Radu Nicolae

I am part of the @Large Research group at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and a member of the international SPEC RG Cloud research group. I work on massivizing computer systems—making distributed infrastructure scalable, reliable, and performant—with a focus on datacenter simulation, multi- and meta-model analysis, and digital twinning. More about my research.

On “sharing knowledge with the (fellow-) youngsters”, I co-coordinate and co-teach large Bachelor’s cohorts in Computer Organization, Computer Networking, and Computer Programming—often with teams of 20–30 teaching assistants and 200-300 of students. I coordinate and sometimes lecture, create assignments and exams, and mentor TAs. I’m (for 4 years now) a Student Ambassador for the faculty, and contributed as commitee member for BSc Computer Science (CS) curricula, evaluation committee for the honours programme, and accreditation committee for the CS BSc. More about my teaching.

If you want to get in touch, feel free to drop me an email.

Affiliations

Massivizing Computer Systems

SPEC RG Cloud Group

Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

Universiteit van Amsterdam

IBM Research Europe
(Dublin & Zurich)

News

May 19, 2026	Talk: M3SA: Exploring Datacenter Performance and Climate-Impact with Multi- and Meta-Model Simulation and Analysis, CF’26, Catania, Italy, May 19, 2026.
May 05, 2026	Talk: OpenDT: Exploring Datacenter Performance and Sustainability with a Self-Calibrating Digital Twin, ICPE’26, Florence, Italy, May 5, 2026.
Mar 30, 2026	Research visit: IBM Dublin: researching LLM ecosystems with the lovely IBM Research Labs from Dublin, as part of EU Cloudstars. Enjoying the Irish landscapes until July.for

Selected Publications

CF ’26

M3SA: Exploring Datacenter Performance and Climate-Impact with Multi- and Meta-Model Simulation and Analysis

Radu Nicolae, Dante Niewenhuis, Sacheendra Talluri, and Alexandru Iosup

In Proceedings of the 23rd ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers (CF 2026), 2026

Bib PDF TR Artifact Talk

@inproceedings{nicolae2026m3sa,
  title = {M3SA: Exploring Datacenter Performance and Climate-Impact with Multi- and Meta-Model Simulation and Analysis},
  author = {Nicolae, Radu and Niewenhuis, Dante and Talluri, Sacheendra and Iosup, Alexandru},
  booktitle = {Proceedings of the 23rd ACM International Conference on Computing Frontiers (CF 2026)},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://atlarge-research.com/rnicolae/},
}

ICPE ’26

OpenDT: Exploring Datacenter Performance and Sustainability with a Self-Calibrating Digital Twin

Radu Nicolae, Jules Toorn, Stavriana Kraniti, Houcen Liu, and Alexandru Iosup

In Companion of the 17th ACM/SPEC International Conference on Performance Engineering (ICPE Companion 2026), Florence, Italy, May 2026

DOI Bib PDF TR Artifact Talk

@inproceedings{nicolae2026opendt,
  title = {OpenDT: Exploring Datacenter Performance and Sustainability with a Self-Calibrating Digital Twin},
  author = {Nicolae, Radu and van der Toorn, Jules and Kraniti, Stavriana and Liu, Houcen and Iosup, Alexandru},
  booktitle = {Companion of the 17th ACM/SPEC International Conference on Performance Engineering (ICPE Companion 2026)},
  year = {2026},
  month = may,
  location = {Florence, Italy},
  pages = {142--147},
  publisher = {ACM},
  doi = {10.1145/3777911.3800634},
  url = {https://atlarge-research.com/rnicolae/},
}

BSc Thesis

Kavier: Exploring Performance, Sustainability, and Efficiency of LLM Ecosystems under Inference through Cache-Aware Discrete-Event Simulation

Radu Nicolae, Alexandru Iosup, Animesh Trivedi, and Jesse Donkervliet

2025

Bib PDF Artifact

@mastersthesis{nicolae2025kavier,
  title = {Kavier: Exploring Performance, Sustainability, and Efficiency of LLM Ecosystems under Inference through Cache-Aware Discrete-Event Simulation},
  author = {Nicolae, Radu and Iosup, Alexandru and Trivedi, Animesh and Donkervliet, Jesse},
  school = {Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam},
  type = {Bachelor's thesis},
  year = {2025},
  url = {https://atlarge-research.com/rnicolae/},
}