I am a lecturer and researcher in Computer Science at EPFL. My research activities are associated with the Scalable Computing Systems laboratory, led by Prof. Anne-Marie Kermarrec, and focuses on systems solutions for enhancing security, privacy, efficiency and frugality in distributed systems, nowadays applied to machine learning.

Teaching

Course Title Course Code Faculty Semester(s) Taught
Information, Computation, Communication CS-119(k) • Chemistry and Chemical Engineering
• Environmental Sciences and Engineering		 Spring 2025-26
CS-119(g) • Life Sciences Engineering Fall 2025
Introduction to programming CS-107 • Computer Science
• Communication Systems		 Fall 2024-25
Project-oriented programming COM-112(a) • Electrical and Electronics Engineering
• Microengineering		 Spring 2026

Service

Year Role Venue / Journal
2026 Program Committee Middleware'26, DSN'26
2025 Program Committee DICG@ICDCS'25
Ad-hoc Reviewer IEEE OJ-COMS, IEEE TDSC
2024 Keynote Speaker METIS'24
Program Committee NETYS'24, EuroDW'24, SBSeg'24, WTICG@SBRC'24
External Reviewer Middleware'24
Ad-hoc Reviewer IEEE TDSC, IEEE TIFS
2023 Submission Chair EuroSys'23
Program Committee SRDS'23, DICG@Middleware'23, WTICG@SBSeg'23
2022 Submission Chair EuroSys'22
Program Committee DICG@Middleware'22, SF@SBSeg'22
2021 Ad-hoc Reviewer IEEE Internet Computing

Assistant Reviewer: PODC'16, SRDS'16, DSN'18, Middleware'18, PPoPP'19, EuroSys'19, ATC'19, DSN'19, SRDS'19, Middleware'19, ASPLOS'19, DSN'20, OSDI'20, Middleware'20, PODC'21, EuroSys'21, DSN'23, EuroSys'24

Publications

International Conferences and Workshops

Leveraging approximate caching for faster retrieval-augmented generation (to appear)
Shai Bergman, Zhang Ji, Anne-Marie Kermarrec, Diana Petrescu, Rafael Pires, Mathis Randl, Martijn de Vos Middleware '25. 26th ACM/IFIP International Middleware Conference. Nashville - USA, 2025
   
Boosting asynchronous decentralized learning with model fragmentation
Sayan Biswas, Anne-Marie Kermarrec, Alexis Marouani, Rafael Pires, Rishi Sharma, Martijn de Vos The Web Conference (WWW '25). Sydney - Australia, 2025
   
Noiseless privacy-preserving decentralized learning
Sayan Biswas, Mathieu Even, Anne-Marie Kermarrec, Laurent Massoulié, Rafael Pires, Rishi Sharma, Martijn de Vos Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS '25), The 25th. Washington DC - USA, 2025
   
Low-cost privacy-aware decentralized learning
Sayan Biswas, Davide Frey, Romaric Gaudel, Anne-Marie Kermarrec, Dimitri Lerévérend, Rafael Pires, Rishi Sharma, François Taïani Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium (PETS '25), The 25th. Washington DC - USA, 2025
   
Leveraging approximate caching for faster retrieval-augmented generation
Shai Bergman, Zhang Ji, Anne-Marie Kermarrec, Diana Petrescu, Rafael Pires, Mathis Randl, Martijn de Vos Machine Learning and Systems (EuroMLSys'25), 5th Workshop on, Rotterdam - Netherlands, 2025
   
Efficient federated search for retrieval-augmented generation
Rachid Guerraoui, Anne-Marie Kermarrec, Diana Petrescu, Rafael Pires, Mathis Randl, Martijn de Vos Machine Learning and Systems (EuroMLSys'25), 5th Workshop on, Rotterdam - Netherlands, 2025
   
Accelerating MoE model inference with expert sharding
Oana Balmau, Anne-Marie Kermarrec, Rafael Pires, André Loureiro Espírito Santo, Martijn de Vos, Milos Vujasinovic Machine Learning and Systems (EuroMLSys'25), 5th Workshop on, Rotterdam - Netherlands, 2025
   
