First International Workshop on AI and Serverless (WoAIS) 2026

Part of 20th ACM International Conference on Distributed and Event-based Systems (DEBS 2026), Lisbon, Portugal (June 23rd–26th 2026)

The workshop will be hybrid this year with both virtual and on-location formats. Please note that while hybrid formats will be supported for workshops, the DEBS 2026 steering committee wants the main conference to be held in in-person only. Prospective attendees of the workshop should keep this in mind if they plan to attend both this workshop and DEBS 2026.

News

2026-01-30: CFP to be announced soon.

AI and Serverless Computing Workshop: A Call for Research

The upcoming workshop at DEBS will center on AI and Serverless Computing (WoAIS). This focus is driven by the rise of new AI agents—which involve multiple LLM calls, dynamic plans, and a mix of code and AI models—that are creating uniquely complex workloads for serverless platforms.

This new reality has already resurfaced classic serverless headaches, such as cold starts, managing state, and figuring out resource allocation, but within the demanding context of modern AI applications. Furthermore, new complications are emerging, including mixed GPU/CPU needs, unpredictable execution plans, long-running yet highly bursty processes, and the critical need for robust agent-to-agent communication.

Looking beyond the cloud, the scope of serverless is expanding. We aim to look ahead at future architectures involving AI, hybrid clouds, and especially edge/IoT devices, which current serverless platforms are not well-equipped to support. This naturally leads to a discussion on the role of LLMs in Serverless, where we will explore how hybrid serverless platforms can be leveraged for the entire lifecycle of Large Language Models (LLMs) and Foundation Models (FMs), from fine-tuning to serving.

Ultimately, the goal is to bring together researchers and practitioners to share their experiences, discuss the challenges, and collaboratively brainstorm the next critical research directions for the serverless domain.

Workshop program

Preliminary Date: June 23 (Tuesday) (to be confirmed)

Preliminary Time: 9am ET (to be confirmed)

Workshop location: hybrid: on-location and virtual (Zoom)

Workshop schedule (perliminary, subject to change)

Please visit the previous workshops website to see what you can expect.

Organization

Workshop co-chairs

Paul Castro, IBM Research
Pedro García López, University Rovira i Virgili
Vatche Ishakian, IBM Research
Vinod Muthusamy, IBM Research
Aleksander Slominski, IBM Research

Steering Committee

Geoffrey Fox, Indiana University
Dennis Gannon, Indiana University & Formerly Microsoft Research
Arno Jacobsen, MSRG (Middleware Systems Research Group)

Program Committee (tentative)

  • Alexandru Iosup, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
  • Ali Kanso, Microsoft
  • Amine Barrak Assistant Professor, Oakland University
  • Azer Bestavros, Boston University
  • Cristina Abad, Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral (Ecuador)
  • Dennis Gannon, Indiana University & Formerly Microsoft Research
  • Eric Rozner, University of Colorado Boulder
  • Etienne Rivière, UCLouvain
  • Geoffrey Fox, Indiana University
  • Gul Agha, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • Hans-Arno Jacobsen, MSRG (Middleware Systems Research Group)
  • Ian Foster, University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory
  • Josef Spillner, Zurich University of Applied Sciences
  • Kyungyong Lee, Kookmin University
  • Lucas Nussbaum, LORIA, France
  • Maciej Malawski, AGH University of Science and Technology, Poland
  • Maciej Pawlik, Academic Computer Centre CYFRONET of the University of Science and Technology in Cracow
  • Marc Sánchez Artigas, Universitat Rovira i Virgili
  • Per Persson, Ericsson Research
  • Peter Pietzuch, Imperial College
  • Rich Wolski, University of California, Santa Barbara
  • Rodric Rabbah, Nimbella and Apache OpenWhisk
  • Rodrigo Fonseca, Microsoft Research
  • Samuel Kounev, University of Wuerzburg
  • Tyler R. Caraza-Harter, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • Volker Hilt, Bell Labs (Nokia)
  • Wes Lloyd, University of Washington Tacoma

Previous workshop

11th International Workshop on Serverless Computing (WoSC11) December 15, 2025. In conjunction with ACM/IFIP International Middleware Conference.

Fourth International Workshop on Serverless Computing Experience (WOSCx4) 2025 Virtual on June 17, 2025. List of talks with links to videos: https://www.serverlesscomputing.org/woscx4/program.html.

10th International Workshop on Serverless Computing (WoSC10) December 2, 2024. In conjunction with ACM/IFIP International Middleware Conference.

Third International Workshop on Serverless Computing Experience (WOSCx3) 2024 Virtual on June 19, 2024. List of talks with links to videos: https://www.serverlesscomputing.org/woscx3/program.html.

9th International Workshop on Serverless Computing (WoSC9) December 11, 2023. In conjunction with ACM/IFIP International Middleware Conference.

Second International Workshop on Serverless Computing Experience (WOSCx2) 2023 Virtual on June 22, 2023. List of talks with links to videos: https://www.serverlesscomputing.org/woscx2/#schedule.

Eighth International Workshop on Serverless Computing (WoSC8) November 7, 2022. In conjunction with ACM/IFIP International Middleware Conference.

First International Workshop on Serverless Computing Experience (WOSCx1) 2022 Virtual on June 16, 2022. List of talks with links to videos: https://www.serverlesscomputing.org/woscx1/program.html.

Seventh International Workshop on Serverless Computing (WoSC7) Decemeber 7, 2021. In conjunction with ACM/IFIP International Middleware Conference.

Sixth International Workshop on Serverless Computing (WoSC6) in TU Delft, The Netherlands (virtual) on Decemeber 8, 2020. In conjunction with ACM/IFIP International Middleware Conference.

Fifth International Workshop on Serverless Computing (WoSC5) in UC Davis, CA, USA on Decemeber 9, 2019. In conjunction with 20th ACM/IFIP International Middleware Conference.

Fourth International Workshop on Serverless Computing (WoSC4) in Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland on Decemeber 20, 2018. In conjunction with 11th IEEE/ACM UCC and 5th IEEE/ACM BDCAT.

Third International Workshop on Serverless Computing (WoSC3) in San Francisco, CA, USA on July 2nd 2018 In conjunction with IEEE CLOUD 2018 affiliated with 2018 IEEE World Congress on Services (IEEE SERVICES 2018).

Second International Workshop on Serverless Computing (WoSC2) 2017 in Las Vegas, NV, USA on December 12th, 2017 part of Middleware 2017.

First International Workshop on Serverless Computing (WoSC) 2017 in Atlanta, GA, USA on June 5th, 2017 part of ICDCS 2017.

Tweets about workshop

Please use hashtags #wosc11 #wosc #serverless