Eliã Batista

About me

I am a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Distributed Systems Group at Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI), Lugano, Switzerland. I received my Ph.D. in Informatics from USI in a cotutelle de thèse program with PUC-RS (Brazil). I also hold an M.Sc. and a B.Sc. in Computer Science from PUC-RS.

My research focuses on dependable distributed systems, with particular emphasis on State Machine Replication (SMR), Atomic Multicast, parallel scheduling, and Blockchain state management and recovery. I am especially interested in designing efficient and fault-tolerant protocols that scale under realistic workloads and dynamic system conditions.

My recent work explores optimized data structures and algorithms for efficient SMR/Blockchain state transference and communication overlays that address fault tolerance, system reconfiguration, and performance variability under different workload and locality patterns. My research combines protocol design, systems implementation, and experimental evaluation on real distributed infrastructures.

Before academia, I spent over a decade in industry as a Senior Software Developer and System Analyst, working on large-scale systems and full-stack applications. This background strongly influences my research approach, with an emphasis on practicality, performance, and real-world applicability.

I am actively involved in teaching and mentoring at both undergraduate and graduate levels, and I regularly serve as a reviewer for top-tier conferences and journals in distributed systems and dependability. I am always open to research collaborations and technical discussions.

Short CV | Full Academic CV | ORCID | Google Scholar

Education

Ph.D. in Informatics – USI / PUC-RS (cotutelle), Lugano, Switzerland (2021–2026)

Advisors: Prof. Dr. Fernando Pedone (USI) and Prof. Dr. Fernando Dotti (PUC-RS)
PhD Thesis: Revving Up Replication: Communication and State Management for State Machine Replication (English, Português)

M.Sc. in Computer Science – PUC-RS, Porto Alegre, Brazil (2018–2020) (Dissertation)

B.Sc. in Computer Science – PUC-RS, Porto Alegre, Brazil (2006–2011)

Professional experience

PhD Researcher / R & D Engineer – USI, Switzerland (2021-2026)

• Research in dependable distributed systems: SMR, Atomic Multicast, performance, and fault tolerance
• Design and evaluation of distributed protocols: communication patterns, state management, recovery strategies
• Experimental infrastructures and reproducible benchmarking under realistic workloads and failure scenarios
• Linux cluster administration supporting distributed systems experiments (multi-user research environment)
• Teaching Assistant: Operating Systems, Systems Programming, Distributed Algorithms
• Technologies: Java, Go, Python, C/C++, Linux, distributed protocols, performance analysis

Senior Software Developer – Compasso UOL, Brazil (2017–2020)

• Technical leadership in scalable full-stack applications (TypeScript, Node.js, React), REST APIs, CI/CD and performance optimization
• Cross-platform mobile development with React Native and TypeScript
• Mentoring junior developers; architecture decisions; code reviews; Agile (SCRUM)

System Analyst – Bem Promotora, Brazil (2014–2017)

• Requirements engineering and system analysis for payroll-loan financial platform
• Implementation of complex business rules and data processing with SQL Server stored procedures
• Close collaboration with stakeholders and engineering teams for feature definition and compliance

Software Developer – DB, Brazil (2010–2013)

• Enterprise ERP development on Microsoft stack, database integration and performance tuning (SQL Server)

Software Developer – Vensis, Brazil (2008–2010)

• ERP modules development and SQL Server query/stored procedure optimization

Academic research publications

B+AVL trees: towards data structures for robust and efficient blockchain state synchronization
Michele Cattaneo; Eliã Batista; Fernando Pedone
Proceedings of the 44th International Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems (SRDS), Porto, Portugal, 2025

FlexCast: Genuine Overlay-based Atomic Multicast
Eliã Batista; Paulo Coelho; Eduardo Alchieri; Fernando Dotti; Fernando Pedone
Proceedings of the 24th International Middleware Conference (Middleware), Bologna, Italy, 2023

Early Scheduling on Steroids: Boosting Parallel State Machine Replication
Eliã Batista; Eduardo Alchieri; Fernando Dotti; Fernando Pedone
Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing (JPDC), Volume 163, May 2022, Pages 269–282

Resource Utilization Analysis of Early Scheduling in Parallel State Machine Replication
Eliã Batista; Eduardo Alchieri; Fernando Dotti; Fernando Pedone
9th Latin-American Symposium on Dependable Computing (LADC), Natal, Brazil, 2019

Under review / under submission

Reconfiguring Atomic Multicast
Eliã Batista; Paulo Coelho; Eduardo Alchieri; Fernando Dotti; Fernando Pedone
Under submission to Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing (JPDC)

Scaling Atomic Ordering in Shared Memory
Lorenzo Martignetti; Eliã Batista; Gianpaolo Cugola; Fernando Pedone
Under review at ACM SoCC 2026

Teaching experience

I have extensive teaching experience as a Teaching Assistant at USI, contributing to undergraduate and graduate courses in core systems topics. My teaching emphasizes hands-on experimentation and the connection between theory and real system implementations.

• Distributed Algorithms (M.Sc.) – USI, 2022–2025
• Operating Systems (B.Sc.) – USI, 2021–2025
• Systems Programming (B.Sc.) – USI, 2021

Student supervision

• M.Sc. (co-advisor):
  Genuine atomic multicast on Apache Kafka, USI, 2024 — Poster at PASC 2024 (Zurich, Switzerland)
• B.Sc. (co-advisor):
  Merklized B+Trees for fast state synchronization in blockchain systems, USI, 2022 — BSc thesis

Service and leadership

• Reviewing: DSN (2022, 2023, 2025, 2026), EuroSys (2022, 2024), Middleware (2022), OPODIS (2023–2025), SRDS (2024), ICDCS (2024), IEEE TDSC (2022), USENIX ATC (2022, 2025)
• Infrastructure: System administration of a Linux-based research cluster supporting distributed systems experiments
• Funding proposals: Principal researcher on multiple project submissions to Swiss funding programs

Talks

• SYS Institute Yearly Workshop, USI, Lugano, Switzerland — 2021
• Switzerland–Brazil Workshop (PUC-RS + Online) — April 2025
  Um Olhar Atual sobre Sistemas Distribuídos: Da Pesquisa à Aplicação no Mundo Real

Skills

Programming

• Main: Java, Go, Python, Node.js / TypeScript
• Experienced: C, C++, SQL
• Used in the past: C#, JavaScript, Bash, Visual Basic, Assembly, PHP

Tools / Platforms

• Systems: Linux (advanced), Windows, macOS
• Containers / VMs: Docker, VirtualBox, Vagrant
• Collaboration: Git, GitHub, GitLab, JIRA, Confluence
• Frameworks / Systems: MPI, BFT-SMaRt, Redis, Protocol Buffers, Netty, Maven, Gradle
• Web: React, Next.js, Express.js, REST APIs, HTML/CSS
• Databases: SQL Server, relational databases, NoSQL databases, data modeling and query optimization
• Writing: LaTeX, Markdown, Microsoft Office