Pedro Fonseca is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science, Purdue University. He leads the Reliable and Secure Systems Lab, focusing on building reliable and secure core software systems such as operating systems, hypervisors, and distributed systems. His research has been recognized with awards including the NSF CAREER Award and Google Faculty Research Awards. Before Purdue, he completed a postdoc at the University of Washington, working with Arvind Krishnamurthy, Hank Levy, and Xi Wang. He earned his PhD from MPI-SWS and the University of Saarland under Rodrigo Rodrigues. His academic contributions span over 30 peer-reviewed publications in top-tier conferences like SOSP, OSDI, EuroSys, and ASPLOS. He teaches courses including CS503 (Operating Systems), CS592 (Reliable and Secure Systems), and CS408 (Software Testing). He actively serves on program committees for major systems conferences including SOSP, OSDI, EuroSys, and ASPLOS.
Giuliano Casale is a Professor in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London, leading the Quality of Service Research Lab (QORE). His research focuses on performance assurance, resource management, and fault-tolerance in distributed systems. He teaches courses on Probability and Statistics and Scheduling and Resource Allocation at undergraduate and Master’s levels. Casale’s work spans cloud computing, edge AI, and machine learning applications in system modeling. Key contributions include methodologies for performance engineering, anomaly detection, and automated resource management in large-scale systems. He actively participates in international conferences, delivering keynote speeches on topics such as performance evaluation and AI-driven systems. His research integrates queueing theory, machine learning, and generative models to address challenges in distributed software systems. Casale also engages in service activities like PhD admissions tutoring and collaborates on projects involving resilience planning and cloud service optimization. His lab, QORE, emphasizes practical solutions for real-world distributed systems, including edge federations and serverless architectures. Casale’s work bridges theoretical performance analysis with industrial applications, contributing to advancements in both academia and industry.
Marco Picone is an Associate Professor at the Department of Sciences and Methods for Engineering (DISMI) of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. He leads the Distributed and Pervasive Intelligence (DIPI) Group and holds a PhD in Information Technology from the University of Parma. His postdoctoral research at the University of Parma (2012-2015) and a visiting scholar position at the University of Cambridge (2011) further enriched his expertise. He is nationally qualified as an Associate Professor by MIUR (2020). Education: PhD in Information Technology, University of Parma (Italy) M.Sc. (cum Laude) in Computer Engineering, University of Parma Visiting Researcher, NetOS Group, University of Cambridge (UK) His research focuses on Distributed Systems , IoT , Edge Computing , and Digital Twins , emphasizing their applications in smart industries and cities. He has supervised postdocs (e.g., Matteo Martinelli) and PhD students (e.g., Enrico Rossini) on topics like Digital Twin Continuum and Edge-Cloud Systems. Teaching spans courses on Intelligent IoT , Distributed IoT Software Architectures , and Edge Computing , with a focus on lab-based learning and industry-relevant projects. He actively contributes to open-source frameworks like the White Label Digital Twin (WLDT) and collaborates on initiatives such as the Web of Digital Twins (WoDT). Research collaborations include projects on smart city data fusion, livestock waste management, and Industry 5.0 human-centric systems. His work bridges theoretical advancements with practical implementations in cyber-physical environments.
Dr. Kenneth Kent is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of New Brunswick (UNB), where he has served for 14 years. He is the Director of the Information Technology Centre (ITC) and heads the Reconfigurable Computing Group. He also serves as Director of the IBM Centre for Advanced Studies - Atlantic and holds an Honorary Professorship at Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg. His research focuses on hardware/software co-design, reconfigurable computing, virtual machines, and embedded systems. Dr. Kent earned his PhD and Master of Science in Computer Science from the University of Victoria. His work has led to over 100 refereed publications and the supervision of 70+ graduate students. He co-founded WEnTech Solutions Inc., a software firm addressing waste-to-energy optimization. His awards include the IBM Faculty Fellow of the Year and Project of the Year (as Principal Investigator) for contributions to the J9 Java Virtual Machine. His articles span FPGA acceleration, compiler optimization, cloud storage security, and IoT intrusion detection. Recent work emphasizes energy-efficient Node.js systems and advancements in CAD tools like VTR 9 for FPGA architecture. Dr. Kent’s advising and grants include leading the IBM CAS Atlantic and directing industry-academia collaborations. He has pioneered technologies such as the Eclipse OpenJ9 JVM and the CephArmor storage interface, balancing academic research with commercial innovation. He leads the Reconfigurable Computing Group at UNB and collaborates with the Institute for Visual Computing in Germany. His research bridges theoretical computing and practical applications, with a focus on scalable systems and embedded technologies.
