I am an Assistant Professor in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University. My research area is computer networking, and my interests broadly lie at the intersection of mathematical modeling and systems-building: fixing the ever-growing gaps in our “mental models” of networked systems, and using the resulting model insights to improve their performance, scalability, and attack resiliency. My group’s work spans subsystems (e.g., caches, schedulers, packet processors), network protocols, and datacenter fabrics. Prior to joining Stanford, I was a Visiting Researcher on the hardware team at Jane Street. Even before that, I completed my Ph.D. in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University, and obtained an undergraduate degree (B.A.Sc.) in Computer Engineering from the University of Toronto.

Recent News

8th September, ‘25

I’m beyond excited to be joining the Computer Science Department at Stanford University as an Assistant Professor starting Fall 2026! Until then, I will be a Visiting Researcher on Jane Street’s Ultra Low Latency (ULL) hardware team in New York City.

Publications

Conference & Workshop Papers


INFOCOM

Confucius: Adapting Home Routers to Congestion Control’s Reactions for Consistent Low Latency at IEEE INFOCOM, 2026 (Tokyo, Japan)

Zili Meng, Nirav Atre, Bochun Zhang, Mingwei Xu, Justine Sherry, and Maria Apostolaki
pdf code
BibTeX
@inproceedings{meng2026confucius, author = {Meng, Zili and Atre, Nirav and Zhang, Bochun and Xu, Mingwei and Sherry, Justine and Apostolaki, Maria}, title = {Confucius: Adapting Home Routers to Congestion Control’s Reactions for Consistent Low Latency}, booktitle = {IEEE INFOCOM 2026-IEEE Conference on Computer Communications}, pages = {1--10}, year = {2026}, organization = {IEEE} }
Thesis

Taming Model Incongruities in Networked Systems Ph.D. Dissertation, 2025 (Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA)

Nirav Atre
pdf
BibTeX
@phdthesis{thesis2025-atre, title={Taming Model Incongruities in Networked Systems}, author={Atre, Nirav}, year={2025}, school={Carnegie Mellon University} }
PODC

Impossibility Results for Data-Center Routing with Congestion Control and Unsplittable Flows at ACM PODC, 2024 (Nantes, France)

Miguel Ferreira, Nirav Atre, Justine Sherry, and João Luís Sobrinho
pdf
BibTeX
@inproceedings{podc2024-ferreira, title={Impossibility Results for Data-Center Routing with Congestion Control and Unsplittable Flows}, author={Ferreira, Miguel Alves and Atre, Nirav and Sherry, Justine and Sobrinho, Jo{\~a}o Lu{\'\i}s}, booktitle={Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Symposium on Principles of Distributed Computing}, pages={}, year={2024} }
NSDI

BBQ: A Fast and Scalable Integer Priority Queue for Hardware Packet Scheduling at USENIX NSDI, 2024 (Santa Clara, CA)

Nirav Atre, Hugo Sadok, and Justine Sherry
pdf video code slides
BibTeX
@inproceedings {nsdi2024-atre, author = {Nirav Atre and Hugo Sadok and Justine Sherry}, title = {BBQ: A Fast and Scalable Integer Priority Queue for Hardware Packet Scheduling}, booktitle = {21st USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI 24)}, year = {2024}, isbn = {978-1-939133-39-7}, address = {Santa Clara, CA}, pages = {455--475}, url = {https://www.usenix.org/conference/nsdi24/presentation/atre}, publisher = {USENIX Association}, month = apr }
OSDI

Ensō: A Streaming Interface for NIC-Application Communication at USENIX OSDI, 2023 (Boston, MA)

Hugo Sadok, Nirav Atre, Zhipeng Zhao, Daniel S. Berger, James C. Hoe, Aurojit Panda, Justine Sherry, and Ren Wang
Jay Lepreau Best Paper Award  Distinguished Artifact Award 
Featured in SCS News
pdf video code
BibTeX
@inproceedings {osdi2023-sadok, author = {Sadok, Hugo and Atre, Nirav and Zhao, Zhipeng and Berger, Daniel S. and Hoe, James C. and Panda, Aurojit and Sherry, Justine and Wang, Ren}, title = {Ensō: A Streaming Interface for {NIC}-Application Communication}, booktitle = {17th {USENIX} Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation}, year = {2023}, isbn = {}, pages = {}, publisher = {USENIX Association}, month = jul, series = {OSDI~'23} }
SIGCOMM

SurgeProtector: Mitigating Temporal Algorithmic Complexity Attacks using Adversarial Scheduling at ACM SIGCOMM, 2022 (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

Nirav Atre, Hugo Sadok, Erica Chiang, Weina Wang, and Justine Sherry
Featured on CyLab
pdf video code slides
BibTeX
@inproceedings{sigcomm2022-atre, author = {Atre, Nirav and Sadok, Hugo and Chiang, Erica and Wang, Weina and Sherry, Justine}, title = {SurgeProtector: Mitigating Temporal Algorithmic Complexity Attacks using Adversarial Scheduling}, year = {2022}, publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery}, address = {New York, NY, USA}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2022 Conference of the ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication (SIGCOMM)} }
HotOS

We Need Kernel Interposition over the Network Dataplane at ACM HotOS, 2021 (Virtual)

Hugo Sadok, Zhipeng Zhao, Valerie Choung, Nirav Atre, Daniel S. Berger, James C. Hoe, Aurojit Panda, and Justine Sherry
pdf video
BibTeX
@inproceedings{hotos2021-sadok, author = {Sadok, Hugo and Zhao, Zhipeng and Choung, Valerie and Atre, Nirav and Berger, Daniel S. and Hoe, James C. and Panda, Aurojit and Sherry, Justine}, title = {We Need Kernel Interposition over the Network Dataplane}, year = {2021}, isbn = {}, publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery}, address = {New York, NY, USA}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3458336.3465281}, doi = {10.1145/3458336.3465281}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the Workshop on Hot Topics in Operating Systems}, pages = {152--158}, month = may, series = {HotOS '21} }
OSDI

