A new reading course on networks and distributed systems
This semester, I am teaching Advanced Topics in Networked Distributed Systems: a paper-based course exploring networks, distributed systems, and their intersection with AI.
Fernando Ramos
Associate Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico
Senior Researcher at INESC-ID, member of DPSS
I'm a computer scientist interested in how we design, program, and accelerate networks and systems. My research spans Internet architecture, programmable data planes, network security, and the increasingly exciting intersection of AI/ML and networking—in both directions. I enjoy pushing the boundaries of what networks can do, especially when it makes them more flexible, secure, and blazingly fast.
News
All news →
CoNEXT 2027 PC co-chair
I am co-chairing the technical program committee of ACM CoNEXT 2027 with Gyuyeong Kim. The call for papers is available—we look forward to your submissions!
SmartNIC programming tutorial at SIGCOMM 2026
I co-organised Programming SmartNICs: From Packet Processing to Programmable Transport at SIGCOMM 2026, with hands-on sessions on packet processing and programmable transport. Explore the BlueField-3 tutorial and hands-on materials.
Helping organise EuroP4 2026
I am helping organise EuroP4 2026 as a member of its steering committee. The workshop takes place on 7 December alongside CoNEXT 2026 in Utrecht.
NSDI 2027 program committee
I joined the NSDI 2027 program committee.
Research Lab / Team
PhD students
João Romeiras Amado
Programmable network security and in-network intrusion detection.
Co-advised with Miguel Correia (IST).
Francisco Pereira
Network functions, synthesis, and acceleration.
Co-advised with Luís Pedrosa (IST) and Justine Sherry (CMU).
Rui Miguel
Synthesizing adaptable network functions.
Co-advised with Luís Pedrosa (IST).
Nuno Oliveira
Current MSc students
AI for Networking & Networking for AI
Tiago Silva
Using programmable networks to detect and recover from failures in GPU clusters, reducing interrupted training jobs and protecting model quality.
Luís Calado
Generating network protocol implementations from RFCs using AI, with developer feedback to resolve ambiguities and validate compliance with the standards.
Network & AI Security
André Pires
Scaling ML-based traffic detection beyond switch memory limits through sketches, hierarchical flow-state management, and hybrid switch–SmartNIC architectures.
Miguel Pires
Making split learning more efficient with lightweight client-side speculation, conditional server offloading, and adaptive execution across heterogeneous devices.
Sérgio Olim
Designing adversarial attacks and defenses for AI-driven self-driving networks, with high-performance implementations on CPUs, GPUs, SmartNICs, and programmable switches.
João Andrade
Developing adaptive network deception that responds to attacker behaviour to delay reconnaissance and improve detection. In collaboration with Giorgios Spathoulas (NTNU).
Guilherme Leitão
Developing defenses against adversarial traffic that manipulates the monitoring and ML-based control of self-driving networks.
Synthesis of Network Accelerators
António Delgado
Designing a traffic manager for batch-oriented SmartNICs that groups and schedules packets for state locality and efficient processing. Co-advised with Muhammad Shahbaz (University of Michigan).
António Oliveira
Automatically transforming network functions into vectorized packet-processing pipelines, using program analysis to handle control flow and inter-packet dependencies.
Tiago Branquinho
Synthesizing accelerated network functions from high-level specifications, targeting batch processing, vectorized pipelines, and the RISC-V-based BURST SmartNIC.
Bernardo Boto
Automatically making stateful network functions easier to parallelize by restructuring shared counters and statistics into efficient per-core operations.
Recent Alumni
All alumni →José Maria Costa Luís Cardoso
Projeto: NEAT – Network Emulator for Applied Teaching
João Ivo
Development of an Internet-SCION translator, towards a secure Internet
Recent Teaching
- Advanced Topics in Networked Distributed Systems2026/27
- Computer Networks2026/27
- Computer Organization2026/27
- Introduction to Computer Architecture2025/26
I also coordinate the Master’s Programme in Telecommunications and Informatics Engineering (METI).
For Computer Organization (OC) students: cache simulation to explore cache behavior.
Research Highlights
Automatic parallelization of network functions
Turning sequential network functions into parallel implementations while preserving their semantics.
Paper & presentation →Found in Translation
Exploring how translation can help the Internet evolve towards new architectures.
Read the paper →
Malicious traffic detection for terabit networks
Combining feature computation in programmable switches with machine learning on servers.
Read the paper →Community
Conference & workshop organisation
- CoNEXT 2027 — Technical Program Committee Co-chair, with Gyuyeong Kim. Call for papers →
- EuroP4 2026 — Steering committee; helping organise the workshop at CoNEXT 2026. Workshop →
- SIGCOMM 2026 — SmartNIC tutorial co-organiser. Tutorial → · Hands-on materials →
- SIGCOMM 2025 — Registration Co-chair. Organizing committee →
Program committees
Education & community
- P4 Education Working Group — Co-chair.
Contact
- Office
- INESC-ID · Room 504A
Rua Alves Redol, 9
1000-029 Lisbon, Portugal
Biography
Fernando Ramos is an Associate Professor at Instituto Superior Técnico, University of Lisbon, and a senior researcher at INESC-ID. His research interests include software-defined networking, network programmability and acceleration, network security, and machine learning for networks.
He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge and an MSc from Queen Mary University of London. His previous academic and research experience includes the Faculty of Sciences of the University of Lisbon, the University of Cambridge, Telefónica Research in Barcelona, and Altice Labs.
He coordinates the Master’s Programme in Telecommunications and Informatics Engineering, and served as Scientific Coordinator of the Distributed, Parallel and Secure Systems (DPSS) research area at INESC-ID from 2022 to 2025. He is co-chair of the P4 Education Working Group.