Bo Sun

I work at the intersection of theory and systems, focusing on developing algorithms with provable guarantees for online decision-making problems in networked systems, such as energy systems (electric vehicle networks and smart grids) and computing systems (cloud computing and mobile edge computing). I am recently interested in the following topics:
• Online competitive algorithms that provide robust online decisions with worst-case guarantees

• Online knapsack problems (SIGMETRICS23)
• Online conversion problems (SIGMETRICS21)

• Learning-augmented algorithms that leverage predictions from AI/ML tools in algorithm design

• Consistency-robustness analysis (e-Energy24 and NeurIPS21)
• Distributionally robust competitive analysis (ICML24)

• Algorithmic fairness that encodes fairness in online algorithms and mechanism design

• Time fairness (WINE24 and ICLR24)
• Group fairness (SIGMETRICS25)

I will be joining the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Ottawa as an Assistant Professor in July, 2025. I am looking for self-motivated Master’s and Ph.D. students for Fall 2026, to work on online decision-making algorithms and their applications to networked systems. Please drop me an email with your CV and research interests (in one paragraph) if you are interested.

I am currently a Postdoc in the David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo, working with Prof. Raouf Boutaba. Prior to this, I worked as a Postdoc with Prof. John C.S. Lui at The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and with Prof. Danny H.K. Tsang at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). I obtained my Ph.D. degree from HKUST.

Among others, I was a visiting scholar at Columbia Univerisity, working with Prof. David Yao and Prof. Ward Whitt. I also visited the California Institute of Technology, and worked with Prof. Steven Low and Prof. Adam Wierman. I work closely with Prof. Mohammad Hajiesmaili at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

M. Daneshvaramoli, H. Karisani, A. Lechowicz, B. Sun, C. Musco, and M. Hajiesmaili, “Online Fractional Knapsack With Predictions,” ICML, 2025. [PDF]

F. Zargari, H. Jazi, B. Sun, and X. Tan, “Online Allocation with Multi-Class Arrivals: Group Fairness vs Individual Welfare,” ACM Sigmetrics, 2025. [PDF]

A. Lechowicz, N. Christianson, B. Sun, N. Bashir, M. Hajiesmaili, A. Wierman, and P. Shenoy, “Learning-Augmented Competitive Algorithms for Spatiotemporal Online Allocation with Deadline Constraints,” ACM Sigmetrics, 2025. [PDF]

H. Jazi, B. Sun, X. Tan, and R. Boutaba, “Improved Algorithms for Online k-Selection with Diseconomies of Scale,” WWW, 2025. [PDF]

B. Sun, H. Jazi, X. Tan, and R. Boutaba, “Static Pricing for Online Selection Problem and its Variants,” WINE, 2024. [PDF]

B. Sun, J. Huang, N. Christianson, M. Hajiesmaili, A. Wierman, and R. Boutaba, “Online Algorithms with Uncertainty-Quantified Predictions,” ICML, 2024. [PDF]

N. Christianson, B. Sun, A. Wierman, and S. Low, “Risk-Sensitive Online Algorithms,” COLT, 2024. [PDF]

R. Lee, B. Sun, M. Hajiesmaili, and J.C.S. Lui, “Online Search with Predictions: Pareto-optimal Algorithm and its Applications in Energy Markets,” ACM e-Energy, 2024. [PDF]

B. Sun, L. Yang, M. Hajiesmaili, A. Wierman, J.C.S. Lui, D. Towsley, and D.H.K. Tsang, “The Online Knapsack Problem with Departures,” ACM Sigmetrics, 2023. [PDF]

B. Sun, R. Lee, M. Hajiesmaili, A. Wierman, and D.H.K. Tsang, “Pareto-Optimal Learning-Augmented Algorithms for Online Conversion Problems,” NeurIPS, 2021. [PDF]

B. Sun, A. Zeynali, T. Li, M. Hajiesmaili, A. Wierman, and D.H.K. Tsang, “Competitive Algorithms for the Online Multiple Knapsack Problem with Application to Electric Vehicle Charging,” ACM Sigmetrics, 2021. [PDF]