Katrina LaCurts, MIT EECS

Dr. Katrina LaCurts
Senior Lecturer, Undergraduate Officer, MIT EECS
lacurts@mit.edu

77 Massachusetts Ave., Room 38-476
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Cambridge, MA 02139

Phone: +1 617 253 4613

About

I am a Senior Lecturer and Undergraduate Officer in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

My primary academic interests lie in the intersection of computer systems and society, and I specialize in teaching large undergraduate systems courses. Currently I teach 6.02 (Introduction to EECS via Communication Networks), 6.033 (Computer Systems Engineering), and 6.S057 (Computer Systems and Society).

As EECS Undergraduate Officer, I manage the undergraduate office, which serves nearly 1700 undergraduate and MEng students. In this role I've led efforts to make information and processes in the department more accessible and transparent to students and advisors. I serve on the Office of Minority Education's Faculty Advisory Committee, the EECS Committee on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, and am part of the Dean's Action Group on Social and Ethical Responsibilities of Computing. In 2021 I received the inaugural School of Engineering Distinguished Educator Award.

Outside of work, I can usually be found in my garden, at a local powerlifting gym, or chasing after my perfect dog, Broccoli.

Teaching

I've been the lead instructor for 6.033 since 2015, and 6.02 since 2014. This semester I'm teaching 6.S057 Computer Systems and Society in addition to 6.02.

Refereed Publications

Active Learning in Undergraduate Computer Systems: Before and After the COVID-19 Pandemic (pdf)
K. LaCurts, M. Ghobadi, K. Sollins. ACM SIGCOMM Online Networking Education Workshop 2020

Cicada: Introducing Predictive Guarantees for Cloud Networks (pdf)
K. LaCurts, J. Mogul, H. Balakrishnan, Y. Turner. HotCloud 2014

Choreo: Network-Aware Task Placement for Cloud Applications (pdf | slides | web)
K. LaCurts, S. Deng, A. Goyal, H. Balakrishnan. IMC 2013

Making Currency Inexpensive with iOwe (pdf)
D. Levin, A. Schulman, K. LaCurts, N. Spring, B. Bhattacharjee. NetEcon 2011

Measurement and Analysis of Real-World 802.11 Mesh Networks (pdf | slides | web)
K. LaCurts, H. Balakrishnan. IMC 2010

VTrack: Accurate, Energy-aware Traffic Delay Estimation Using Mobile Phones (pdf | web)
A. Thiagarajan, L. Ravindranath, K. LaCurts, S. Toledo, J. Eriksson, S. Madden, H. Balakrishnan. SenSys 2009. Awarded Best Paper

BitTorrent is an Auction: Analyzing and Improving BitTorrent's Incentives (pdf | web)
D. Levin, K. LaCurts, N. Spring, B. Bhattacharjee. SIGCOMM 2008

Technical Reports

Cicada: Predictive Guarantees for Cloud Network Bandwidth (pdf)
K. LaCurts, J. Mogul, H. Balakrishnan, Y. Turner. MIT-CSAIL-TR-2014-004

A Plan for Optimizing Network-Intensive Cloud Applications (pdf)
K. LaCurts, S. Deng, H. Balakrishnan. MIT-CSAIL-TR-2013-003

Theses

Application Workload Prediction and Placement in Cloud Computing Systems (pdf)
K. LaCurts. Ph.D. Thesis, MIT EECS. 2014

Measurement and Analysis of Real-World 802.11 Mesh Networks (pdf)
K. LaCurts. Master's Thesis, MIT EECS. 2010

Software

I'm not actively involved with any software projects at the moment, but in the past I've done some work with OpenDaylight and Zeek (formerly Bro). My Zeek branch has been used for some interesting research.