去年被MSR Graduate Fellowship给拒了，狠是郁闷了一把，看来在微软没有自己人一说！人家扁的就是我……，不过还是给我寄了一封拒信，也算是有礼貌讲文明了。一直都比较喜欢微软这点，拒你也是明明白白的，虽然我比较不服。

星期三早上晓静突然给我电话说我们学院给偶发Maseeh Graduate Fellowship了。Maseeh虽然不比MSR的大，但是也算是个honor了，哈哈。按照要求写了封感谢信给Dr. Fariborz Maseeh。贴出来honor一下我老爸老妈和谢老师，当然也万分感谢偶的GF晓静啦。^_^ 还要谢谢扁我的人们 ……

June 25, 2009

Dear Dr. Fariborz Maseeh:

I am writing to thank you for the Maseeh Graduate Fellowship 2009/2010 being awarded to me. I am a third year Ph.D. student at the Department of Computer Science, Portland State University. It is my great honor to receive this fellowship.

I came from Chongqing City, China. My father was a train conductor before he passed away and my mother is a nurse. My parents didn’t have opportunities for higher education, but very early they made it clear to me that knowledge is invaluable. Their encouragement has always been my source of passion on the way pursuing knowledge and tackling challenging problems.

I received my Bachelors and Masters degrees of Electrical Engineering both from Harbin Institute of Technology, China, where I did most of my research on signal processing and network security. To further improve myself, I started my Ph.D. study in Computer Science at PSU in September 2006 right after my Masters study.

In the past three years, I have been working with Prof. Fei Xie, my Ph.D. dissertation advisor, on the project of component-based embedded system co-design and co-verification, funded by both Semiconductor Research Corporation and National Science Foundation. Our research focuses on a comprehensive methodology for designing highly-confidence embedded systems such as embedded car controllers and medical devices. Through this project, I found my research interests in formal methods and established the basic academic skills for my Ph.D. study. Based on my research, I have four papers published and three papers submitted. I am the first author of six papers.

During my internship with Microsoft in the summer 2008, I discovered an interesting topic for my dissertation research: co-verification of device drivers and hardware devices. Working together with Dr. Tom Ball from Microsoft Research, Dr. Vladimir Levin from Microsoft Windows, Dr. Jin Yang from Intel Research, and my advisor Prof. Xie, we are developing automatic algorithms that can formally prove safety properties of hardware/software interface designs. Our efforts have great potential in improving the reliability of device drivers and hardware devices, so to reduce the crashes of operating systems such as Microsoft Windows or the malfunction of computer peripherals such as USB flash drives. Currently, I am doing my second internship with Microsoft. We are trying to build up theories and automatic tools to co-verify the USB3.0 host controller hardware design and its driver implementation.

I am pursuing a Ph.D. degree because I want to equip myself with the knowledge and skills necessary for conducting innovative research that can better serve our society. I greatly appreciate the education I receive from PSU and am proud as a PSU student. I have helped a Microsoft campus recruiter visit PSU in 2008 and now helping him plan the 2009 campus recruiting visit to PSU. Seeing my efforts serving other people makes me most excited and passionate. I will continue to contribute to building high-confidence computer systems after graduation.

Your generous fellowship is not only a great encouragement to me, but also a strong support to my Ph.D. research. I want to express my sincere appreciation to you and I will strive to be an excellent representative of the Maseeh Graduate Fellowship.

Best wishes

Juncao Li

Ph.D. Student

Department of Computer Science

Portland State University