computer Science
Qiuyang Mang*, Wenhao Cai*, Zhifei Li*, Huanzhi Mao*, and others, Ion Stoica, Jingbo Shang, Zhuang Liu, Alvin Cheung
Open Source and Builder Work
Alongside research, I care about translating ML systems ideas into practical infrastructure and widely usable tools. That builder lens is part of the site, but it should not replace the research identity.