CV · Viraj Thakkar

General Information

Data Infrastructure: LSM-based Key-Value Stores (RocksDB, LevelDB); Disaggregated Compute, Memory, and Storage; Storage for Quantum Computing; Data Confidentiality.
Intelligent Storage: AI/ML for Storage Systems; Storage Systems for AI/ML; Real-Time Storage Systems for High-Velocity and High-Volume Data.

Ph.D. in Computer Science · 2023 - Ongoing
Arizona State University · Advisor - Dr. Zhichao Cao
- ASU Fulton Fellowship Award Recipient.
- GPA: 3.95 / 4.00.
M.S. in Computer Science · 2022 - 2023
Arizona State University · Advisor - Dr. Zhichao Cao
- Thesis: Refining Consistency and Performance Trade-off in Distributed LSM-KVS.
- GPA: 3.87 / 4.00.
B.Tech in Information Technology · 2017 - 2021
K. J. Somaiya College of Engineering, Mumbai University
- CGPA: 8.56 / 10.00.

System Software Research Associate Intern — HPE Labs · Aug 2025 - May 2026
Systems Architecture Lab · California, USA
- Explored FUSE (Linux's Filesystem in Userspace) for slowdowns due to kernel scheduling and identified optimizations currently under development.
- Developed a prototype RDMA-based in-memory filesystem on top of FUSE to experiment with different solutions.
System Software Research Associate Intern — HPE Labs · May 2025 - Aug 2025
Systems Architecture Lab · California, USA
- Performed a background survey over existing distributed caching/storage services like Redis and Memcached.
- Designed and developed a federated token management solution that maintains cache coherence for a global distributed client-side cache.
Software Development Engineer Intern — Amazon · May 2023 - Aug 2023
Washington D.C., USA
- Established product documentation to seamlessly onboard future team members.
- Built a full-stack application (AWS Lambda, DynamoDB, S3, ECS, SQS, CloudFormation) to check for copyright infringements for products on Amazon.
Junior Researcher — Somaiya Vidyavihar & CIFF (U.K.) · Sept 2019 - Mar 2020
Mumbai, India
- Led a team of six to build an automated tool identifying legal cases about Online Child Sexual Abuse and Exploitation (OCSA/OCSE) in India.
- Contributed to a report for the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights, submitted to the Rajya Sabha of the Indian Parliament.

How to Tune your Key-Value Store · Upcoming
Amazon Invited Talk
ANCHOR: A Vision for Secure Persistent Key-Value Stores in Disaggregated Data Centers · 2026
1st SeQureDB Workshop on Secure & Private Data Management
O3-LSM: Maximizing Disaggregated LSM Write Performance via Three-Layer Offloading · 2026
ACM SIGMOD
SHIELD: Encrypting Persistent Data of LSM-KVS from Monolithic to Disaggregated Storage · 2025
ACM SIGMOD
NetLSM: Enabling an In-Network Approach for Scheduling LSM-KVS Operations · 2025
USENIX FAST
Can Modern LLMs Tune and Configure LSM-based Key-Value Stores? · 2024
ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Storage and File Systems (HotStorage)
LLM-assisted Automatic-Configuration and Tuning Framework for LSM-based Key-Value Stores · 2024
USENIX FAST
Explainability using Decision Trees and Monte Carlo Simulations · 2021
Int'l Conference on Advances in Science & Technology (ICAST)

Shadow Program Committee

Artifact Evaluation Committee

Timo Sokler — HPE Labs Dual-Study Intern · 2026
Characterizing and understanding eBPF overheads.
Sampada Nemade — M.S. Student · 2026
Modeling traces using statistical methods.
Elias Klett — HPE Labs Dual-Study Intern · 2025
Benchmarking FUSE as an in-memory filesystem.
Anushwar Sharma — M.S. Student · 2025
The fusion of LLMs and ML for LSM-KVS tuning.
Harry Deccoco — M.S. Thesis Student · 2024
Optimizing post-deletion performance in LSM-KVS.
Madhumitha Sukumar & Kaushiki Singh — Undergrad Project Group; Jiaxin Dai — M.S. Project Group · 2023
LLM-driven tuning for LSM-KVS.
Anish Pawar, Kamal Rohra & Dhruv Joshi — Undergrad Robotics Club · 2020
Simulating object physics in MATLAB.

John Byrne, Viraj Thakkar, Harumi Kuno, Sekwon Lee. "A Global, Strongly Consistent, Client-Sided Caching Mechanism." Under HPE internal disclosure review; patent filing upon approval.
John Byrne, Viraj Thakkar, Harumi Kuno, Sekwon Lee. "Federated Coherence Management for a Globally Shared Cache." Under HPE internal disclosure review; patent filing upon approval.