Carlos A. Varela

Carlos A. Varela is a Professor of Computer Science and Founding Director of the Worldwide Computing Laboratory at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His research focuses on distributed computing systems, concurrent programming models, and cyber-physical systems with applications to aerospace safety and intelligent flight systems. He has authored influential works on actor-based programming languages (e.g., SALSA), PILOTS for aviation data analytics, and MilkyWay@Home for galactic simulations. Varela's contributions span formal verification, middleware design, and adaptive distributed algorithms. He holds an NSF CAREER Award and industry grants from Amazon, Google, and IBM.

Education:

• B.S. with Honors in Computer Science (UIUC)
• M.S. in Computer Science (UIUC)
• Ph.D. in Computer Science (UIUC)

Research Highlights: PILOTS detects aircraft sensor failures using error signatures; SALSA revolutionized actor-oriented programming; MilkyWay@Home simulates galactic evolution at petascale. Current projects include an Internet of Planes platform for real-time situational awareness and safety envelopes for stochastic flight systems.

Awards: NSF CAREER Award (2005–2010), Amazon Cloud Credits (multiple years), Best Paper Nominations (CCGrid, eScience), IBM Eclipse Innovation Awards.

Advising & Grants: Supervised 7 PhD and 19 MS students. Research supported by NSF, AFOSR, and industry partnerships. Active in conference leadership (General Chair CCGrid 2016, PC roles in major venues).

Labs & Teams: Leads the interdisciplinary Worldwide Computing Lab exploring aero-space informatics, concurrent systems, and distributed computing fundamentals. Collaborates on FAA-mandated ADS-B systems and next-gen flight trajectory algorithms.