SOSP Doctoral Workshop 2026
(SysDW '26)
September 29, 2026 · 09:00–12:00 · Aquarius — View the program
The second Doctoral Workshop (SysDW'26) will provide a forum for PhD students to present their work and receive constructive feedback from experts in the field, as well as from peers. The workshop will also offer a platform for senior graduate students/recent graduates/postdocs to showcase their research to other community members as a way to help their job search. Technical presentations will be augmented with keynotes and panels offering general advice and discussions for students in all stages of their career. SysDW'26 will also offer the opportunity for mentoring.
The idea is to give graduate students/recent graduates/postdocs a chance to talk one-on-one (or, in some cases, one-on-two) about their research with outstanding researchers beyond those available at the students' universities.
September 29, 2026 · 09:00–12:00 · Room Aquarius
All times are local to Prague. The SysDW program starts at 09:00.
The coffee break is at 10:00–10:30.
| Time | Session / Presentation |
|---|---|
| 09:00–09:05 | Welcome & Introduction Redha Gouicem and Erci Xu |
| 09:05–09:40 | Keynote 1 Adam Barker Title TBA |
| 09:40–09:50 | Research Statement Shailesh Mishra Recovery, Accountability, and Uniqueness in Digital Identity Systems |
| 09:50–10:00 | Research Statement Neil Giridharan Performance-stable distributed systems |
| 10:00–10:30 | Coffee Break |
| 10:30–11:05 | Keynote 2 Xiaosong Ma Title TBA |
| 11:05–11:13 | Work-in-Progress Daniel Qian Assuring Correctness for Agentic Synthesis of Distributed Systems |
| 11:13–11:21 | Work-in-Progress Austin Tan et al. There is More Consensus in Regulated Scheduling |
| 11:21–11:29 | Work-in-Progress Shistata Subedi HotSwap: Workload-Adaptive Placement for Authenticated State |
| 11:29–11:37 | Work-in-Progress Tara Aggoun et al. VoliMap: Optimizing Key-Value Store Performance by Leveraging Userland Page Tables |
| 11:37–11:45 | Work-in-Progress Rui Pedro Oliveira Enabling easy-to-use and high-performance user-space storage I/O for applications |
| 11:45–11:53 | Work-in-Progress Maxime Vanliefde et al. Reconciling Genericity and High Performance in Sequence Processing on Modern Hardware |
| 11:53–12:00 | Open Discussion & Closing Remarks Redha Gouicem and Erci Xu |
Names listed for multi-author submissions are provisional pending presenter confirmation. Keynote titles will be announced.
Slide counts are suggestions, not requirements. We encourage presenters to conclude with one specific question on which they would welcome feedback. Please respect the presentation time so that every speaker has time for discussion.
Please arrive by 08:50 to check your slides and bring a PDF backup. For submissions with multiple authors, please confirm the presenter with the workshop chairs.
The goal of the workshop is to provide feedback and advice to PhD students in all stages of their career both on technical aspects of their research as well as career development. We expect a range of participants such as the presenters' peers, as well as senior researchers who will attend to share their expertise and provide constructive feedback. The idea is to create opportunities for students to meet with peers outside of their home institution, to get technical feedback as well as career advice from senior researchers in their field, to find out about internship and job opportunities, and to articulate their own work in a public, non-threatening forum. We encourage the participants to stay for the duration of the SOSP main conference.
We will accept two types of submissions:
Research topics of interest cover computing systems in the broadest sense, including work on formal foundations, as well as the design, implementation and evaluation of real systems. More specifically, research topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
Note: the workshop is not a venue for publication; there will be no published proceedings. Work-in-progress or simultaneous submissions are allowed (and in fact encouraged) from the perspective of SysDW'26.
If you would like to participate in the workshop, please submit your materials before the deadline. Submissions will receive written feedback from the PC, but the submission process is very lightweight and the main purpose is to put together the program and to match students with mentors.
Submission site: https://sysdw26.hotcrp.com/
For work-in-progress abstracts, submissions should be up to 2 pages (including title and figures but excluding references) and should only include the following sections:
Submissions will be assessed based on the importance, clarity, and relevance to SOSP of the research problem, excellent understanding of the core related work, a realistic and clear roadmap to work completion towards the PhD, and the overall quality of the submitted paper.
For research statements, submissions should be up to 3 pages (including title and figures but excluding references).
Please note that there will be no published proceedings. Submissions shall be in .pdf, 2-column, single-spaced, 10pt format.
You can contact the workshop chairs at ercixu@sjtu.edu.cn and gouicem@os.rwth-aachen.de with any questions or concerns.