OSCAR: Open Systems Challenges — Agenda and Roadmap
Co-located with EuroSys 2026
| Date | April 27, 2026 |
| Time | 14:00 – 17:30 |
| Room | TBD |
Abstract
Modern computing systems are evolving rapidly, driven by the growth of large-scale data centres, heterogeneous hardware, and increasingly complex AI and distributed workloads. While systems research continues to produce important advances, many of the most impactful problems emerge at the intersection of research and real-world deployments. Identifying and articulating these problems clearly is essential for guiding future research directions.
OSCAR (Open Systems Challenges — Agenda and Roadmap) is a discussion-focused workshop aimed at identifying and clarifying the most important open challenges in systems research. The workshop brings together leading researchers from academia and industry to present focused talks outlining concrete problems that remain unsolved in practice, and where new systems ideas could have significant impact.
Rather than a traditional paper workshop, OSCAR is designed as an invitation-based forum centred on problem formulation and discussion. Speakers will highlight emerging challenges across areas such as operating systems, distributed systems, data centre infrastructure, AI/ML systems, and heterogeneous computing. The goal is to move beyond incremental improvements and instead articulate research questions that can shape the next decade of systems research.
A central aim of the workshop is to strengthen the dialogue between academic and industrial systems communities. By surfacing real-world challenges and framing them as clear research opportunities, OSCAR seeks to help guide PhD students, early-career researchers, and the broader systems community toward problems that matter for both scientific progress and practical impact.
Program
TBD
Workshop Committee
Prof. Adam Barker
University of Edinburgh
Prof. Boris Grot
University of Edinburgh
Prof. Ahmed Ali-Eldin Hassan
Chalmers University of Technology