Rachid Guerraoui

Rachid Guerraoui is a Moroccan-Swiss computer scientist and Full Professor in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences at EPFL. He is renowned for his significant contributions to distributed and concurrent computing, holding the prestigious Chair in Distributed Computing at the Collège de France (2018-19). As an ACM Fellow (2012) and recipient of the Dahl-Nygaard Senior Prize (2024), his work has shaped both theoretical foundations and practical implementations in distributed systems.

Guerraoui earned simultaneous Master's degrees in Computer Engineering from École supérieure d'informatique électronique automatique (ESIEA) and in Computer Science from Pierre and Marie Curie University in 1989. He completed his PhD at Université d'Orsay in 1992 under the supervision of Christian Fluhr, with a dissertation titled "Programmation Répartie par Objets: Études et Propositions." Following postdoctoral research at EPFL, he joined the computer science faculty in 1999 after working at HP Labs and MIT.

Guerraoui's research spans distributed computing, concurrent systems, transactional memory, and asynchronous algorithms. His work on establishing theoretical foundations of Transactional Memory, including the concept of opacity, has been highly influential. He has also made significant contributions to scalable information dissemination methods, asynchronous distributed computations, and the mathematical abstraction of indulgence. His research bridges theoretical rigor with practical implementations, as evidenced by systems like SwissTM and STMBench7.

His publication record shows a clear evolution from theoretical foundations to practical implementations and broader applications. Early work focused on fundamental problems like consensus and renaming, while more recent publications address machine learning applications and public understanding of AI. The consistent thread throughout his career is a focus on making distributed systems more reliable, efficient, and accessible.

Guerraoui has received numerous prestigious awards including:

• ACM Fellow (2012)
• ERC Advanced Grant Award (2013)
• Google Focused Award (2014)
• Middleware Best Paper Award (2014)
• Middleware 10-Years Best Paper Award
• Chair in Distributed Computing, Collège de France (2018-19)
• Dahl-Nygaard Senior Prize (2024)

As an academic advisor, Guerraoui has mentored students including El Mahdi El Mahmdi, with whom he co-created the Wandida project - a collection of educational videos on computer science. His research has been supported by significant grants from the European Research Council and Google. Beyond research, Guerraoui actively participates in public discourse, particularly regarding computer science education and technology policy.

Guerraoui leads the Distributed Computing Laboratory (DCL) at EPFL, which focuses on advancing the state of the art in distributed systems. The lab's work spans theoretical foundations, practical implementations, and educational outreach, reflecting Guerraoui's holistic approach to computer science research and education.