I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of British Columbia (UBC) and an Associate Faculty Member of UBC's Department of Computer Science. My research focuses on building more efficient and sustainable large-scale computing systems. I am an enthusiastic, hands-on researcher with experience in multiple layers of abstraction, from circuits to large-scale cloud systems. My primary research domain is cloud resource management, more recently in the context of serverless systems. I lead the UBC Cloud Infrastructure Research for Reliability, Usability, and Sustainability (CIRRUS) Lab.

Openings in My Research Group

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Experience

University of British Columbia logo Assistant Professor (2021-Present)
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of British Columbia

Princeton University logo Lecturer - 2020-2021
Department of Computer Science, Princeton University

Princeton University logo Research Assistant - 2015-2020
Parallel Research Group, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Princeton University

Microsoft logo Research Intern - Summer 2019
Microsoft Research Montréal

Microsoft logo Research Intern - Spring 2018
Systems Research Group, Microsoft Research Redmond

Microsoft logo Research Intern - Fall 2017
Systems Research Group, Microsoft Research Redmond

EPFL logo Research Intern - Summer 2013
Processor Architecture Laboratory (LAP), EPFL

Education

Princeton University logoPh.D., Electrical Engineering (2016-2020)
Princeton University, Princeton
Advisor: Professor David Wentzlaff
Dissertation: Resource-Efficient Management of Large-Scale Public Cloud Systems

Princeton University logoM.A., Electrical Engineering (2014-2016)
Princeton University, Princeton
Advisor: Professor David Wentzlaff

Sharif University of Technology logoB.Sc., Electrical Engineering (2010-2014)
Sharif University of Technology, Tehran
Advisor: Professor Mahdi Shabany. 1st rank of class of 2014 in Digital Systems major.

Publications   [Scholar] [DBLP]

Conference Proceedings | Workshop Papers | Journal Papers | Preprints
  🏆: won an award |   ⚙️: deployed in production |   📰: major press coverage |   ✉️: invited

Conference Proceedings

  1. Growlithe: A Developer-Centric Compliance Tool for Serverless Applications
    P. Gupta, A. Moghimi, D. Sisodraker, M. Shahrad, and A. Mehta
    46th IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy (IEEE S&P '25)
  2. The Sunk Carbon Fallacy: Rethinking Carbon Footprint Metrics for Effective Carbon-Aware Scheduling
    N. Bashir, V. Gohil, A. B. Subramanya, M. Shahrad, D. Irwin, E. Olivetti, and C. Delimitrou
    15th ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing (SoCC '24)
  3. Caribou: Fine-Grained Geospatial Shifting of Serverless Applications for Sustainability
    V. Gsteiger, P. H. Long, Y. Sun, P. Javanrood, and M. Shahrad
    30th ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP '24)
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  4. Parrotfish: Parametric Regression for Optimizing Serverless Functions
    A. Moghimi, J. Hattori, A. Li, M. Ben Chikha, and M. Shahrad
    14th ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing (SoCC '23)
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  5. UnFaaSener: Latency and Cost Aware Offloading of Functions from Serverless Platforms 
    G. Sadeghian, M. Elsakhawy, M. Shahrad, J. Hattori, and M. Shahrad
    2023 USENIX Annual Technical Conference (ATC '23)
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  6. VectorVisor: A Binary Translation Scheme for Throughput-Oriented GPU Acceleration 
    S. Ginzburg, M. Shahrad, and M. Freedman
    2023 USENIX Annual Technical Conference (ATC '23)
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  7. On Merits and Viability of Multi-Cloud Serverless   
    A. Fatahi Baarzi, G. Kesidis, C. Joe-Wong, and M. Shahrad
    12th ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing (SoCC '21)
  8. Provisioning Differentiated Last-Level Cache Allocations to VMs in Public Clouds 
    M. Shahrad, S. Elnikety, and R. Bianchini
    12th ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing (SoCC '21)
  9. Serverless in the Wild: Characterizing and Optimizing the Serverless Workload at a Large Cloud Provider 🏆⚙️📰   
    M. Shahrad, R. Fonseca, I. Goiri, G. Chaudhry, P. Batum, J. Cooke, E. Laureano, C. Tresness, M. Russinovich, and R. Bianchini
    2020 USENIX Annual Technical Conference (ATC '20)
    [🏆 Received the Community Award at USENIX ATC '20.]
    Azure Functions Trace:   Star   Fork   Download
  10. Architectural Implications of Function-as-a-Service Computing   
    M. Shahrad, J. Balkind, and D. Wentzlaff
    IEEE/ACM 52nd International Symposium on Microarchitecture (MICRO '19)
    FaaSProfiler:   Star   Fork   Download
  11. Burstable Instances for Clouds: Performance Modeling, Equilibrium Analysis, and Revenue Maximization   
    Y. Jiang, M. Shahrad, D. Wentzlaff, D. Tsang, and C. Joe-Wong
    IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM '19)
  12. Power and Energy Characterization of an Open Source 25-core Manycore Processor   
    M. McKeown, A. Lavrov, M. Shahrad, P. Jackson, Y. Fu, J. Balkind, T. Nguyen, K. Lim, Y. Zhou, and D. Wentzlaff
    24th IEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture (HPCA '18)
  13. Incentivizing Self-Capping to Increase Cloud Utilization   
    M. Shahrad, C. Klein, L. Zheng, M. Chiang, E. Elmroth, and D. Wentzlaff
    8th ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing (SoCC '17)
  14. Symmetric Split-Row LDPC Decoders
    M. Shahrad and M. Shabany
    2017 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS '17)
  15. Availability Knob: Flexible User-Defined Availability in the Cloud   
    M. Shahrad and D. Wentzlaff
    7th ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing (SoCC '16)
  16. Piton: A 25-core Academic Manycore Processor 📰
    M. McKeown, Y. Fu, T. Nguyen, Y. Zhou, J. Balkind, A. Lavrov, M. Shahrad, S. Payne, and D. Wentzlaff
    2016 IEEE Hot Chips 28 Symposium (HCS)
  17. OpenPiton: An Open Source Manycore Research Framework  
    J. Balkind, M. McKeown, Y. Fu, T. Nguyen, Y. Zhou, A. Lavrov, M. Shahrad, A. Fuchs, S. Payne, X. Liang, M. Matl, and D. Wentzlaff
    21st International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems (ASPLOS '16)
    OpenPiton:   Star   Fork   Download
  18. TTCN: A New Approach for Low-Power Split-Row LDPC Decoders  
    M. Shahrad and M. Shabany
    2015 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS '15)