Harnessing increased client participation with cohort-parallel federated learning
Akash Dhasade, Anne-Marie Kermarrec, Tuan-Anh Nguyen, Rafael Pires, Martijn de Vos Machine Learning and Systems (EuroMLSys'25), 5th Workshop on, Rotterdam - Netherlands, 2025
   
Efficient Pyramidal Analysis of Gigapixel Images on a Decentralized Modest Computer Cluster
Marie Reinbigler, Rishi Sharma, Rafael Pires, Elisabeth Brunet, Anne-Marie Kermarrec, Catalin Fetita Parallel and Distributed Computing (Euro-Par'25), 31st International European Conference on, Dresden - Germany, 2025
   
Revisiting ensembling in one-shot federated learning
Youssef Allouah, Akash Dhasade, Rachid Guerraoui, Nirupam Gupta, Anne-Marie Kermarrec, Rafael Pinot, Rafael Pires, Rishi Sharma Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2024), 38th Annual Conference on, Vancouver - Canada, 2024
   
Epidemic Learning: Boosting decentralized learning with randomized communication
Martijn de Vos, Sadegh Farhadkhani, Rachid Guerraoui, Anne-Marie Kermarrec, Rafael Pires, Rishi Sharma Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2023), 37th Annual Conference on, New Orleans - USA, 2023
   
Get more for less in decentralized learning systems
Akash Dhasade, Anne-Marie Kermarrec, Rafael Pires, Rishi Sharma, Milos Vujasinovic, Jeffrey Wigger Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS '23), 43rd IEEE International Conference on, Hong Kong - China, 2023
   
Decentralized learning made easy with DecentralizePy
Akash Dhasade, Anne-Marie Kermarrec, Rafael Pires, Rishi Sharma, Milos Vujasinovic Machine Learning and Systems (EuroMLSys'23), 3rd Workshop on, Rome - Italy, 2023
   
TEE-based decentralized recommender systems: The raw data sharing redemption
Akash Dhasade, Nevena Dresevic, Anne-Marie Kermarrec, Rafael Pires Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS '22), 36th IEEE International, Lyon - France, 2022
   
NVCache: A plug-and-play NVMM-based I/O booster for legacy systems
Rémi Dulong, Rafael Pires, Andreia Correia, Valerio Schiavoni, Pedro Ramalhete, Pascal Felber, Gaël Thomas Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN '21). 51st IEEE International Conference on, Taipei - Taiwan, 2021
   
Trust management as a service: Enabling trusted execution in the face of Byzantine stakeholders
Franz Gregor, Wojciech Ozga, Sébastien Vaucher, Rafael Pires, Do Le Quoc, Sergei Arnautov, André Martin, Valerio Schiavoni, Pascal Felber, Christof Fetzer Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN '20). 50th IEEE International Conference on, Valencia - Spain, 2020
 
Anonymous and confidential file sharing over untrusted clouds
Stefan Contiu, Sébastien Vaucher, Rafael Pires, Marcelo Pasin, Pascal Felber, Laurent Réveillère Reliable Distributed Systems (SRDS '19). 38th IEEE International Symposium on, Lyon - France, 2019
   
Supply chain malware targets SGX: Take care of what you sign
Andrei Mogage, Rafael Pires, Vlad Crăciun, Pascal Felber, Emanuel Onica Reliable Distributed Systems (SRDS '19). 38th IEEE International Symposium on, Lyon - France, 2019
 
Security, performance and energy trade-offs of hardware-assisted memory protection mechanisms
Christian Göttel, Rafael Pires, Isabelly Rocha, Sébastien Vaucher, Pascal Felber, Marcelo Pasin, Valerio Schiavoni Reliable Distributed Systems (SRDS '18). 37th IEEE International Symposium on, Salvador - Brazil, 2018
 
CYCLOSA: Decentralizing private web search through SGX-based browser extensions
Rafael Pires, David Goltzsche, Sonia Ben Mokhtar, Sara Bouchenak, Antoine Boutet, Pascal Felber, Rüdiger Kapitza, Marcelo Pasin, Valerio Schiavoni Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS '18). 38th IEEE International Conference on, Vienna - Austria, 2018
 