Jovan Stojkovic is an incoming Assistant Professor at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin, set to join in Fall 2026. Prior to his appointment at UT Austin, he will spend a year at Meta working with the AI and Systems Co-design group. His research focuses on cloud computing and datacenters, with particular emphasis on cloud-native workloads and machine learning inference. Education: PhD in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, advised by Professor Josep Torrellas Undergraduate studies at the School of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade, Serbia, where he was recognized as the best student of the Computer Engineering and Information Theory Department every year from 2017-2020 Research Interests: Jovan's research focuses on cloud computing and datacenters , with two primary domains: Cloud-native workloads , such as microservices and serverless computing. He investigates how to co-design novel hardware platforms and software systems that deliver orders-of-magnitude improvements in performance, energy efficiency, and resource utilization for these emerging workloads. Machine Learning (ML) inference , particularly large language models (LLMs). His work addresses the challenges of ML inference through smart scheduling, workload placement, and system-level configuration tuning to reduce energy, power, and thermal overheads while maintaining performance and accuracy guarantees. Publication Trends: Jovan's publications demonstrate a strong focus on optimizing cloud infrastructure for emerging workloads. His research spans across serverless computing, microservices, and large language model inference. A clear trend emerges in his work: addressing the performance, energy efficiency, and resource utilization challenges of modern cloud workloads through innovative hardware-software co-design approaches. His most recent work shows increasing focus on LLM inference optimization, particularly in the areas of thermal management, power efficiency, and scheduling for many-adapter environments. Awards and Honors: HPCA Best Paper Award (2025) IEEE MICRO Top Picks Honorable Mention (2024) 6 patents with IBM and Microsoft on: Serverless systems, Processor overclocking in the cloud, and Energy-efficient LLM inference W. J. Poppelbaum Memorial Award (2025) for hardware and architecture innovation Mavis Future Faculty Fellowship (2024–2025) Invited to present at 11th Heidelberg Laureate Forum (2024) Kenichi Miura Award (2022) for excellence in High Performance Computing Multiple student travel grants to ISCA, MICRO, ASPLOS, and HPCA Advising and Grants: Jovan is actively seeking prospective PhD students for his research group at UT Austin. His research has been supported through collaborations with major tech companies including IBM, Microsoft, and Meta. His six patents with IBM and Microsoft demonstrate the practical impact of his research in serverless systems, processor overclocking, and energy-efficient LLM inference. His work on serverless computing (MXFaaS, EcoFaaS) and LLM inference optimization has received significant recognition in top-tier computer architecture conferences. Research Groups: During his PhD at UIUC, Jovan worked with Professor Josep Torrellas on cloud infrastructure research. He has collaborated extensively with researchers at IBM Research (particularly Hubertus Franke) and Microsoft (particularly Íñigo Goiri and Ricardo Bianchini). His upcoming position at UT Austin will establish his independent research group focused on cloud computing and datacenter systems. His year at Meta working with the AI and Systems Co-design group will further strengthen his expertise in AI infrastructure.
