Disruptive ideas need to be nurtured. VMware collaborates with the world’s leading faculty to develop and incubate innovative research approaches, and to accelerate the transformation of ideas into world-class technology solutions.
VMware is committed to sponsoring academic research in areas of importance to the future of computing. Our support for faculty enables graduate student researchers and post-docs, and helps to cover the expenses involved in developing new technology in a university setting. Some recent faculty research collaborations include:
VMware’s annual Systems Research Award recognizes early career systems researchers who have made notable contributions to computer science systems research, and who demonstrate an outstanding level of innovation, academic research leadership, and industry impact with their work. The recognition includes a $100,000 gift to the researcher’s university in support of his/her research. Eligible faculty must be within five years of their first tenure-track appointment.
Learn More
Tim Kraska is an Associate Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Professor Kraska received the 2017 VMware Systems Research Award. He has been widely recognized for his early work on hybrid human-machine data management. On the systems side, his work includes a pioneering reference architecture (CrowdDB) for hybrid crowdsourced queries. He has continued to role-model a style of holistic systems treatment in his early research by formulating and tackling research problems that together represent a powerful new vision for the future of database systems.
Matei Zaharia is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University.
Professor Zaharia received the 2016 VMware Systems Research Award. His accomplishments as a young researcher include developing the well-known and widely used open source projects Apache Spark, Apache Mesos, and Tachyon (now Alluxio). Zaharia’s academic work has received thousands of citations, and his software is being used by thousands of developers worldwide.
The Early Career Faculty Grant program is intended to recognize the next generation of exceptional faculty members. A gift to the researcher’s university is made in support of his/her research and to promote excellence in teaching. Early career faculty must be within five years of their first tenure-track appointment. Recent grants include:
The Scholar-in-Residence (SiR) program brings together exceptional university faculty with VMware researchers for deeper collaboration over a specific time period. SiRs often takes place during a faculty member’s summer break or sabbatical year. Collaboration focuses on research objectives mutually defined in advance. Recent scholars include leading faculty from:
For a listing of current open positions, visit our careers page.
Full- or part-time faculty members at eligible institutions can build their technical expertise and teach new technology skills as a VMware IT Academy instructor. See the VMware IT Academy pages for details.
Learn More
VMware offers academic software licensing to educational institutions for teaching, research and personal discovery. (Software licensed for academic use cannot be used for campus infrastructure, non-academic purposes, or any for-profit activity.)
Eligibility