Rucio
Open-source scientific data management system, handling exabyte-scale data for large research infrastructures worldwide.
About
I am a staff scientist at CERN in the EP-SFT group. I lead Rucio, the open-source scientific data management system born at CERN and used by many of the world's largest scientific collaborations, including ATLAS, CMS, Belle II, DUNE, SKA and CTAO, to manage multiple Exabytes of data across hundreds of computing centres. I head a globally distributed team, steer the open-source community, and initiate and coordinate large EU-funded research projects (>10M€). PhD in computer science from TU Wien, with over 20 years of software development experience and a passion for building software, teams and communities that last.
Research interests
Large-scale scientific data management Distributed systems Machine learning for systems operation Data-intensive computing Open-source community building
Projects
Funded research projects
Co-Coordinator of the project together with CERN IT
CERN Scientist-in-charge; Work Package (WP2) leadership, coordinating 209 Person Months (PM) and 2 tasks
CERN Scientist-in-charge; Scientific Coordinator of the project, coordinating 229 PM over 7 work packages
Co-Supervision of ESCAPE-funded CERN person-power contributing to Rucio (24 PM)
Supervised 6 PM contribution to the project (Third party contractual contribution to CERN)
Education
Ph.D. with Distinction, Computer Science
Vienna University of Technology, AustriaThesis: Hybrid simulation models for data-intensive systems
M.Sc. with Distinction, Computational Intelligence
Vienna University of Technology, AustriaB.Sc., Medical Computer science
Vienna University of Technology, AustriaSelected publications
I authored and co-authored over 30 peer-reviewed publications for international journals and conferences in the area of computer and data science. Among the most impactful are:
- Experiences in exascale scientific data management (2020)Invited article for the 2020 Bulletin of the IEEE Technical Committee on Data Engineering
- Rucio: Scientific Data Management (2019)Springer: Computing and Software for Big Science
- A hybrid simulation model for data grids (2016)16th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Grid Computing (CCGrid), Cartagena, Colombia
I also have co-authorship of more than 900 physics publications as a member of the ATLAS collaboration.
Selected invited talks
- Geneva Observatory seminar, Switzerland, 2026
- UK Research Network Engineering (RNE) community, 2024
- ePIC computing workshop, CERN, 2024
- CERN Storage day, 2024
- ESA Ground segment workshop, 2021 & 2022
- Facebook Data Engineering seminar series, Virtual, 2021
- Workshop on Emerging Open Storage Systems and Solutions (EMOSS) at the 30th ACM Symposium on High-Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing (HPDC), 2021
- 17th Plenary Meeting - Research Data Alliance, 2021
- Jiangmen Underground Neutrino Observatory (JUNO), Chinese Academy of Science, China, 2020
- International workshop on the high energy Circular Electron-Positron Collider (CEPC), Chinese Academy of Science, China, 2019
- BNL Physics seminar series, Brookhaven National Laboratory, USA, 2018
Scientific community roles
- Member of the Computing review panel, Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO), since 2026
- Ninth Rucio Community Workshop 2026 (upcoming), Chair of the program committee, CC-IN2P3, Lyon, France
- Eighth Rucio Community Workshop 2025 (118 participants), Chair of the program committee, SKAO Global Headquarters, United Kingdom
- Seventh Rucio Community Workshop 2024, Chair of the program committee, San Diego Supercomputer Center, USA
- DIRAC & Rucio Workshop 2023 (45 participants), Co-Chair of the program committee, KEK, Japan
- 26th International Conference on Computing in High Energy & Nuclear Physics (CHEP, 600 participants), Member of the program committee
- Fifth Rucio Community Workshop 2022 (90 participants), Chair of the program committee, Lancaster University, United Kingdom
- 20th International Workshop on Advanced Computing and Analysis Techniques in Physics Research, Reviewer
- Fourth Rucio Community Workshop 2021 (120 participants), Chair of the program committee, Virtual
- Third Rucio Community Workshop 2020 (80 participants), Chair of the program committee, Fermi National Laboratory, United States of America
- Rucio Coding Camp 2019 (20 participants), Chair of the workshop, CERN, Switzerland
- Second Rucio Community Workshop 2019 (70 participants), Chair of the program committee, Oslo, Norway
- Rucio Coding Camp 2018 (15 participants), Chair of the workshop, CERN, Switzerland
- First Rucio Community Workshop 2018 (90 participants), Chair of the program committee, CERN, Switzerland
- Future Generation Computer Systems Journal, Elsevier, Review of several publications
- 14th International conference on Software engineering and Formal methods (SEFM), Member of the organisation team, Vienna, Austria
- 21st International conference on Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP), Review of publications