Berk Sunar is a Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and the founder of the Vernam Applied Cryptography and Cybersecurity Laboratory at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). He joined WPI in 2000 after holding postdoctoral and research roles at Oregon State University (OSU) and Trust Inc. His work focuses on applied cryptography, microarchitectural security, AI security, post-quantum cryptography, and homomorphic encryption. Sunar received his BSc from Middle East Technical University (1995) and PhD from Oregon State University (1998). Research interests include vulnerabilities in hardware (e.g., Rowhammer, TPM-FAIL), side-channel attacks, and cryptographic implementations. Notable contributions include discovering flaws in Intel CPUs and TPM chips affecting billions of devices, as well as developing defenses like cuHE (GPU-accelerated homomorphic encryption). Publications highlight breakthroughs in transient execution attacks (e.g., LVI, RIDL), post-quantum signature schemes (Dilithium), and cloud security (Firecracker VMM vulnerabilities). Awards include NSF CAREER (2002) and IBM Pat Goldberg Best Paper (2007). Advised over 30 graduate students, many of whom hold senior roles in academia and industry. Current research addresses AI security, quantum-resistant algorithms, and automated attack detection via machine learning. The Vernam Lab remains a hub for cybersecurity innovation.
Marc Sánchez Artigas is an Associate Professor at Rovira i Virgili University, Department of Computer Engineering and Mathematics. He holds a PhD from Pompeu Fabra University (2009) and conducted postdoctoral research at EPFL (Switzerland). His research focuses on distributed computing, cloud storage systems, and serverless architectures. He leads the CloudLab research group and coordinates major EU projects like Horizon Europe's CloudSkin and H2020's IOStack. Education: PhD in Computer Science (2009), Pompeu Fabra University MSc in Computer Engineering (2004), Universitat Rovira i Virgili BSc in Computer Engineering (2002), Universitat Rovira i Virgili Research Interests: Distributed systems, cloud computing, software-defined storage, serverless computing, and privacy-preserving storage solutions. His work emphasizes scalable architectures, data management in heterogeneous environments, and optimizing cloud storage efficiency through novel algorithms and frameworks. Awards: Best Paper (IEEE LCN 2007), Best Dataset (ACM IMC 2015), Serra-Hunter Excellence Professorship, and multiple grants from EU and Spanish funding bodies. Grants & Projects: Coordinated over €5 million in projects including H2020 CloudButton (serverless analytics), FP7 CloudSpaces (personal clouds), and national initiatives like Software-Defined Edge Clouds. Active in coordinating IPCEI-CIS for cloud infrastructure. Teaching: Courses on distributed systems, parallel architectures, and cloud computing. Taught at Universitat Rovira i Virgili and Universitat Oberta de Catalunya.
Stephen Lee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Pittsburgh, affiliated with Pitt Cyber. His research focuses on distributed systems, cyber-physical systems, and sustainability, emphasizing energy efficiency and cost optimization. Dr. Lee holds a PhD from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, a Master’s from Chennai Mathematical Institute, and a Bachelor’s from St. Stephen’s College, Delhi. He actively seeks students for his research group. Education: PhD, Computer Science, University of Massachusetts Amherst Master’s, Chennai Mathematical Institute Bachelor’s, St. Stephen’s College, Delhi Research Interests: Dr. Lee’s work integrates distributed systems, machine learning, and optimization to enhance sustainability. Key areas include IoT-enabled energy systems, emission-aware computing, and privacy-preserving frameworks. He leads projects like GreenWhisk (serverless emission reduction) and Sat2map (3D building modeling from satellite imagery). Recent Achievements: Best Paper Award in IEEE TPS 2024 DOE-funded Cyber Energy Center (2024) MCSI Seed Grant for Pitt building sustainability (2024) NSF Grant on sustainable distributed infrastructures (2023) Grants & Advising: Secured over $2M in grants, including NSF and DOE funding. Advises on energy-efficient systems and IoT security. Teaches CS 2510 (Operating Systems) and CS 1699 (Systems & Sustainability). Labs & Teams: Directs the Sustainable Systems Research Group, focusing on decarbonizing IT and optimizing renewable energy systems. Collaborates with industry partners on smart grid solutions and edge-cloud systems.
