Ravi
Prakash

Professor
Department of Computer Science
&
Hobson Wildenthal Honors College

About Me

I am a professor in the Department of Computer Science and the Hobson Wildenthal Honors College at the University of Texas at Dallas. I received my Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science from The Ohio State University. My Ph.D. advisor was Professor Mukesh Singhal.

My research interests include Field-of-View prediction and caching for 360-degree videos, augmented and virtual reality, coexistence of wireless networks (including WiFi networks) in unlicensed and shared frequency bands, sensor networking, mobile computing and distributed algorithms. I teach courses that run the gamut from discrete mathematics and data strutures to advanced operating systems and mobile computing.

As computing impacts all aspects of our personal life, society, and politics, I believe it is important for computer scientists to understand the legal, ethical and political implications of the work they do. Towards this goal, in addition to the usual computing courses, I also teach an undergraduate course in Internet & Public Policy.

I am a member of the UT Dallas Faculty Senate and Academic Council. In the past I have served as Speaker of the UT Dallas Academic Senate, as an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, and as the President and Secretary of the IEEE Dallas Section.

When not watching highly civilized and calming serials like Narcos, Ozark, Sacred Games, Mirzapur, etc. I like to to listen to a variety of music including works of Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Rahman, Shankar Mahadevan, Charlie Parker, k.d. lang. In a different era I used to have enough time to watch movies, especially those directed by Martin Scoresese and/or featuring Robert De Niro; and that Chalamet kid ain't too shabby, either.

Research Interests

I am interested in exploring issues related to networking and distributed systems. Please continue reading for my research interests. You an access my research publications through Google Scholar

360-degree Video Streaming

360-degree videos watched using head-mounted displays (HMDs) require considerable network bandwidth. Due to limited viewport size of HMDs, at any given time viewers see only a small fraction of the full 360-degree frame. This creates opportunities to reduce streaming bandwidth consumption if viewers' field-of-view (FoV) can be predicted in advance, each frame can be divided into tiles, and only tiles corresponding to the predicted FoV are pre-fetched.

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Wireless Networking

I am interested in Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols related to WiFi (IEEE 802.11) and other wireless communication technologies that co-exist/interfere with it in the same unlicensed band.

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Mobile Computing

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) do not assume the presence of any fixed infrastructure. Each MANET device could possibly move independently, and two devices can communicate with each other if they are sufficiently close to each other to form a wireless link. As each device could move independently, the topology of a MANET can change in unpredictable ways, including the possibility of the network getting partitioned. We have studied issues related to clustering in MANETs, distributed allocation of addresses to nodes, and collision-free transmission scheduling of MANET nodes.

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Distributed Systems

I have developed algorithms to take consistent global snapshots of distributed systems, and to support causally ordered message delivery in such systems.

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Teaching

I teach undergraduate and graduate courses in the areas of operating systems and computer networking. Listed below are some of these courses. If you are registered for one of these courses, you will find detailed information, including slides, syllabi, reading material on the university's learning management system's page for the course.

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Graduate Courses 6000 and higher level

I teach the graduate level Advanced Operating Systems (CS 6378) once a year. In addition, from time to time I teach the elective Mobile Computing Systems (CS 6392) and the Graduate Seminar in Advanced Topics in OS and Networking (CS 7301) from time to time.

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Undergraduate Courses 4000 and lower level

Once a year I teach the Honors section of the Operating Systems (CS 4348) course. In the past I have also taught Discrete Mathematics and Data Structures courses.

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Internet and Public Policy Honors Reading

This is a one-credit readings course available to students in the Hobson Wildenthal Honors College. One set of readings is offered in Fall, and another in Spring semester. If interested, you can sign up for one or both these versions.

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Professional Service: Conferences, Workshops, Journals

Here are some of the conferences/workshops that I am helping organize

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ICDCS 2025 Conference

45th IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, July 20-23, 2025, Glasgow, Scotland, UK.

I am the Mobile Computing Systems Track Co-Chair for this conference.

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MASS 2025 Conference

The 22nd IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad Hoc and Smart Systems (MASS 2025), October 6-8, 2025, Chicago, USA

I am the General Co-Chair for this conference.

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Students

Like any other teacher, I am most proud of the Ph.D. students I have graduated. Below is a list of them with the titles of their Ph.D. dissertation. Click on their names to go to their LinkedIn profiles.

Ph.D. students graduated

Sanket Nesargi: Distributed Approaches to Design Network Services in Rapidly Deployable Wireless Networks.

Alan Amis: D-Cluster Formation and Routing in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks.

Aqeel Siddiqui: Towards Unification of Clustering Mechanisms for Multi-Cluster Mobile Ad Hoc Networks.

Mansoor Mohsin: Reliable Communication in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks .

Srikant Kuppa: Characterising the Expected Performance of IEEE 802.11 DCF and its QoS Enhancements.

Shashidhar Rao Gandham: Near Optimal Algorithms for Link Scheduling, Routing and Positioning of Mobile Base Stations in Wireless Sensor Networks.

Mansi Thoppian: Medium Access Control Protocols for Cognitive Radio-based Multi-hop Wireless Networks.

Michael James Brehm: Resource Allocation Algorithms Optimized for Overload States in the LTE Downlink.

Qasim Javed: Improving the Performance of Wireless Mesh Networks with Better Medium Access and Routing Strategies.

Ehsan Nourbakhsh: Wireless Sensor Networks for Monitoring Smart Grids: Design and Experimental Verification.

Hars Vardhan: Polycell: Wireless Data Center with Millimeterwave Network.

Joseph Beshay: Transport Protocols for Next-Generation Networks and Applications.

Afshin Taghavi Nasrabadi: Improving Quality of Experience for HTTP Adaptive Video Streaming: From Legacy to 360-degree Videos.

Anahita Mahzari: Exploiting Mobile Edge Computing to Improve Efficiency of 360-degree Video Streaming.

Contact Me

The best way to contact me is through email (address provided below). Please no solicitations. For location of my place of employment, please follow the Google Map location link below.

Location & Address

Google Map Location
Department of Computer Science, MS EC 31, University of Texas at Dallas,
800 West Campbell Road,
Richardson, TX 75080
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