The Laboratory for Advanced System Software (LASS) investigates systems issues for distributed systems ranging from large server clusters to networks of small sensors. Our past and current research has focused on issues in operating systems, distributed systems, networking, mobile systems, web and multimedia. We build prototype systems and understand them using analysis and experimentation.

Research Areas

Our lab comprises of two research groups: distributed systems group and sustainable computing group.

Distributed Systems research

The distributed systems research group focuses on topics in cloud computing, edge computing, data centers, virtualization and data management. Ongoing projects include:

  • Cloud and Edge Research: Serverless computing, Edge AI, and Model-driven resource management
  • Internet of Things (IoT) Research: Sensing, privacy and scale in Pervasive IoT
  • Non-intrusive Mobile Sensing with applications to health and well-being

Sustainable Computing research

The Sustainable Computing research group focuses on computational methods for sustainability and decarbonization of engineered systems and infrastructure. We apply our research to energy grids, built environment, renewables and energy storage, and transportation. We take a systems and data analytics approach to addressing problems in this area. Ongoing projects include:

  • CarbonFirst: Making cloud and edge computing sustainable
  • Decarbonizing Energy Grids and the Built Environment
  • Sustainable transportation: Electric vehicles and ride sharing

LASS Alumni: Our Alums are an exceptionally accomplished group. Two-thirds of our Ph.D. and Post-doc alums have gone to tenure-track faculty positions in academia. Four alums have co-founded startup companies. The rest, including two dozen MS alums, have gone on to successful careers in industry. We are incredibly proud of their accomplishments.

Recent News

  • June 24, 2025
    Congrats to Bhawana Chhaglani for being selected as ACM MobiSys Rising Star!
  • June 19, 2025
    Congrats to Diptyaroop Maji, David Irwin, Prashant Shenoy, and Ramesh Sitaraman for receiving a best paper candidate award for A First Look at Node-Level Curtailment of Renewable Energy and its Implications at ACM e-Energy 2025. (view paper here)
  • May 30, 2025
    Congrats to Priyanka Mary Mammen who successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis.
  • April 14, 2025
    Congrats to Bin Wang who successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis.
  • April 07, 2025
    Congrats to Walid A. Hanafy who successfully defended his Ph.D. thesis.

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