Kostas Magoutis is Professor and Chair of the Computer Science Department at the University of Crete , and a collaborating researcher at FORTH-ICS . His research focuses on scalable distributed systems, cloud computing, IoT, and quantum-enhanced control. Education and Career: Ph.D. in Computer Science, Harvard University (2003) Research Staff Member, IBM T. J. Watson Research Center (2003-2009) Assistant Professor (2014-2019, tenured 2017) and Associate Professor (2020-2024), University of Crete Professor and Chair, University of Crete (2024-present) Research Interests: His work spans distributed computer systems , cloud computing , scalable data stores and stream-processing engines , Internet of Things , and the emerging area of quantum-enhanced control . Representative projects include the H.F.R.I.-funded QUADS (2025-2028) on quantum-enhanced adaptive systems, STREAMSTORE (2020-2023) on elastic stream processing, SmartCityBus on IoT-driven public transport, and the EU FP7 PaaSage project on model-based cloud lifecycle management. Awards and Honors: Best Paper Awards: USENIX ATC 2002, USENIX BSDCon 2002, IEEE SRDS 2014 (Best Student Paper), IoT 2024 (Runner-up) Grand Challenge Audience Award, ACM DEBS 2022 Best Poster Award, ACM EuroSys 2022 EU Marie Curie IEF Fellow (2009-2011) Alexander S. Onassis Fellow (1994-1995) and J. William Fulbright Scholar (1993-1994) Students and Mentoring: He has supervised or co-supervised more than 30 Ph.D., M.Sc. and undergraduate students, including Antonis Papaioannou (Ph.D. 2021), Efthimios Papageorgiou (current Ph.D.), and numerous M.Sc. graduates now in industry and academia. Labs and Teams: At FORTH-ICS he leads activities within the Distributed Systems and Storage Laboratory, coordinating research on scalable storage, stream processing, and IoT data management. The lab collaborates closely with European and national initiatives, hosting visiting researchers and industry partners.
Willis Lang is a Researcher at Microsoft , focusing on Database Systems , Cloud Computing , and Data Management . His work bridges academic research with industrial applications in cloud databases. Education: PhD in Computer Sciences - Databases (University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2012) MS in Computer Science and Engineering - Databases (University of Michigan, 2008) BMath in Honours Computer Science - Bioinformatics (University of Waterloo, 2006) Research Interests: Willis’s research spans Database Systems , Cloud Computing , and Energy Efficiency , with a focus on scalability, tenant management, and predictive provisioning. His work addresses real-world challenges in cloud database optimization, multi-tenancy, and power-aware systems. Recent Publications highlight trends in Cloud Database Efficiency , including auto-scaling, tenant placement, and energy-conscious cluster design. His contributions often involve collaboration with industry leaders like Microsoft and Jignesh M. Patel. Scientific Awards: Best Paper Award, DaMoN 2010 Best Presented Award, Midwest Database Research Symposium 2007 Service: Willis has served as a reviewer for conferences like SIGMOD, VLDB, and journals including VLDBJ and JPDC. His expertise is sought in cloud and database research communities.
