Ariel Szekely
- Ph.D. in Computer Science from MIT
- Advisors: Frans Kaashoek and Robert Morris
-
email: arielck
atmitdotedu - interests: Distributed Systems, Operating Systems, Security
- cv: [pdf]
- github: [ArielSzekely]
- google scholar: [profile]
Bio
I recently completed my Computer Science Ph.D. in the PDOS group at MIT, where I was supported by an MIT Lemelson Presidential Fellowship and an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. I like to hack on Distributed Systems and Operating Systems. Generally, I am interested in making cloud computing more efficient, and making cloud applications easier to program.
Previously, I was an undergraduate student in the Turing Scholars Honors Program at the University of Texas at Austin. During my time there, I was fortunate to do some work on GPU timing side-channels and accelerator virtualization for OS kernels under the superb guidance of Emmett Witchel and Christopher J Rossbach.
Outside of research I'm an avid soccer player, a jazz pianist, and a proud Mexican immigrant. If you want to kick a ball around, jam, or make some guacamole, send me an email!
Selected Publications
SigmaOS: a Cloud OS with a Unified API for Serverless and
Microservice Applications
[pdf]
Ariel Szekely.
Ph.D. Thesis, MIT 2026
Accelerating cloud application cold-start with initscripts
[pdf]
Ariel Szekely, Hannah Gross,
Robert Morris,
M. Frans Kaashoek.
Preprint
Unifying serverless and microservice tasks with SigmaOS
[pdf]
Ariel Szekely, Adam Belay,
Robert Morris,
M. Frans Kaashoek.
SOSP 2024
Towards a Machine Learning-Assisted Kernel with LAKE
[pdf]
Henrique Fingler, Isha Tarte,
Hangchen Yu, Ariel Szekely, Bodun Hu,
Aditya Akella,
Christopher J. Rossbach.
ASPLOS 2023
Telekine: Secure Computing with Cloud GPUs
[pdf]
Tyler Hunt,
Zhipeng Jia,
Vance Miller,
Ariel Szekely, Yige Hu,
Christopher J. Rossbach,
Emmett Witchel.
NSDI 2020
Awards
- NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (2022)
- MIT Lemelson Presidential Fellowship (2020)
- MIT EECS Departmental Fellowship (2020)
- Dean's Honored Graduate, UT Austin College of Natural Sciences (2020)
- Research Distinction, UT Austin College of Natural Sciences (2020)
- NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Honorable Mention (2020)
- Computing Research Association Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Honorable Mention (2020)
- National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates (2019)
- UT Unrestricted Endowed Presidential Scholarship (2019)
- UT College of Natural Sciences College Scholar (2018,2019,2020)
- Louis E. Rosier Memorial Scholarship (2018)
- UT College of Natural Sciences Freshman Scholarship (2016)
- National Merit Scholarship (2016)
Mentorship
I have been extremely fortunate to advise some very talented students during my time at MIT:
| Year | Student | Degree | Thesis Title |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | Nicolas Camenisch | M.Eng. | Fork Around and Find Out: Accelerating Dynamic Language Runtimes in SigmaOS via Lightweight Container Forking |
| 2026 | Nathan Mustafa | M.Eng. | Efficient RDMA for SigmaOS |
| 2025 | Ivy Wu | M.Eng. | Interposing the syscall boundary: Transparent Python execution in SigmaOS |
| 2025 | Ryan Chang | M.Eng. | Optimizing SigmaOS for efficient orchestration of fault-tolerant, burst-parallel workloads |
| 2025 | Freddie Tang | M.Eng. | Accelerating Burst Parallelism of SigmaOS processes with CRIU |
| 2025 | Katie Liu | M.Eng. | Enabling efficient ML inference in SigmaOS with model-aware scheduling |
| 2024 | Kevin S. Chen | M.Eng. | ICσOS: σOS for Intercloud Environments |
| 2023 | Yizheng He | M.Sc. | Evaluating SigmaOS with Kubernetes for orchestrating microservice and serverless applications |
Service
- EECS Communication Lab Fellow (2022)
- SOSP 2021 Artifact Evaluation Committee
- MIT Graduate Application Assistance Program (2020, 2021, 2022)
- MIT AI Undergraduate Mentorship Program (2020)
Teaching Experience (TA)
| Institution | Semester | Course Title | Course Number |
|---|---|---|---|
| MIT | Spring 2023 | Computer Systems Security | 6.5660 |
| MIT | Fall 2022 | Operating Systems Engineering | 6.1810 |
| UT Austin | Spring 2020 | Introduction to CS Research (Honors) | cs178h |
| UT Austin | Spring 2020 | Concurrency (Honors) | cs378h |
| UT Austin | Spring 2019 | Introduction to CS Research (Honors) | cs178h |
News
- 08/2026: I completed my Ph.D. in Computer Science at MIT!
- 08/05/2026: I successfully defended my PhD thesis!
- 2024: Our paper Unifying serverless and microservice tasks with SigmaOS was accepted to SOSP 2024!
- 03/19/2020: Excited to join the PDOS group as I start my Ph.D. at MIT in Fall 2020!
- 02/03/2020: Admitted to some Ph.D. programs!
- 12/15/2019: Applying to Ph.D. programs!