SGX-aware container orchestration for heterogeneous clusters
Sébastien Vaucher, Rafael Pires, Pascal Felber, Marcelo Pasin, Valerio Schiavoni, Christof Fetzer Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS '18). 38th IEEE International Conference on, Vienna - Austria, 2018
   
IBBE-SGX: Cryptographic group access control using trusted execution environments
Stefan Contiu, Rafael Pires, Sébastien Vaucher, Marcelo Pasin, Pascal Felber, Laurent Réveillère Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN '18). 48th IEEE/IFIP International Conference on, Luxembourg, 2018
   
X-Search: Revisiting private web search using intel SGX
Sonia Ben Mokhtar, Antoine Boutet, Pascal Felber, Marcelo Pasin, Rafael Pires, Valerio Schiavoni Middleware '17. 18th International Middleware Conference, Las Vegas - USA, 2017
   
SecureStreams: A reactive middleware framework for secure data stream processing
Aurélien Havet, Rafael Pires, Pascal Felber, Marcelo Pasin, Romain Rouvoy, Valerio Schiavoni
Distributed and Event-based Systems (DEBS'17). 11th ACM International Conference on, Barcelona - Spain, 2017
   
A lightweight MapReduce framework for secure processing with SGX
Rafael Pires, Daniel Gavril, Pascal Felber, Emanuel Onica, Marcelo Pasin
Assured Cloud Computing and QoS aware Big Data (WACC'17). International Workshop on
Cluster, Cloud and Grid Computing (CCGRID'17), 17th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on, Madrid - Spain, 2017
   
SecureCloud: Secure big data processing in untrusted clouds
Florian Kelbert, Franz Gregor, Rafael Pires, Stefan Köpsell, Marcelo Pasin, Aurélien Havet, Valerio Schiavoni, Pascal Felber, Christof Fetzer, Peter Pietzuch
Design, Automation & Test in Europe Conference & Exhibition (DATE), Lausanne - Switzerland, 2017
 
Secure content-based routing using intel software guard extensions
Rafael Pires, Marcelo Pasin, Pascal Felber, Christof Fetzer Middleware '16. 17th International Middleware Conference, Trento - Italy, 2016
   
[Portuguese]
Manipulador cartesiano de cadeia cinemática mista - desenvolvimento eletroeletrônico e computacional para a geração, execução e correção de trajetórias de soldagem
Rafael Pereira Pires, Ivan Luiz Hubert, Cassiano Bonin, Vitor Pinto da Cunha, Nelso Gauze Bonacorso Soldagem (CONSOLDA'14). Congresso Panamericano de, São Paulo - Brazil, 2014
[Portuguese]
Manipulador cartesiano de cadeia cinemática mista - desenvolvimento mecânico para a execução de movimentos de oscilação da tocha na soldagem a arco elétrico
Ivan Luiz Hubert, Rafael Pereira Pires, Vitor Pinto da Cunha, Cassiano Bonin, Nelso Gauze Bonacorso Soldagem (CONSOLDA'14). Congresso Panamericano de, São Paulo - Brazil, 2014
An efficient calibration method for RSSI-based location algorithms
Rafael Pereira Pires, Lucas Francisco Wanner, Antônio Augusto Fröhlich Industrial Informatics (INDIN'08). 6th IEEE International Conference on, Daejeon - South Korea, 2008
 
A framework for configuration and assembly of routing protocols for wireless ad hoc networks
Rafael Pereira Pires, Antônio Augusto Fröhlich Ambient Intelligence and Embedded Systems (AMIES'08). 7th International Conference and Workshop on, Kiel - Germany, 2008
[Portuguese]
Gestão e monitoração remota de transformadores em redes de distribuição de energia elétricas subterrâneas
F. F. Andrade, J. Coelho, A. A. M. Fröhlich, R. Matos, R. P. Pires, W. S. C. Moreira, V. L. Guimarães Power Transformers. International Workshop On, V Workspot, Belém - Brazil, 2008
[Portuguese]
Monitoração remota dos transformadores das redes de distribuição de energia elétrica subterrâneas
Fabiano Ferreira Andrade, Jorge Coelho, Roberto de Matos, Antônio A. M. Fröhlich, Rafael Pereira Pires, Vitor L. Guimarães, Celso Ternes Leal, Walério S. C. Moreira Distribución eléctrica (CLADE'08). Congreso Latinoamericano de, Mar del Plata - Argentina, 2008
 

