final deadline extension for Workshop on AI and Serverless (WoAIS1)

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Aleksander Slominski

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Apr 28, 2026, 3:33:25 PM (7 days ago) Apr 28
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Hi,

The deadline for Workshop on AI and Serverless is extended to May 6:
https://www.serverlesscomputing.org/woais1/cfp/#dates

Best,

Alek

First International Workshop on AI and Serverless (WoAIS) 2026

   Part of [1]20th ACM International Conference on Distributed and
   Event-based Systems (DEBS 2026), Lisbon, Portugal (June 23rd–26th 2026)

   WoAIS will be hybrid with both virtual and on-location formats. Please
   note that while hybrid formats will be supported for workshops, the
   DEBS 2026 steering committee wants the main conference to be held in
   in-person only. Prospective attendees of the workshop should keep this
   in mind if they plan to attend both WoAIS and DEBS 2026.

   The rise of new AI agents—which involve multiple LLM calls, dynamic
   plans, and a mix of code and AI models—is creating uniquely complex
   workloads for serverless platforms. This new reality has already
   resurfaced classic serverless headaches, such as cold starts, managing
   state, and figuring out resource allocation, but within the demanding
   context of modern AI applications. Furthermore, new complications are
   emerging, including mixed GPU/CPU needs, unpredictable execution plans,
   long-running yet highly bursty processes, and the critical need for
   robust agent-to-agent communication.

   Looking beyond the cloud, the scope of serverless is expanding. We aim
   to look ahead at future architectures involving AI, hybrid clouds, and
   especially edge/IoT devices, which current serverless platforms are not
   well-equipped to support. This naturally leads to a discussion on the
   role of LLMs in Serverless, where we will explore how hybrid serverless
   platforms can be leveraged for the entire lifecycle of Large Language
   Models (LLMs) and Foundation Models (FMs), from fine-tuning to serving.

   This workshop brings together researchers and practitioners to explore
   aspects such as use cases, resource allocations, optimizations, and
   using AI to improve serverless experience and to discuss their
   experiences and ideas for future directions in serverless research.

   As this year the workshop is hybrid and we are looking not only for
   research papers, experience papers, demonstrations, or position papers
   but also for live presentations of ongoing work, demonstrations, and
   anything else that may be interesting to the workshop audience.

   The latest version of this CFP is available at
   [2]http://serverlesscomputing.org/woais1/

Topics

   This workshop solicits papers from both academia and industry on the
   state of practice and state of the art in AI and serverless computing.
   Topics of interest include but are not limited to:
     * AI Operating System: research on system-level infrastructure for
       scalable intelligence, viewing world models as "operating systems"
       for future AI agents
     * Infrastructure for Scaling AI: Research is sought for distributed
       training and evaluation systems, compilers, and data engines that
       support continual updates
     * Infrastructure and network optimizations for AI and serverless
       applications
     * Cloud Services for AI: scalable AI cloud services for tasks such as
       the inspection of large-scale infrastructures
     * Operating AI at Scale: extending monitoring and adaptation to
       large-scale production environments with heterogeneous data streams
       and real-time costs
     * Cost per token, energy usage, cost to operate AI agents and models,
       cost models, pricing models, and economics of AI and serverless
     * Using serverless for AI pipelines
     * Using serverless for inference serving of AI models and agents
     * Autonomous Lifecycle Management for AI: topics such as
       transitioning AI to operations and managing the infrastructure
       challenges for AI adoption across its entire lifecycle
     * Orchestrating multiple AI agents running as serverless functions,
       addressing issues such as how to manage the synchronization if they
       are working on sections of the same task
     * Memory Layers for AI: implementing memory architectures for
       LLM-based agents, including episodic vs. semantic memory, retrieval
       mechanisms, and consolidation of interaction-driven experiences
     * Cloud AI Security: AI-driven cybersecurity risk analysis and secure
       machine learning for the vulnerability assessment of AI and related
       technologies using serverless and other scalable techniques
     * Elastic AI platforms and pay-as-you-go for GPUs with different cost
       metrics. Using AI assist and generative LLMs such as ChatGPT for
       building, running, and maintaining serverless-like applications.
     * Supporting AI agents and with serverless approaches in agentic
       platforms
     * Multi-cloud and hybrid cloud for AI and serverless computing in
       Edge, Fog, IoT, etc.
     * Supporting Model Context Protocol (MCP) and using it in serverless
       AI applications
     * Supporting customization and running user provided AI models any
       place: Cloud, Edge,Fog, IoT, etc.
     * Evaluation, Benchmarking, and Reproducibility: early work and
       proposals for standardized benchmarks and
     * evaluations, in particular about reproducible AI research results
     * Mixed GPU, accelerators, and CPU workloads for AI agents
     * Running AI and serverless applications with stochastic plans
       (unpredictable execution paths), bursty long-running processes, and
       inter-process communications
     * Developer experience as we transition from “traditional” serverless
       and FaaS to AI agentic programming
     * Developer productivity to build AI serverless code: from local
       source to observability and maintenance in production
     * Serverless data management for AI, Retrieval-Augmented Generation
       (RAGs), vector and graph databases applied to serverless
       experience,
     * AI and serverless for next-gen computing in Industry such as
       Platform Engineering and Internal Developer Platforms and other
       areas
     * Low-code and no-code - new programming abstractions for AI and
       serverless
     * Debugging AI serverless applications
     * Use cases, experiences with AI and serverless
     * DevOps for AI and serverless
     * Confidential computing
     * Sustainable computing
     * Granular computing
     * Super-lightweight containers Web Assembly
     * Swarm intelligence
     * Other topics related to AI and serverless computing

