Rich Wolski

Rich Wolski is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), holding the Duval Family Presidential Chair in Energy Efficiency. He previously held positions at UC San Diego, UC Knoxville, and research roles at Lawrence Livermore and Berkeley National Laboratories. His research focuses on distributed systems, cloud computing, and energy efficiency, including pioneering the Eucalyptus open-source cloud project and leading the RiPiT carbon emissions initiative.

Education: Ph.D./M.S. in Computer Science from UC Davis (1994/1989), B.S. from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo (1986).

Research Interests: Distributed systems, cloud computing architectures, resource-aware systems, and energy-efficient computational frameworks. Current projects include CSPOT (serverless IoT platform), RiPiT (carbon emissions measurement), SmartFarm, and the Aristotle Federated Cloud. He co-leads UCSB's RACELab with Chandra Krintz and collaborates with the Institute for Energy Efficiency.

Awards: Includes Top-10 Cloud Pioneers (2012), multiple teaching awards, and industry recognitions for cloud innovation.

Teaching: Leading CS170 (Operating Systems) in Winter 2025. Notable past courses include systems programming and distributed computing lectures.