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.
Recent news: (click here for full news history)Experience
Assistant Professor (2021-Present)
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of British Columbia
Lecturer - 2020-2021
Department of Computer Science, Princeton University
Research Assistant - 2015-2020
Parallel Research Group, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Princeton University
Research Intern - Summer 2019
Microsoft Research Montréal
Research Intern - Spring 2018
Systems Research Group, Microsoft Research Redmond
Research Intern - Fall 2017
Systems Research Group, Microsoft Research Redmond
Research Intern - Summer 2013
Processor Architecture Laboratory (LAP), EPFL
Education
Ph.D., Electrical Engineering (2016-2020)
Princeton University, Princeton
Advisor: Professor David Wentzlaff
Dissertation: Resource-Efficient Management of Large-Scale Public Cloud Systems
M.A., Electrical Engineering (2014-2016)
Princeton University, Princeton
Advisor: Professor David Wentzlaff
B.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
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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) -
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) -
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)
Star Fork Download -
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)
Star Fork Download -
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)
Star Fork Download -
VectorVisor: A Binary Translation Scheme for Throughput-Oriented GPU Acceleration
S. Ginzburg, M. Shahrad, and M. Freedman
2023 USENIX Annual Technical Conference (ATC '23)
Star Fork Download -
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) -
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) -
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 -
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 -
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) -
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) -
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) -
Symmetric Split-Row LDPC Decoders
M. Shahrad and M. Shabany
2017 IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems (ISCAS '17) -
Availability Knob: Flexible User-Defined Availability in the Cloud
M. Shahrad and D. Wentzlaff
7th ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing (SoCC '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) -
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 -
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
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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) -
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) -
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) -
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) -
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
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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) -
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) -
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) -
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
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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
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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
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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
- Fall '24: CPEN 221 - Principles of Software Construction, UBC
- Spring '24: CPEN 534 - Trade-offs in Designing Computer Systems, UBC
- Fall '23: CPEN 221 - Principles of Software Construction, UBC
- Spring '23: EECE 571H - Trade-offs in Designing Computer Systems, UBC
- Fall '22: CPEN 221 - Principles of Software Construction, UBC
- Spring '22: EECE 571H - Trade-offs in Designing Computer Systems, UBC
- Fall '21: CPEN 221 - Principles of Software Construction, UBC
- Spring '21: COS375/ELE375 - Computer Architecture and Organization, Princeton University
- Fall '20: COS318 - Operating Systems, Princeton University