Laurent Vanbever

I am an associate professor at ETH Zurich. My research interests lie at the crossroads of theory and practice, with a focus on network programmability. Overall, I aim at making networks both more performant and easier to manage.

I completed my PhD in computer science in 2012 at the University of Louvain under the guidance of Olivier Bonaventure. My thesis is entitled “Methods and Techniques for Disruption-Free Network Reconfiguration”. After my PhD, I spent two years at Princeton University working with Jennifer Rexford as a postdoctoral researcher.

Prior to my PhD, I earned my master degree in computer science from the University of Louvain in 2008. I also earned a master degree in management from the Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management in 2010.

To find out more about my work, check out my resume, activity reports (2023, 2022, 2021, 2020), research and teaching statements.

In June 2024, I’ve co-founded NetFabric, an ETH spin-off which aims at building the next-generation of network observability platform. Head to https://netfabric.ai/ to learn more about our journey thus far! (We also offer student projects in collaboration with the startup; head over to the theses page to see our current offerings.)

Talks

The three tales of (correct) network operations

Staying engaged - Slides, Video and the professor

Programmable, Hardware-Based Routing and Scheduling

Selected Publications

Albert Gran Alcoz, Balázs Vass, Pooria Namyar, Behnaz Arzani, Gábor Rétvári, and Laurent Vanbever
NSDI '25
Thomas Wirtgen, Tom Rousseaux, Quentin De Coninck, Nicolas Rybowski, Randy Bush, Laurent Vanbever, Axel Legay, and Olivier Bonaventure
NSDI '23
Luca Beurer-Kellner, Martin Vechev, Laurent Vanbever, and Petar Veličković
NeurIPS '22
Vamsi Addanki, Maria Apostolaki, Manya Ghobadi, Stefan Schmid, and Laurent Vanbever
SIGCOMM '22
Rüdiger Birkner, Tobias Brodmann, Petar Tsankov, Laurent Vanbever, and Martin Vechev
NSDI '21
Thomas Wirtgen, Quentin De Coninck, Randy Bush, Laurent Vanbever, and Olivier Bonaventure
HotNets '20
Roland Meier, Petar Tsankov, Vincent Lenders, Laurent Vanbever, and Martin Vechev
USENIX Security '18
Timon Gehr, Sasa Misailovic, Petar Tsankov, Laurent Vanbever, Pascal Wiesmann, and Martin Vechev
PLDI '18
Aaron Gember-Jacobson, Costin Raiciu, and Laurent Vanbever
HotNets '17
Thomas Holterbach, Stefano Vissicchio, Alberto Dainotti, and Laurent Vanbever
SIGCOMM '17
IEEE SP (Oakland) '17
2018 IETF/IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize
Nick Shelly, Brendan Tschaen, Klaus-Tycho Förster, Michael Chang, Theophilus Benson, and Laurent Vanbever
HotNets '15
Yixin Sun, Anne Edmundson, Laurent Vanbever, Oscar Li, Jennifer Rexford, Mung Chiang, and Prateek Mittal
USENIX Security '15
João Luís Sobrinho, Laurent Vanbever, Franck Le, and Jennifer Rexford
CoNEXT '14
2015 IETF/IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize
Laurent Vanbever, Oscar Li, Jennifer Rexford, and Prateek Mittal
HotNets '14
Arpit Gupta, Laurent Vanbever, Muhammad Shahbaz, Sean Donovan, Brandon Schlinker, Nick Feamster, Jennifer Rexford, Scott Shenker, Russ Clark, and Ethan Katz-Bassett
SIGCOMM '14
Marco Chiesa, Luca Cittadini, Giuseppe Di Battista, Laurent Vanbever, and Stefano Vissicchio
ICNP '13
ICNP 2013 Best Paper Award
Stefano Vissicchio, Laurent Vanbever, Cristel Pelsser, Luca Cittadini, Pierre Francois, and Olivier Bonaventure
IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking '13
2013 IETF/IRTF Applied Networking Research Prize
Laurent Vanbever, Stefano Vissicchio, Luca Cittadini, and Olivier Bonaventure
INFOCOM '13
Stefano Vissicchio, Luca Cittadini, Laurent Vanbever, and Olivier Bonaventure
INFOCOM '12
Laurent Vanbever, Stefano Vissicchio, Cristel Pelsser, Pierre Francois, and Olivier Bonaventure
SIGCOMM '11