Bio

I will be joining ByteDance as a Research Scientist (based in San Jose), working on the next generation memory architecture for agentic workloads.

My name is Nanqinqin Li (pronunciation: nan-CHIN-CHin, Chinese: 李南沁沁). I am a Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University advised by Prof. Michael Freedman on systems research in Princeton SNS Group (also working closely with Prof. Amit Levy and Prof. Wyatt Lloyd).

I received my M.S. degree from the University of Chicago advised by Prof. Haryadi Gunawi on combating the notorious tail latency problem of solid-state drives. I got my B.Eng degree from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications.

Research interests

I am broadly interested in building fast, robust systems with emerging memory and storage technologies (e.g., CXL). My current project focuses on reducing CPU idle time when CXL introduces higher memory access latency.

Publications

Peer-reviewed

• Harvesting Sub-Microsecond CXL Memory Stalls with LiteSwitch
  Nanqinqin Li, Yuhong Zhong, Asaf Cidon, and Michael J. Freedman.
  The 20th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI 2026).
  [bib]

• Speculative Recovery: Cheap, Highly Available Fault Tolerance with Disaggregated Storage
  Nanqinqin Li, Anja Kalaba, Michael J. Freedman, Wyatt Lloyd, and Amit Levy.
  The 2022 USENIX Annual Technical Conference (ATC 2022).
  [paper][talk][slides][code][bib]

• [Best Paper Award] Fantastic SSD Internals and How to Learn and Use Them
  Nanqinqin Li, Mingzhe Hao, Huaicheng Li, Xing Lin, Tim Emami, and Haryadi S. Gunawi.
  The 15th ACM International Systems and Storage Conference (SYSTOR 2022).
  [paper][talk][code][bib]

• LinnOS: Predictability on Unpredictable Flash Storage with a Light Neural Network
  Mingzhe Hao, Levent Toksoz, Nanqinqin Li, Edward Edberg, Henry Hoffmann, and Haryadi S. Gunawi.
  The 14th USENIX Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation (OSDI 2020).
  [paper][talk (Mingzhe Hao)][slides][code][bib]

arXiv

• How Low Can You Go? Practical cold-start performance limits in FaaS
  Yue Tan, David Liu, Nanqinqin Li, and Amit Levy.
  [paper][code][bib]

Services

• Artifact Evaluation PC - OSDI 2026

Teaching

• Princeton University - COS 461, 418/518, 126, 217, 316