Important Dates

   Paper Submission: May 6, 2026 (AOE) (final deadline extension)
   Notification of Acceptance: May 11, 2026
   Final Camera-Ready Manuscript (Hard Deadline): May 15, 2026
   Non-paper submissions (demos and other proposals): June 1, 2026
   Author registration deadline: TBD
   Workshop: June 23, 2026 (Tuesday)
   Conference: June 23–26, 2026

Papers and Submissions

Papers submissions

   Authors are invited to submit original, unpublished
   research/application papers that are not being considered in another
   forum.

   Submitted manuscripts should be structured as technical papers and may
   not exceed six (6) single-spaced double-column pages using ACM
   proceeding style two-column “sigconf” which can be found on the ACM
   template page [3]https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template,
   font size set to 10 pt. The page limit contains all the content,
   including bibliography, appendix, etc.

   Shorter formats like extended abstracts (5 pages or less), posters, or
   opinions are also accepted.

   For information about Auxiliary Materials, please check
   [4]https://2026.debs.org/acm-auxiliary-materials/

   Note that submissions must be doubly anonymous - authors’ names must
   not appear on the manuscript, and authors must make a good-faith
   attempt to anonymize their submissions. This means that submitted
   papers must be anonymous (not revealing author names). References to
   authors’ previous work should be done in the third person to not reveal
   their identities. There should be no acknowledgments of people or
   projects. Supplementary material (e.g., GitHub or GitLab repository)
   should not reveal the authors’ identities; to this end, anonymized
   repositories can be used (e.g., [5]https://anonymous.4open.science).
   See below for more details on the anonymity requirements for
   doubly-anonymous reviewing.

   This year's edition will place ACM Artifacts Available badges on papers
   that make their artifacts available according to ACM's rules.

   The DEBS conference organizers will provide companion proceedings
   including all workshop papers, which will be available in the ACM
   Digital Library. This is subject to the availability of their
   camera-ready papers by the deadline for camera ready papers.

   Authors should submit the manuscript in PDF format. All manuscripts
   will be reviewed and will be judged on correctness, originality,
   technical strength, rigour in analysis, quality of results, quality of
   presentation, and interest and relevance to the conference attendees.
   Papers conforming to the above guidelines can be submitted to “Workshop
   on AI and Serverless Computing” track through the paper submission
   system powered by Microsoft CMT
   [6]https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/DEBS2026/.

   All submitted manuscripts (following DEBS conference requirements on
   formatting and page limits) will be peer-reviewed by at least 3 program
   committee members. Accepted papers with confirmed presentation will
   appear in the conference proceedings as well as in the ACM Digital
   Library.

   The authors of accepted papers will be given a choice between different
   copyright agreements, according to the recent changes in the ACM
   policy. The options will include opportunities for open access as well
   as the traditional ACM copyright agreement.

   Note that at least one author of each accepted workshop paper must hold
   a full pre-conference registration.

ACM Policies

   By submitting your article to an ACM Publication, you are hereby
   acknowledging that you and your co-authors are subject to all [7]ACM
   Publications Policies, including ACM's new [8]Publications Policy on
   Research Involving Human Participants and Subjects. Alleged violations
   of this policy or any ACM Publications Policy will be investigated by
   ACM and may result in a full retraction of your paper, in addition to
   other potential penalties, as per ACM Publications Policy.

