Rachid Guerraoui

ACM named Rachid Guerraoui the recipient of the inaugural ACM Luiz André Barroso Award for theoretical and applied contributions to distributed computing and impactful work on promoting computer science in Africa. Guerraoui is a Professor in the School of Computer and Communications Sciences at EPFL, where he is also Director of the Distributed Computing Laboratory.

The ACM Luiz André Barroso Award was established to recognize researchers from historically underrepresented communities who have made fundamental contributions to computer science. The award is named after Luiz André Barroso, a Brazilian computer engineer who pioneered the design of the modern data center. Barroso, who grew up in a diverse community, was a strong supporter of equal opportunity for everyone.

Technical Contributions
Rachid Guerraoui has made groundbreaking contributions that have shaped the landscape of distributed computing. Distributed computing is the process of making multiple computers in different locations work together to solve a common problem. A common thread that runs through Guerraoui’s work is providing principled theoretical and practical foundations for distributed computing mechanisms such as transactional memory, agreement protocols, and asynchronous information dissemination algorithms.

His work on e-Transaction and opacity concepts has provided new insights into managing transactions in concurrent environments. By establishing a theory of Transaction Contention Management and developing STMBench7, he has provided tools and frameworks for understanding and optimizing transaction performance.

Guerraoui proposed effective solutions to distributed agreement problems, which he applied to the realm of cryptocurrency. He demonstrated how to build scalable asynchronous abstractions that can support secure and decentralized digital currencies. Furthermore, his work on asynchronous dissemination protocols has paved the way for fully decentralized publish-subscribe systems, enabling efficient and reliable communication in distributed environments. In recent years, Guerraoui has ventured into the exciting field of Byzantine Machine Learning, which seeks to implement large-scale machine learning algorithms in the presence of machine failures. This work has opened new avenues for research at the intersection of machine learning and distributed computing.

Computing in Africa
Beyond his technical contributions, Guerraoui has also been a passionate advocate for computing education in Africa. Born in Morocco, he has been committed to fostering academic excellence on the African continent. By co-initiating the EPFL’s Excellence in Africa program, for example, Guerraoui has promoted the development of junior faculty and graduate students, providing them with opportunities to excel in their research and careers. The program has benefited researchers from Rwanda, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Cameroon, South Africa, Tanzania, Tunisia, and Morocco. His involvement in the creation of the UM6P College of Computing in Morocco has further expanded access to high-quality computer science education in the region.

Additionally, Guerraoui has played a key role in fostering collaboration and exchange among African computer science researchers through the Netys conference, which he also co-initiated and is held in Morocco. Netys is an exchange forum for African computing researchers who cannot easily travel to the US and Europe because of visas and financial issues.