Edouard Bugnion

Edouard Bugnion is a Full Professor in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. He is globally recognized for co-founding VMware Inc. while a Ph.D. student at Stanford University, and for pioneering the widespread adoption of virtualization technology on commodity x86 hardware.

Education:

• Ph.D. in Computer Science, Stanford University

Research Interests:
Professor Bugnion’s work spans the entire stack of computer systems, with a primary focus on operating systems, virtualization, cloud computing, computer architecture, and software engineering. His early research on virtual-machine monitors laid the groundwork for modern data-center virtualization and has influenced both industry architectures and academic research directions.

Scientific Awards:

• ACM Fellow (2017) — for transformative contributions to virtual machines.
• ACM Software System Award (2009) — for VMware Workstation 1.0 for Linux, which brought virtualization to the desktop and catalyzed an entire industry.

Impact & Recognition:
His work on VMware Workstation 1.0 not only popularized virtualization on the Linux desktop but also spurred processor vendors such as Intel and AMD to add hardware support for virtualization, fundamentally reshaping data-center economics and enabling the rise of modern cloud computing.

Labs & Teams:
At EPFL he leads the Data Center Systems Laboratory (DCSL), where his group investigates next-generation systems challenges in cloud infrastructure, high-performance networking, and secure execution environments.