   Please ensure that you and your co-authors obtain an [9]ORCID ID, so
   you can complete the publishing process for your accepted paper. ACM
   has been involved in ORCID from the start and we have recently made a
   [10]commitment to collect ORCID IDs from all of our published authors.
   We are committed to improve author discoverability, ensure proper
   attribution and contribute to ongoing community efforts around name
   normalization; your ORCID ID will help in these efforts.

Important update on ACMs new open access publishing model for 2026 ACM
Conferences!

   Starting January 1, 2026, ACM will fully transition to Open Access. All
   ACM publications, including those from ACM-sponsored conferences, will
   be 100% Open Access. Authors will have two primary options for
   publishing Open Access articles with ACM: the ACM Open institutional
   model or by paying Article Processing Charges (APCs). With over 2,600
   institutions already part of ACM Open, the majority of ACM-sponsored
   conference papers will not require APCs from authors or conferences
   (currently, around 76%).

   Authors from institutions not participating in ACM Open will need to
   pay an APC to publish their papers, unless they qualify for a financial
   waiver. To find out whether an APC applies to your article, please
   consult the list of participating institutions in ACM Open and review
   the
   [11]https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/policy-on-discretionary-o
   pen-access-apc-waivers. Keep in mind that waivers are rare and are
   granted based on specific criteria set by ACM.

   Understanding that this change could present financial challenges, ACM
   has approved a temporary subsidy for 2026 to ease the transition and
   allow more time for institutions to join ACM Open. The subsidy will
   offer:

   $250 APC for ACM/SIG members

   $350 for non-members

   This represents a [12]65% discount, funded directly by ACM. Authors are
   encouraged to help advocate for their institutions to join ACM Open
   during this transition period.

Anonymity Requirements for Doubly-Anonymous Reviewing

   Every research paper submitted to DEBS 2026 will undergo a
   ''doubly-anonymous'' reviewing process: in addition to maintaining the
   anonymity of the reviewers of the papers, the PC members and reviewers
   will not know the identity of the authors. To ensure the anonymity of
   authorship, authors must at least do the following:
    1. Authors' names and affiliations must not appear on the title page
       or elsewhere in the paper.
    2. Funding sources must not be acknowledged anywhere in the paper
       under review; these can be added to accepted papers upon submission
       of the camera-ready manuscript.
    3. Non-anonymized links to the authors’ online content must be
       removed.
    4. Research group members, or other colleagues or collaborators, must
       not be acknowledged anywhere in the paper.
    5. The paper’s file name must not identify the authors of the paper.

   Authors should also use care in referring to related past work. The
   solution is to reference past work in the third person (in the same way
   that one would reference work by anyone else). This allows you to set
   the context for your submission while at the same time preserving
   anonymity.

   Despite the anonymity requirements, authors should still include all
   relevant work, including their own; omitting them could reveal the
   author's identity by negation. However, self-references should be
   limited to the essential ones, and extended versions of the submitted
   paper (e.g., technical reports or URLs for downloadable versions) must
   not be referenced. The goal is to preserve anonymity while allowing the
   reader to grasp the context of the submitted paper fully. It is the
   responsibility of authors to do their very best to preserve anonymity.
   Papers that do not follow the guidelines or potentially reveal the
   author's identity are subject to immediate rejection.

Other submissions

   Authors are invited to submit proposals for demos and other
   presentations that are not papers.

   Proposals must be submitted as short abstracts (not longer than one
   page) in PDF format using the paper submission system selecting "Other"
   as submission type.

   Accepted presentations will not be part of the conference proceedings
   but will be part of the workshop agenda with dedicated time for live
   presentation (with video backup), questions etc.

Workshop co-chairs

   Paul Castro, IBM Research
   Pedro García López, University Rovira i Virgili
   Vatche Ishakian, 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 Assistant Professor, Oakland University
     * Azer Bestavros, Boston 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
     * Volker Hilt, Bell Labs (Nokia)
     * Wes Lloyd, University of Washington Tacoma

References

   1. https://2026.debs.org/
   2. http://serverlesscomputing.org/woais1/
   3. https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template
   4. https://2026.debs.org/acm-auxiliary-materials/
   5. https://anonymous.4open.science/
   6. https://cmt3.research.microsoft.com/DEBS2026/
   7. https://www.acm.org/publications/policies
   8. https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/research-involving-human-participants-and-subjects
   9. https://orcid.org/register
  10. https://authors.acm.org/author-resources/orcid-faqs
  11. https://www.acm.org/publications/policies/policy-on-discretionary-open-access-apc-waivers"
  12. https://www.acm.org/publications/openaccess
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