Journals

Boosting resource-constrained federated learning systems with guessed updates
Mohamed Yassine Boukhari, Akash Dhasade, Anne-Marie Kermarrec, Rafael Pires, Othmane Safsafi, Rishi Sharma IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (Volume: 36, Issue: 8, August 2025)
 
Malware in the SGX supply chain: Be careful when signing enclaves!
Vlad Crăciun, Pascal Felber, Andrei Mogage, Emanuel Onica, Rafael Pires IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (Volume: 19, Issue: 2, Mach-April 2022)
 
[Portuguese]
Técnica da oscilação longitudinal da tocha para o incremento da produção na soldagem em ângulo entre chapas de espessuras dissimilares
Nelso Gauze Bonacorso, Adriano Albino Machado, Rafael Pereira Pires, Ivan Luiz Hubert, Cassiano Bonin, Erwin Werner Teichmann
Soldagem & Inspeção (Volume: 22, Issue: 2, April 2017)
 
[Portuguese]
Desenvolvimento de um braço robótico portátil para a execução de soldagens automatizadas
Nelso Gauze Bonacorso, Ivan Luiz Hubert, Vitor Pinto da Cunha, Igor Anes Romero, Giancarlo Hedlund Rosa, Laís Cindy Krüger, Rafael Pereira Pires, Maurício Cesar Marcolin de Campos
Revista Técnico-científica (IFSC) (Volume: 1, p. 1-13, 2014)
[Portuguese]
Evaluation of an RSSI-based location algorithm for wireless sensor networks
Rafael Pereira Pires, Giovani Gracioli, Lucas Wanner, Antonio Augusto Medeiros Fröhlich
IEEE Latin America Transactions (Volume: 9, Issue: 1, March 2011)
 
 

Non peer-reviewed

HarMoEny: Efficient Multi-GPU Inference of MoE Models
Zachary Doucet, Rishi Sharma, Martijn de Vos, Rafael Pires, Anne-Marie Kermarrec, Oana Balmau arXiv, 2025
 
Secure Aggregation Meets Sparsification in Decentralized Learning
Sayan Biswas, Anne-Marie Kermarrec, Rafael Pires, Rishi Sharma, Milos Vujasinovic arXiv, 2024
 
Energy-Aware Decentralized Learning with Intermittent Model Training
Akash Dhasade, Paolo Dini, Elia Guerra, Anne-Marie Kermarrec, Marco Miozzo, Rafael Pires, Rishi Sharma, Martijn de Vos arXiv, 2024
 
 

National or Regional Conferences, Workshops and Seminars

Distributed systems and trusted execution environments: Trade-offs and challenges (PhD thesis extended abstract)
Rafael Pires Computer Networks and Distributed Systems (SBRC '20). XXXVIII Brazilian Symposium on, Rio de Janeiro - Brazil, 2020
 
[Portuguese]
Iniciação científica nos cursos de engenharia mecatrônica - estudo de caso: desenvolvimento de uma IHM para manipuladores de soldagem
Arthur Raulino Kretzer, Gabriel Vega da Motta, Isac de Souza Campos, Isis Machado Silva, Nelso Gauze Bonacorso, Rafael Pereira Pires, Rodolfo Cavour Moretti Schiavi, Volnei Resena Junior Educação em Engenharia (COBENGE'16). Congresso Brasileiro de, Natal - Brazil, 2016
[Portuguese]
Projeto de um manipulador dedicado a execução de soldagens
I. L. Hubert, L. C. Kruger, M. C. Campos, N. G. Bonacorso, R. P. Pires Seminário de Pesquisa, Extensão e Inovação do IFSC (SEPEI'13), Lages - Brazil, 2013
GRADEp: towards pervasive grid executions
Cláudio F. R. Geyer, Luciano C. da Silva, Adenauer C. Yamin, Iara Augustin, Alberto E. S. Filho, Maurício C. Moraes, Rodrigo A. Real, Gustavo C. Frainer, Rafael P. Pires Grade Computacional e Aplicações (WCGA'05). III Workshop de, Rio de Janeiro - Brazil, 2005
[Portuguese]
Arquitetura de serviços para o portal de compras pervasivo
R. P. Pires, Ricardo Miotto Redin, Rubens Cesar Belusso, João Carlos Damasceno Lima, Iara Augustin IV Simpósio de Informática da Região Centro do RS (SIRC'05), Santa Maria - Brazil, 2005
[Portuguese]
Comunicação entre componentes da aplicação em ambiente pervasivo
Rafael Pereira Pires, Ricardo Miotto Redin, Rubens Cesar Belusso, João Carlos Damasceno Lima, Iara Augustin XV Seminário Regional de Informática (SRI'05), Santo Ângelo - Brazil, 2005
[Portuguese]
Análise de alternativas para a apresentação consciente do dispositivo em um ambiente pervasivo
Rubens Cesar Belusso, Rafael Pereira Pires, Ricardo Miotto Redin, João Carlos Damasceno Lima, Iara Augustin XV Seminário Regional de Informática (SRI'05), Santo Ângelo - Brazil, 2005
[Portuguese]
Análise de alternativas de entrega de dados independente do dispositivo em um ambiente de computação pervasiva
Ricardo Miotto Redin, Rafael Pereira Pires, Rubens Cesar Belusso, João Carlos Damasceno Lima, Iara Augustin Seminário de Informática (SEMINFO'05), Torres - Brazil, 2005
[Portuguese]
Explorando adaptação dinâmica ao contexto no projeto de aplicações da computação pervasiva
Iara Augustin, João Carlos Damasceno Lima, Marcus Lucas Silva, Rafael Pereira Pires, Ricardo Miotto Redin III Simpósio de Informática da Região Centro do RS (SIRC'04), Santa Maria - Brazil, 2004

Education

PhD in Computer Science

Distributed systems and trusted execution environments: Trade-offs and challenges
Supervisor: Pascal Felber
Co-supervisor: Marcelo Pasin
UniNE - Université de Neuchâtel, Switzerland, 2019
Léon Du Pasquier et Louis Perrier award, for an excellent PhD thesis - Faculty of Sciences - University of Neuchâtel
 

Professional Master in Mechatronics

[Portuguese]
Trajectory planning and adjustment in a welding manipulator
Supervisor: Nelso Gauze Bonacorso
IFSC - Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of Santa Catarina, Brazil, 2014

Master in Computer Science

[Portuguese]
A framework for generating routing protocols for ad-hoc wireless networks
Supervisor: Antônio Augusto Medeiros Fröhlich
UFSC - Federal University of Santa Catarina, Brazil, 2009

Bachelor in Computer Science

[Portuguese]
Network connectivity aware communication service in a pervasive environment
Supervisor: Iara Augustin
Co-supervisor: João Carlos Damasceno Lima
UFSM - Federal University of Santa Maria, Brazil, 2006
 

Work experience

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne

Lecturer
(2024-)

Postdoctoral researcher
(2020-2024)

Teacher, researcher.
Lausanne, Switzerland, 2020-

University of Neuchâtel

Scientific staff
Researcher, teaching assistant.
Neuchâtel, Switzerland, 2016-2020

Santa Catarina State Public Prosecutor's Office

Analyst in Information Technology
Analysis of data, equipment and procedures related to Information Technology. Computer and mobile forensics.
Florianópolis, Brazil, 2011-2015

Automatisa Laser Solutions

Systems Analyst
Firmware and CAD (Computer Aided Design) software development for cutting and engraving laser machines. C/C++, ARM, FPGA, Embedded Systems, Kinematics, Communication Protocols.
Florianópolis, Brazil, 2010-2012

Suntech

Systems Developer
Distributed systems, storage, database and communication protocols for lawful data interception. C++, Python and SQL (PostgresSQL).
Florianópolis, Brazil, 2009-2010

Khomp

Systems Developer
Development of firmware and linux device drivers for CTI applications (Computer Telephony Integration). C/C++.
Florianópolis, Brazil, 2009