Willy Emile O Zwaenepoel

Professor Willy Zwaenepoel is a distinguished Belgian computer scientist serving as Professor in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Sydney. He earned his BS and MS in Electrical Engineering from Ghent University in 1979, an MS in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1980, and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1984. His academic career began at Rice University in 1984 as an Assistant Professor, advancing to Associate Professor in 1989, Full Professor in 1993, and holding prestigious chairs including the Noah Harding Chair and Karl F. Hasselmann Chair in Computer Science by 2000. From 2002 to 2018, he was at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), where he served as the inaugural Dean of the School of Computer and Communication Sciences from 2002 to 2011 and continued as Professor. In 2018, he joined the University of Sydney as Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, a position he held until 2024.

Zwaenepoel's research focuses on experimental software systems, with groundbreaking contributions to distributed shared memory, multicast communication, fault tolerance, Internet servers, graph processing, virtualization, and storage systems. His work has profoundly influenced the field, underpinning modern cloud computing and data centers, with over 24,000 citations. He has earned numerous accolades, including IEEE Fellow in 1998, ACM Fellow in 2000, IEEE Tsutomu Kanai Award in 2007, EuroSys Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019, Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering in 2020, IEEE Technical Committee on Distributed Processing Outstanding Technical Achievement Award in 2022, IEEE Harry H. Goode Memorial Award in 2024, and Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2024. His leadership has transformed ICT faculties at EPFL and the University of Sydney into world leaders. Additionally, he has held visiting professorships at institutions such as University of Technology Sydney, INRIA, ETH Zurich, National University of Singapore, and Stanford University.

Professional Email: willy.zwaenepoel@sydney.edu.au