The project is indeed driven by the authors listed on the paper and also the knowledge and experience that was accumulated in the AMPLab (the predecessor of the RISELab, see https://amplab.cs.berkeley.edu/). If you look at the github history, we've been working on it for longer than a year and had various prototypes before that, so it doesn't come out of "thin air" ;)
The lab's sponsors are also helpful, some of them have been experimenting with the system internally and giving us feedback.
The project is indeed driven by the authors listed on the paper and also the knowledge and experience that was accumulated in the AMPLab (the predecessor of the RISELab, see https://amplab.cs.berkeley.edu/). If you look at the github history, we've been working on it for longer than a year and had various prototypes before that, so it doesn't come out of "thin air" ;)
The lab's sponsors are also helpful, some of them have been experimenting with the system internally and giving us feedback.