Jianfeng Gu is a Ph.D. Candidate and researcher at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), affiliated with the Department of Computer Science and specifically the Chair of Computer Architecture and Parallel Systems led by Prof. Martin Schulz. He maintains an active research profile with numerous publications and contributes to the academic community through teaching seminars on Cloud Computing. His academic path began with a Bachelor of Software Engineering from Sun Yat-sen University in China (2014-2018), followed by a Master of Engineering from the same institution (2018-2020). Since April 2021, he has been pursuing his Ph.D. at TUM, advancing research in computing systems and architectures. Gu's research focuses on Heterogeneous Serverless Computing for Deep Learning applications, specializing in GPU, FPGA, and NPU technologies within serverless environments. His work addresses critical challenges in resource allocation, auto-scaling, and performance optimization for serverless inference systems. Additionally, he investigates Real-time Autonomous Driving Systems , developing advanced perception techniques through sensor fusion (particularly stereo-LiDAR fusion) for high-precision depth sensing and object detection in autonomous vehicles. His interdisciplinary approach bridges hardware acceleration, cloud infrastructure, and AI applications. His publication trajectory shows a progression from foundational computer vision and autonomous driving research (2018-2020) toward increasingly sophisticated work on serverless computing and federated learning (2021-2025). Recent publications focus on efficient resource sharing in heterogeneous serverless environments, with particular attention to GPU and FPGA allocation strategies that maintain service level objectives while optimizing costs. His work demonstrates strong technical depth across multiple computing domains. Best Paper Award at IEEE/ACM DATE 2021 15+ publications with 185+ citations Research featured in top venues for computer architecture and cloud computing As a Ph.D. researcher, Gu teaches seminars on Cloud Computing (IN2107) and contributes to multiple research projects at TUM's Chair of Computer Architecture and Parallel Systems. His work is supported by the department's research infrastructure and collaborations with faculty including Prof. Martin Schulz and Prof. Michael Gerndt. Gu works within TUM's advanced computing research environment, contributing to projects related to high-performance computing, serverless architectures, and autonomous systems. His research group maintains specialized hardware and software infrastructure for evaluating modern HPC architectures and accelerators, including FPGA clusters and GPU resources for deep learning research.
Rakesh Kumar is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science (IDI) at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) , affiliated with the Computer Architecture Lab (CAL) within the Faculty of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering . Prior to joining NTNU, he held postdoctoral and research associate positions at Uppsala University and the University of Edinburgh, and interned at Intel Barcelona Research Center. Research Interests include improving large-scale datacenter efficiency through microarchitecture and memory system optimizations, hardware/software co-designed processors, dynamic code translation, vectorization, and serverless function execution. His work explores ready-aware instruction scheduling, branch prediction organization, and address translation mechanisms. Scientific Contributions span publications at top-tier conferences like MICRO (2024, 2023, 2018, 2016) HPCA (2020, 2019, 2023, 2022) ASPLOS (2018) DATE (2019, 2021) Journal articles appear in ACM Transactions on Computer Systems and IEEE Computer Architecture Letters . Awards include Intel Spontaneous Level II/Excellence Award (2014) Best Presentation Award at HiPC-SS08 (2008) Best Paper Award at National Conference on High Computing Technologies (2008) Distinguished Artifact Award at MICRO 2023 PhD Supervision involves advising students like Roman Kaspar Brunner, Elias Orrem, and Truls Asheim on topics spanning microarchitecture, vector units, and runahead execution policies.
Garth Gibson is a Professor in the Computer Science Department and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science. He serves as Co-Director of the Master of Computational Data Science program and as Associate Dean for Master's Programs. Gibson has been a faculty member at CMU since 1991, after receiving his Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley and a Bachelor of Mathematics in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics from the University of Waterloo. Gibson's research focuses on large-scale parallelism in computer systems, secondary memory system technologies and optimization, scalable file and key-value storage systems, scalable machine learning, and systematic testing for large scale systems. His work bridges theoretical concepts with practical implementations, with a strong emphasis on shepherding technological advances from academic research to commercial reality. He has made significant contributions to RAID technology, network-attached secure disks (NASD), and parallel file systems that have shaped industry standards and products. Gibson's recent publications reveal a strong trend toward data-intensive scalable computing, with increasing focus on machine learning systems, distributed storage solutions, and