ETH Zurich Systems Group
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| ETH Zurich Systems Group | |
|---|---|
| Name | ETH Zurich Systems Group |
| Established | 2000s |
| Location | Zürich, Switzerland |
| Institution | ETH Zurich |
| Director | Robert Gehring |
ETH Zurich Systems Group is a research and education unit within ETH Zurich focused on large-scale computer_science systems, distributed systems_engineering, and cyber-physical integration. The group integrates experimental work with theoretical foundations, engaging with international partners such as Microsoft Research, Google Research, IBM Research, NASA, and CERN while training students who go on to positions at Amazon (company), Facebook, Apple Inc., and academia including University of Cambridge and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
History
The group traces roots to faculty hiring waves at ETH Zurich and collaborations with European projects like FP7 and Horizon 2020, evolving alongside labs at University of Zürich and research centers such as Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology and Paul Scherrer Institute. Early influences included systems work from groups at Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, and partnerships with industrial research labs including Bell Labs and Xerox PARC. Over time the group aligned with initiatives led by European Research Council grants, multinational consortia with Siemens, ABB and spin-offs linked to ETH Zurich Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab.
Research Areas
Primary themes encompass distributed operating_systems design with inspiration from projects at MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, scalable database architectures studied at Google Bigtable teams, and fault-tolerant control influenced by DARPA programs and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Work spans cloud-native platforms paralleling efforts at Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, networked embedded_systems with ties to ETH Zurich's D-ITET, and secure computation aligned with research from Cryptography Research Inc. and labs at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. Cross-disciplinary research connects to robotics groups at ETH Zurich's Robotics Systems Lab and to sensor networks like those in Smart Cities projects coordinated with City of Zürich.
Educational Programs
The group contributes to ETH Zurich undergraduate courses and master's modules that mirror curricula from University of Oxford and Imperial College London, supervising doctoral candidates in programs funded by Swiss National Science Foundation and European Molecular Biology Organization fellowships. Students participate in summer schools aligned with ACM SIGOPS and workshop series run with USENIX, often co-teaching with visiting scholars from Princeton University and Technical University of Munich. The group supports internships through links to Google Summer of Code, industry placements at IBM, and exchange programs with Tsinghua University.
Facilities and Tools
Experimental infrastructure includes cloud testbeds comparable to those used by OpenStack projects and hardware labs similar to setups at ETH Zurich's Future Cities Laboratory, featuring high-performance clusters inspired by designs from Cray and Hewlett-Packard. The group maintains instrumentation for network emulation akin to NS-3 environments, real-time control benches influenced by National Instruments standards, and fabrication collaboration with FabLab Zürich and cleanroom facilities at Paul Scherrer Institute. Software toolchains reference frameworks from Docker, Kubernetes, TensorFlow, and benchmarking suites used by SPEC.
Collaborations and Industry Partnerships
Partners include multinational firms such as Siemens, ABB, Microsoft, Amazon (company), and startups spun out via ETH Zurich Innovation and Entrepreneurship Lab and Venture Kick. Academic collaborations span Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, University of Cambridge, École Polytechnique, Technical University of Munich, and North American hubs like University of Toronto and Cornell University. The group engages in consortia funded by European Commission projects and bilateral programs with Japan Science and Technology Agency and National Science Foundation grants.
Notable Projects and Publications
Projects range from distributed consensus experiments building on Paxos and Raft paradigms to large-scale measurement studies in the vein of work from CAIDA and RIPE NCC. Publications appear in venues such as ACM SIGCOMM, USENIX NSDI, IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, and Communications of the ACM, and include collaborations with researchers from ETH Zurich's Laboratory for Information and Inference Systems and Swiss Data Science Center. Contributions include open-source systems influenced by Linux Foundation projects and datasets shared with archives like Zenodo.
Awards and Recognition
Faculty and students have received honors from bodies including the Swiss National Science Foundation, European Research Council Advanced Grants, ACM awards, and prizes from industry partners such as Siemens and ABB. The group's members have been invited to keynote at IEEE INFOCOM, ACM SOSP, and USENIX FAST, and elected to societies including IEEE, ACM Fellows, and national academies like the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences.