MENAComm2021 - Keynote Session 1: "Towards an Internet Machine"
Keynote Speaker: Rachid Guerraoui, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland
"Towards an Internet Machine"
Rachid Guerraoui (born January 5, 1967) is a Moroccan-Swiss computer scientist and a professor at the School of Computer and Communication Sciences at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), known for his contributions in the fields of concurrent and distributed computing. He is an ACM Fellow and the Chair in Informatics and Computational Science for the year 2018–2019 at Collège de France for distributed computing.Rachid was born on January 5, 1967 in Rabat, Morocco. His father, Mohammed Guerraoui, is a teacher of mathematics and former wali (governor) of Marrakesh. His mother, Fatima Rahmoun-Guerraoui, is a teacher of French. After getting his baccalaureate in 1984, he left Morocco for France.Guerraoui received his PhD from the University of Orsay (1992) and has been affiliated with Ecole des Mines of Paris, the Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique of Saclay, Hewlett Packard Laboratories and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is an associate (area) editor of the Journal of the ACM and is the co-author of several books, including "Algorithms for Concurrent Systems","Introduction to Reliable and Secure Distributed Programming" and "Principles of Transactional Memory".He won an ERC Advanced Grant Award (2013) and the Google Focused Award (2014). With his co-workers, Guerraoui received Best Paper Awards at the following scientific conferences: ACM Middleware (2016, 2014, 2012), ICDCN (2011), Eurosys (2010), DISC (2010) and OPODIS (2006). He also received the 10-Year Best Paper Award at Middleware 2014,Beyond his scientific and academic work, Guerraoui works on the popularization of computer science. He co-initiated the Wandida teaching project on YouTube, a library of 300++ videos on computer science and mathematics with 2.5 million views and over 25 thousand subscribers, as well as the Zettabytes education project, a library of videos related to introducing major computer science discoveries and open problems to the general public. Rachid maintains strong ties to Morocco through his participation in the public debate and the Moroccan political life. In December 2019, he was appointed by King Mohammed VI as a member of the Special Committee on Model of Development.