Achieving 100Gbps Intrusion Prevention on a Single Server at USENIX OSDI, 2020 (Virtual)

Zhipeng Zhao, Hugo Sadok, Nirav Atre, James C. Hoe, Vyas Sekar, and Justine Sherry
pdf video code
BibTeX
@inproceedings{osdi2020-zhao, author = {Zhao, Zhipeng and Sadok, Hugo and Atre, Nirav and Hoe, James and Sekar, Vyas and Sherry, Justine}, title = {Achieving 100Gbps Intrusion Prevention on a Single Server}, booktitle = {14th {USENIX} Symposium on Operating Systems Design and Implementation ({OSDI} 20)}, year = {2020}, address = {Banff, Alberta}, url = {https://www.usenix.org/conference/osdi20/presentation/zhao-zhipeng}, publisher = {USENIX Association}, month = nov, }
SIGCOMM

Caching with Delayed Hits at ACM SIGCOMM, 2020 (Virtual)

Nirav Atre, Justine Sherry, Weina Wang, and Daniel S. Berger
Featured on the APNIC Blog, and reproduced in CS244
pdf video code slides
BibTeX
@inproceedings{sigcomm2020-atre, author = {Atre, Nirav and Sherry, Justine and Wang, Weina and Berger, Daniel S.}, title = {Caching with Delayed Hits}, year = {2020}, isbn = {9781450379557}, publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery}, address = {New York, NY, USA}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3387514.3405883}, doi = {10.1145/3387514.3405883}, booktitle = {Proceedings of the 2020 Conference of the ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication (SIGCOMM)}, pages = {495–513}, numpages = {19}, keywords = {Caching, Belatedly, Delayed hits}, location = {Virtual Event, USA}, series = {SIGCOMM ’20} }

Mentored Students' Posters


Robust Heuristics: Attacks and Defenses on Job Size Estimation for WSJF Systems at ACM SIGCOMM Poster Session, 2022 (Amsterdam, Netherlands)

Erica Chiang, Nirav Atre, Hugo Sadok, Weina Wang, and Justine Sherry
Runner-Up of the SIGCOMM SRC! 
pdf
BibTeX
@inproceedings{poster-sigcomm2022-chiang, title={Robust Heuristics: Attacks and Defenses on Job Size Estimation for WSJF Systems}, author={Chiang, Erica and Atre, Nirav and Sadok, Hugo and Wang, Weina and Sherry, Justine}, booktitle={Proceedings of the 2022 Conference of the ACM Special Interest Group on Data Communication (SIGCOMM) (Poster Session)}, year={2022} }

Delayed Hits in Multi-Level Caches at ACM SOSP Poster Session, 2021

Benjamin Carleton, Nirav Atre, Weina Wang, and Justine Sherry
Winner of the SIGOPS SRC! 
pdf
BibTeX
@inproceedings{poster-sosp2021-carleton, title={Delayed Hits in Multi-Level Caches}, author={Carleton, Benjamin}, booktitle={Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (Poster Session)}, year={2021} }

Preprints


Probabilistic Fair Ordering of Events at arXiv:2602.09148, 2026

Muhammad Haseeb, Jinkun Geng, Aurojit Panda, Radhika Mittal, Nirav Atre, Srinivas Narayana, and Anirudh Sivaraman
pdf
BibTeX
@misc{arxiv2026-haseeb, title = {Probabilistic Fair Ordering of Events}, author = {Muhammad Haseeb and Jinkun Geng and Aurojit Panda and Radhika Mittal and Nirav Atre and Srinivas Narayana and Anirudh Sivaraman}, year = {2026}, eprint = {2602.09148}, archivePrefix = {arXiv}, primaryClass = {cs.NI}, url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2602.09148}, }

Minimum Congestion Routing of Unsplittable Flows in Data-Center Networks at arXiv:2505.03908, 2025

Miguel Ferreira, Nirav Atre, Justine Sherry, Michael Dinitz, and João Luís Sobrinho
pdf
BibTeX
@misc{arxiv2025-ferreira, title={Minimum Congestion Routing of Unsplittable Flows in Data-Center Networks}, author={Miguel Ferreira and Nirav Atre and Justine Sherry and Michael Dinitz and João Luís Sobrinho}, year={2025}, eprint={2505.03908}, archivePrefix={arXiv}, primaryClass={cs.NI}, url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.03908}, }

Research Talks

BBQ: A Fast and Scalable IPQ for Hardware Packet Scheduling
  • at the Jane Street Xcelerate Colloquium (JSXC). May, 2025.
  • at NSDI ‘24. April, 2024.
  • at the Pigasus Developer's Meeting. April, 2023.
SurgeProtector: Mitigating ACAs using Adversarial Scheduling
  • at SIGCOMM ‘22. August, 2022.
  • at MIT, Networks and Mobile Systems Group Seminar. August, 2022.
  • at UT Austin, Systems Research Group Seminar. July, 2022.
  • at UC Berkeley, Systems Research Group Seminar. March, 2022.
  • at the Pigasus Developers Meeting. March, 2022.
  • at the Crossroads 3D-FPGA Research Center. November, 2021.
Caching with Delayed Hits
  • at Principles of Memory Hierarchy Optimization (PMHO) ‘22. April, 2022.
  • at SIGCOMM ‘20. August, 2020.
  • at the University of Cambridge, Systems Research Group. July, 2020.
  • at Microsoft Research (MSR), Systems Research Group. July, 2020.