high-performance computing infrastructure. His research has evolved from foundational storage technologies to address the challenges of petascale and exascale computing environments, with particular attention to the intersection of storage systems and machine learning workloads. The papers demonstrate a consistent theme of addressing system scalability challenges through innovative architectural approaches. Scientific Awards: 2014 Fellow of the IEEE for contributions to the performance and reliability of transformative storage systems 2012 Fellow of the ACM for contributions to the performance and reliability of storage systems 2012 Jean-Claude Laprie Award in Dependable Computing Industrial/Commercial Product Impact Category 2011 SIGOPS Hall of Fame for the SIGMOD88 RAID paper 1999 Reynold B. Johnson Information Storage Award 1999 Allan Newell Award for Research Excellence 1998 Test of Time Award 1991 A.C.M. Doctoral Dissertation Award (tied for second) Gibson has advised numerous graduate students who have gone on to influential positions in both academia and industry, including Swapnil Patil who won first place in the 2010 ACM Graduate Student Research Competition. He has secured significant research funding through initiatives like the DOE Petascale Data Storage Institute and the Intel Science and Technology Center for Cloud Computing. His research has been supported by collaborations with national laboratories including Los Alamos, Sandia, Oak Ridge, Pacific Northwest, and Lawrence Berkeley. Gibson founded CMU's Parallel Data Laboratory (PDL) in 1993, which has grown into a vibrant research community comprising 6-9 faculty members, 2-3 dozen students, and 4-10 staff. The PDL operates with guidance from the Parallel Data Consortium, which includes 15-25 companies interested in parallel data systems. He also founded Panasas Inc. in 1999, a scalable storage cluster company that has deployed technology in national laboratories, energy sectors, and other high-performance computing environments. More recently, Gibson established the Big Learning research group and created the Systems Major curriculum within CMU's Master of Computational Data Science program.
Christina Delimitrou is an Assistant Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Cornell University, where she leads the SAIL research group and is a member of the Computer Systems Laboratory (CSL). She holds the John and Norma Balen Sesquicentennial Faculty Fellowship and will join MIT EECS and CSAIL as a professor starting September 2022. Dr. Delimitrou earned her Ph.D. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, working with Christos Kozyrakis, and completed her undergraduate studies at the National Technical University of Athens. Her research focuses on computer architecture and systems, particularly on improving resource efficiency in large-scale datacenters through QoS-aware scheduling, resource management techniques, efficient server architectures, distributed performance debugging, and cloud security. Her publication record demonstrates consistent high-impact research in datacenter systems, with recurring themes in microservices architecture, machine learning for systems, and QoS-aware resource management. Her work bridges theoretical computer architecture with practical cloud computing challenges, resulting in multiple IEEE Micro TopPicks awards and best paper recognitions at major architecture conferences. Dr. Delimitrou has received numerous prestigious awards including: Sloan Research Fellowship in Computer Science NSF CAREER Award Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship Intel Rising Star Award 2020 IEEE TCCA Young Computer Architect Award Multiple Google Faculty Research Awards Facebook Faculty Research Award Cornell Excellence in Research and Teaching Awards She actively mentors PhD, MS, and undergraduate students in the SAIL research group, focusing on cloud computing and computer architecture. Her research has been supported by significant grants from NSF, Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Intel. She teaches ECE5710: Datacenter Computing at Cornell, exploring hardware, systems software, and distributed systems technology in modern datacenters. The SAIL research group develops innovative solutions for cloud infrastructure challenges, spanning from hardware acceleration to machine learning-driven resource management, with strong emphasis on practical implementation and real-world impact.
Nectarios Koziris is a Professor at the Department of Computer Science , National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) , and former Dean of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering . His research focuses on Parallel and Distributed Systems , Computer Architecture , and Cloud Computing . Key Research Themes: Compiler-OS-Architecture Interaction, Datacenter Hyperconvergence, Sparse Matrix Optimization, Quantum Computing, FPGA Virtualization Leadership: Founder of ~okeanos (Europe's largest public Cloud IaaS), Co-founder of GFOSS , Member of IEEE Computer Society Greece, Advisor to Arrikto Inc. His work has led to over 180 publications with 5800+ citations (h-index 33) , including two Best Paper Awards (IPDPS 2001, CCGRID 2013) and Intel Recognition (2015). He has supervised 12 PhD students and participated in 15+ EU projects as coordinator or consortium partner. Scientific Leadership: Program Co-Chair for Europar 2012 , Organizer for IPDPS , ICPP , SC conferences, and active member in Cloud Computing Expert Groups for the European Commission.
