Walid Abdelrahman Hanafy

Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences

UMass, Amherst

Amherst, MA 01002

I am a distributed systems researcher who designs, builds, and evaluates distributed systems for AI workloads across cloud, edge, and IoT platforms. My current research designs resource-efficient and failure-resilient AI systems for resource-constrained edge environments, and it builds energy-efficient and grid-responsive data centers and societal infrastructures. I work with Prof. Prashant Shenoy, funded by the NSF CoDec Project on the computational decarbonization of computing and societal infrastructure.

I received my PhD in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in May 2025. I also hold a Master’s degree in Computer Engineering from Helwan University, Egypt, and a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from the same university.

My work has appeared at top-tier venues, including ASPLOS, SIGMETRICS, INFOCOM, HPDC, e-Energy, SoCC, IoTDI, SEC, and IWQoS.

I am the recipient of the Best Student Paper Award at ACM SIGMETRICS 2024, the Best Paper Award at DCOSS-IoT 2026, the Krithi Ramamritham Computer Science Scholarship 2025, and the Outstanding Innovation Award from Nokia Bell Labs 2021.

For more details, please check out my CV.

I am currently on the 2026-2027 academic job market. Please feel free to reach out!

news

Jun 22, 2026	Our Paper Collaborative Processing for Multi-Tenant Inference on Memory-Constrained Edge TPUs received the best paper award in DCOSS in DCOSS-IoT 2026, Reykjavik, Iceland.
Jun 01, 2026	Our Paper Making Waves: Toward Systems-Level Interpretation of Hormonal and Endogenous Biomarkers in Wastewater-Based Epidemiology was accepted in Water Research Journal.
May 01, 2026	Our Paper FM-CAC: Carbon-Aware Control for Battery-Buffered Edge AI via Time-Series Foundation Models was accepted in ISLPED 2026 IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Low Power Electronics and Design.
Apr 01, 2026	Our Paper Collaborative Processing for Multi-Tenant Inference on Memory-Constrained Edge TPUs was accepted in DCOSS in DCOSS-IoT 2026 Reykjavik, Iceland.
Mar 03, 2026	Our Paper Untangling the Carbon-Cost Tradeoffs and Stampede Effect Challenges in Cloud Computing was accepted in IEEE Transactions on Computers.

Selected Publications

DCOSS-IoT

🏆 Collaborative Processing for Multi-Tenant Inference on Memory-Constrained Edge TPUs

Nathan Ng, Walid A. Hanafy, Prashanthi Kadambi, and 5 more authors

In 2026 22nd International Conference on Distributed Computing in Smart Systems and the Internet of Things (DCOSS-IoT), 2026

Awarded Bib PDF

Best Paper Award DCOSS-IoT 2026

@inproceedings{ng2026:TPUSplit,
  title = {{🏆 Collaborative Processing for Multi-Tenant Inference on Memory-Constrained Edge TPUs}},
  author = {Ng, Nathan and Hanafy, Walid A. and Kadambi, Prashanthi and Sunil, Balachandra and Gupta, Ayush and Irwin, David and Simmhan, Yogesh and Shenoy, Prashant},
  booktitle = {2026 22nd International Conference on Distributed Computing in Smart Systems and the Internet of Things (DCOSS-IoT)},
  year = {2026},
}

IEEE TC

Untangling the Carbon-Cost Tradeoffs and Stampede Effect Challenges in Cloud Computing

Walid A. Hanafy, Thanathorn Sukprasert, Abel Souza, and 2 more authors

IEEE Transactions on Computers, 2026

DOI Bib PDF

@article{Hanafy2026:Untangling,
  author = {Hanafy, Walid A. and Sukprasert, Thanathorn and Souza, Abel and Irwin, David and Shenoy, Prashant},
  journal = {IEEE Transactions on Computers},
  title = {{Untangling the Carbon-Cost Tradeoffs and Stampede Effect Challenges in Cloud Computing}},
  year = {2026},
  volume = {},
  number = {},
  pages = {1-14},
  keywords = {Carbon dioxide;Carbon;Data centers;Cloud computing;Costs;Processor scheduling;Electricity;Carbon footprint;Renewable energy sources;Energy efficiency;Sustainable Computing;Carbon Efficiency;Cloud Computing;Decarbonization Trade-offs},
  doi = {10.1109/TC.2026.3667610},
}

SoCC

FailLite: Failure-Resilient Model Serving for Resource-Constrained Edge Environments

Li Wu, Walid A. Hanafy, Tarek Abdelzaher, and 3 more authors

In Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing, 2025

Bib PDF Code

@inproceedings{Wu2025:FailLite,
  title = {{FailLite: Failure-Resilient Model Serving for Resource-Constrained Edge Environments}},
  author = {Wu, Li and Hanafy, Walid A. and Abdelzaher, Tarek and Irwin, David and Milzman, Jesse and Shenoy, Prashant},
  year = {2025},
  eprint = {2504.15856},
  archiveprefix = {arXiv},
  primaryclass = {cs.DC},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2504.15856},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2025 ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing},
  series = {SoCC'25},
}

ASPLOS

Going Green for Less Green: Optimizing the Cost of Reducing Cloud Carbon Emissions

Walid A. Hanafy, Qianlin Liang, Noman Bashir, and 3 more authors

In Proceedings of the 29th ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, Volume 3, La Jolla, CA, USA, 2024

DOI Bib PDF Code

@inproceedings{hanafy2024gaia,
  author = {Hanafy, Walid A. and Liang, Qianlin and Bashir, Noman and Souza, Abel and Irwin, David and Shenoy, Prashant},
  title = {{Going Green for Less Green: Optimizing the Cost of Reducing Cloud Carbon Emissions}},
  year = {2024},
  isbn = {9798400703867},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3620666.3651374},
  doi = {10.1145/3620666.3651374},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 29th ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, Volume 3},
  pages = {479–496},
  numpages = {18},
  keywords = {sustainable computing, cloud computing},
  location = {La Jolla, CA, USA},
  series = {ASPLOS '24},
}

SIGMETRICS

🏆 CarbonScaler: Leveraging Cloud Workload Elasticity for Optimizing Carbon-Efficiency

Walid A. Hanafy, Qianlin Liang, Noman Bashir, and 2 more authors

SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review, Jun 2024

Awarded DOI Bib PDF Code

Best Student Paper Award SIGMETRICS 2024

@article{hanafy2024carbonscaler,
  author = {Hanafy, Walid A. and Liang, Qianlin and Bashir, Noman and Irwin, David and Shenoy, Prashant},
  title = {{🏆 CarbonScaler: Leveraging Cloud Workload Elasticity for Optimizing Carbon-Efficiency}},
  year = {2024},
  issue_date = {June 2024},
  volume = {52},
  number = {1},
  issn = {0163-5999},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3673660.3655048},
  doi = {10.1145/3673660.3655048},
  journal = {SIGMETRICS Performance Evaluation Review},
  month = jun,
  pages = {49–50},
  numpages = {2},
  keywords = {auto scaling, carbon efficiency, sustainable computing},
}