Envisioning, Exploring, and Shaping the Future Together
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.
Faculty Research Collaborations
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:
- Arizona State University
- Bar Ilan University
- Brown University
- Carnegie Mellon University
- Cornell University
- École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
- ETH Zürich
- Georgia Institute of Technology
- Imperial College London
- Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Politecnico di Torino
- Princeton University
- Stanford University
- Technion
- Tel Aviv University
- Texas A&M University
- University College London
- University of California, Berkeley
- University of California, Santa Cruz
- University of Cambridge
- University of Colorado at Boulder
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
- University of Texas at Austin
- University of Texas at Dallas
- University of Utah
- University of Washington
- University of Wisconsin at Madison
VMware Systems Research Award
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.
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Tiark Rompf is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Purdue University.
Professor Rompf received the 2018 VMware Systems Research Award. He is recognized for radically new approaches to performance- and safety-critical systems, in particular through rethinking the role and relationship between high-level and low-level languages. His systems-oriented approach is illustrated well by his far-ranging explorations of lightweight modular staging (LMS), a platform and methodology for enabling run-time code generation.
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.
Early Career Faculty Grants
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:
- Ding Yuan, University of Toronto
- Bharath Raghavan, University of Southern California
- Aurojit Panda, New York University
- Aruna Balasubramanian, Stony Brook University
- Taesoo Kim, Georgia Institute of Technology
Scholar-in-Residence
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:
- Carnegie Mellon University
- Bar Ilan University
- Technion
- Tel Aviv University
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
For a listing of current open positions, visit our careers page.
IT Academy Instructor Opportunities
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.
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Academic Software Licensing
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
- Accredited, degree-granting higher education institutions world wide that offer 2, 3, or 4 year programs (or equivalent).
- Career or technical schools offering accredited degrees or certificates through in-person or distance education programs.
- Secondary education (ages 14-17).