WoAIS 2026

Second International Workshop on AI and Serverless

Part of 27th ACM/IFIP International Middleware Conference (Middleware 2026), Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain (December 14–18, 2026).

News Call for Papers

News

2026-06-19: Call for Papers available.

AI and Serverless Computing Workshop: A Call for Research

The rise of new AI agents—which involve multiple LLM calls, dynamic plans, and a mix of deterministic code and AI models—is creating uniquely complex workloads for serverless platforms. These agentic applications may be triggered by events, run quickly for a few seconds or autonomously for days, and communicate with other agents. This new reality has already resurfaced classic serverless challenges, such as cold starts, state management, and resource allocation, but within the demanding context of modern AI applications.

Looking beyond the cloud, the scope of serverless is expanding. The workshop looks ahead at future architectures involving AI, hybrid clouds, and especially edge/IoT devices. This naturally leads to a discussion of the role of LLMs and Foundation Models (FMs) in serverless, where the workshop will explore how hybrid serverless platforms can be leveraged for the entire lifecycle of LLMs and FMs—from fine-tuning and customization to inference serving and ongoing management.

The workshop also welcomes work on the emerging agent platform layer (Kubernetes-native, CRD-based, MCP/A2A/OpenTelemetry-integrated), agentic coding harnesses (Claude Code, OpenClaw), AI-Driven Research for Systems (ADRS) and the broader family of AI-agent-driven research loops (FunSearch, AlphaEvolve, AI Scientist, AI co-scientist), and AI-Native Systems with autonomous evolution at machine speed.

Ultimately, the goal is to bring together researchers and practitioners to share their experiences, discuss the challenges, and collaboratively brainstorm the next critical research directions for the serverless domain. See the Call for Papers for full details and topics of interest.

Organization

WoAIS2 will be a hybrid workshop with both in-person and remote participants. Please consult the Middleware 2026 organizers for the latest guidance on hybrid format and registration requirements.

Workshop co-chairs
  • Paul Castro, IBM Research
  • Pedro García López, Universitat Rovira i Virgili
  • Vatche Isahagian, IBM Research
  • Vinod Muthusamy, IBM Research
  • Aleksander Slominski, IBM Research
Steering Committee
  • Geoffrey Fox, Indiana University
  • Dennis Gannon, Indiana University & Formerly Microsoft Research
  • Arno Jacobsen, MSRG (Middleware Systems Research Group)
Program Committee (tentative)
  • Alexandru Iosup, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
  • Ali Kanso, Microsoft
  • Amine Barrak, Oakland University
  • Cristina Abad, Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral (Ecuador)
  • Dennis Gannon, Indiana University & Formerly Microsoft Research
  • Eric Rozner, University of Colorado Boulder
  • Etienne Rivière, UCLouvain
  • Geoffrey Fox, Indiana University
  • Gul Agha, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
  • Hans-Arno Jacobsen, MSRG (Middleware Systems Research Group)
  • Ian Foster, University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory
  • Josef Spillner, Zurich University of Applied Sciences
  • Kyungyong Lee, Kookmin University
  • Lucas Nussbaum, LORIA, France
  • Maciej Malawski, AGH University of Science and Technology, Poland
  • Maciej Pawlik, Academic Computer Centre CYFRONET of the University of Science and Technology in Cracow
  • Marc Sánchez Artigas, Universitat Rovira i Virgili
  • Per Persson, Ericsson Research
  • Peter Pietzuch, Imperial College
  • Rich Wolski, University of California, Santa Barbara
  • Rodric Rabbah, Nimbella and Apache OpenWhisk
  • Rodrigo Fonseca, Microsoft Research
  • Samuel Kounev, University of Wuerzburg
  • Tyler R. Caraza-Harter, University of Wisconsin-Madison
  • Višnja Križanović, Josip Juraj Strossmayer University of Osijek
  • Volker Hilt, Bell Labs (Nokia)
  • Wes Lloyd, University of Washington Tacoma

Previous workshops

First International Workshop on AI and Serverless (WoAIS1) 2026 on June 23, 2026, in hybrid location (virtual and in Lisbon, Portugal). Part of the 20th ACM International Conference on Distributed and Event-based Systems (DEBS 2026).

11th International Workshop on Serverless Computing (WoSC11) December 15, 2025. In conjunction with ACM/IFIP International Middleware Conference.

Fourth International Workshop on Serverless Computing Experience (WOSCx4) 2025 Virtual on June 17, 2025.

10th International Workshop on Serverless Computing (WoSC10) December 2, 2024. In conjunction with ACM/IFIP International Middleware Conference.

See the full list of past workshops at www.serverlesscomputing.org/workshops/.