Ratul Mahajan

Professor, UW-CSE | Co-director, UW FOCI | Amazon Scholar, AWS

I work on computer systems and networks. I've done research in academia and industry, and engineering at hyperscalers and startups. So, if you’re looking for career advice, I can definitely tell you what not to do. Bio |

Current projects More projects →

Recent papers Complete list | By topic | Google Scholar

Agentic Societies Need a Social Harness
Tapan Chugh, Vidushi Singh, Krish Jain, Arvind Krishnamurthy, and Ratul Mahajan

HotNets, 2026
Toward Safely Optimizing eBPF Programs using Transformation Witnesses
Xiangyu Gao, Alex de Cock Buning, Xiangfeng Zhu, Jocelyn Qiaochu Chen, Konstantinos Kallas, Arvind Krishnamurthy, and Ratul Mahajan

HotNets, 2026
A Self-Defining Operator for Distributed Applications
Shihang Li, Thomas Anderson, Ratul Mahajan, Simon Peter, and Luke Zettlemoyer

arXiv, 2026
CacheWise: Understanding Workloads and Optimizing KVCache Management for Efficiently Serving LLM Coding Agents
Shubham Tiwari, Tapan Chugh, Nash Rickert, Simon Peter, Ratul Mahajan, and Haiying Shen

arXiv, 2026
Network Change Validation with Relational NetKAT
Han Xu, Zachary Kincaid, Ratul Mahajan, and David Walker

POPL, 2026
Self-Defining Systems
Thomas Anderson, Ratul Mahajan, Simon Peter, and Luke Zettlemoyer

White paper, 2025

Current students More students →

Tapan Chugh
Alex de Cock Buning (visiting from Carlos III University of Madrid)
Brody Franks
Wei Shen
Shubham Tiwari
Yuyao Wang

Recent teaching More teacihng →

CSE 461: Introduction to Computer Networks

Spring 2023

Senior-level undergraduate course on computer networking
CSE 550: Systems for All

Autumn 2022

Graduate-level breadth course on foundations of computer systems
CSE 561: Computer Communication and Networks

Winter 2021

Graduate-level course on recent research in computer networks

Recent talks More talks →

Self-defining systems
Talk at LDOS PhD Research School, 2026
The bane of network operations: Networks are evolved, not (intelligently) designed
Keynote at 1st ACM SIGCOMM Workshop on Formal Methods Aided Network Operation (FMANO), Aug 2024
A decade of network verification: Lessons learned and open challenges
Keynote at 8th Asia-Pacific Workshop on Networking (APNet'24), Aug 2024
Application-defined networking
Invited talk at ACM India Winter School on Full Stack Networking, Dec 2023
Network verification: Lessons learned and outlook
Keynote at IEEE CNSM, Nov 2023
NetCov: Test coverage for network configurations
Invited talk at Cisco Research, Apr 2023

Selected professional service More service →

PC chair: SIGCOMM 2020, NSDI 2014, IMC 2012, HotNets 2009
PC member: SIGCOMM 2026, NSDI 2026, OSDI 2025, SIGCOMM 2024
Steering committee: IMC [2014-2018]

Miscellaneous