Professor Marco Ajmone Marsan receives the 2024 ACM SIGMETRICS Achievement Award

This recognizes his contributions to stochastic modeling and analysis techniques and for application of the techniques to obtain a wealth of pioneering results in the analysis of communication protocols and energy efficiency in computer systems and networks

20 June 2024

Distinguished Faculty member Professor Marco Ajmone Marsan of the IMDEA Networks Institute and Politecnico di Torino has been honored with the prestigious 2024 ACM SIGMETRICS Achievement Award. This award recognizes his fundamental contributions to stochastic modeling and analysis techniques, as well as the application of these techniques to achieve pioneering results in the analysis of communication protocols and energy efficiency in computer systems and networks.

Throughout his distinguished professional career, Prof. Ajmone Marsan has published over 400 papers on performance modeling techniques and their applications to system and communication network design. His work has garnered over 17,000 citations, and his Google Scholar h-index is 55, placing him on Stanford’s list of the top 2% of Highly Cited Scientific Researchers worldwide in 2021.

Prof. Ajmone Marsan’s key impacts on performance modeling techniques began with the development of a class of Generalized Stochastic Petri Nets (GSPNs) together with Conte and Balbo. This landmark 1984 paper, cited over 2,000 times, expanded the previous Stochastic Petri Net modeling technique to include the specification of prioritized system events that occur in zero time, using an innovative embedded Markov chain analysis algorithm to compute system performance measures from a GSPN system design specification. This technology paved the way for the creation of software tools that compute analytic performance measures directly from functional specifications of complex system designs, benefiting a broader scientific community.

Among his contributions to the analysis and design of computer networks are a new architecture for multichannel local area network protocols with improved performance and reliability, impactful analyses of optical network technologies, and improved performance packet-switching architectures in collaboration with major companies in the networking sector. Results in each of these areas have been cited hundreds of times and utilized in more than a dozen patents, and established the Telecommunications Network Group at the Politecnico di Torino as a top institution for research.

Another significant set of results is his pioneering work with colleagues in analyzing and optimizing energy-efficient wireless networks, beginning with a 2009 paper on “Optimal Energy Savings in Cellular Access Networks,” which analyzes and optimizes the use of Base Station sleep modes to reduce energy consumption in radio access networks. This work validated the analytic results against system measurements and played a pivotal role in promoting sustainability as an important metric in the performance analysis of networks and systems.

As a Fellow of the IEEE and a member of the Academia Europaea and the Turin Academy of Sciences, Prof. Ajmone Marsan has been recognized with numerous awards, including an Honorary Doctorate in Telecommunication Networks from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics in 2002. In 2006, he was named Commendatore of the Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana by the President of Italy.

From IMDEA Networks we celebrate this well-deserved recognition to Professor Marco Ajmone Marsan for his invaluable contributions.