Workshop Papers

  1. Bridging the Sustainability Gap in Serverless through Observability and Carbon-Aware Pricing
    C. Lin and M. Shahrad
    3rd Workshop on Sustainable Computer Systems (HotCarbon '24)
  2. OpenPiton: An Emerging Standard for Open-Source EDA Tool Development
    J. Balkind, A. Lavrov, M. McKeown, Y. Fu, T. Nguyen, M. Shahrad, et al.
    2018 Workshop on Open-Source EDA Technology (WOSET '18)
  3. Acoustic Denial of Service Attacks on Hard Disk Drives 📰
    M. Shahrad, A. Mosenia, L. Song, M. Chiang, D. Wentzlaff, and P. Mittal
    2018 ACM CCS Workshop on Attacks and Solutions in Hardware Security (CCS ASHES '18)
  4. Towards Deploying Decommissioned Mobile Devices as Cheap Energy-Efficient Compute Nodes 📰
    M. Shahrad and D. Wentzlaff
    9th USENIX Workshop on Hot Topics in Cloud Computing (HotCloud '17)
  5. Designing a Complex 25-Core Academic Processor
    D. Wentzlaff, M. Mckeown, Y. Fu, T. Nguyen, Y. Zhou, J. Balkind, A. Lavrov, M. Shahrad, and S. Payne
    2015 6th Workshop on Architectural Research Prototyping (WARP), Portland

Journal Papers

  1. Isocotoin suppresses hepatitis E virus replication through inhibition of heat shock protein 90   
    I. Nimgaonkar, N. F. Archer, I. Becher, M. Shahrad, R. A. LeDesma, A. Mateus, J. Caballero-Gómez, A. R. Berneshawi, Q. Ding, F. Douam, J. M. Gaska, M. M. Savitski, H. Kim, and A. Ploss
    Antiviral Research, January 2021 (Vol. 185)
  2. Characterization and Optimization of the Serverless Workload at a Large Cloud Provider ✉️
    M. Shahrad, R. Fonseca, I. Goiri, G. Irfan, and R. Bianchini
    USENIX ;login:, Winter 2020 (Vol. 45, No. 4)
  3. Burstable Instances for Clouds: Performance Modeling, Equilibrium Analysis, and Revenue Maximization
    Y. Jiang, M. Shahrad, D. Wentzlaff, D. Tsang, and C. Joe-Wong
    IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON), December 2020 (Vol. 28, Iss. 6)
  4. OpenPiton at 5: A Nexus For Open And Agile Hardware Design
    J. Balkind, T. Chang, P. Jackson, G. Tziantzioulis, A. Li, F. Gao, A. Lavrov, G. Chirkov, J. Tu, M. Shahrad, and D. Wentzlaff
    IEEE Micro, July/Aug 2020
  5. OpenPiton: an Open Source Hardware Platform for Your Research ✉️
    J. Balkind, M. McKeown, Y. Fu, T. Nguyen, Y. Zhou, A. Lavrov, M. Shahrad, A. Fuchs, S. Payne, X. Liang, M. Matl, and D. Wentzlaff
    Communications of the ACM (CACM), December 2019
  6. Piton: A Manycore Processor for Multi-Tenant Clouds
    M. McKeown, Y. Fu, T. Nguyen, Y. Zhou, J. Balkind, A. Lavrov, M. Shahrad, S. Payne, and D. Wentzlaff
    IEEE Micro, March/April 2017

Preprints

  1. Decomposing and Executing Serverless Applications as Resource Graphs   
    Z. Guo, Z. Blanco, M. Shahrad, Z. Wei, B. Dong, J. Li, I. Pota, H. Xu, and Y. Zhang
    arXiv:2206

Teaching

Selected Coverage on Research

Google Cloud - UBC research team develops framework to save costs for serverless computing
The coverage of our ATC 2020 paper by Mikhail Shilkov
The Morning Paper coverage of our ATC 2020 paper
My interview with the Top of Mind radio show
Princeton Alumni Weekly's coverage of our HotCloud 2017 paper
HelpNetSecurity's coverag of our HDD acoustic attacks study
Bleeping Computer's coverag of our HDD acoustic attacks study
The coverag of our HDD acoustic attacks study by Schneier on Security blog
Princeton University coverage of our HotCloud 2017 paper
My intreview with the Spark show on the CBC Canadian Public radio
The Observer's coverage of our HotCloud 2017 paper
The Morning Paper coverage of our HotCloud 2017 paper
Princeton University's covergar of Piton processor
PCWorld's coverage of Piton processor
Another coverage of Piton processor