I am a Research Scientist at IBM Research. Before rejoining the "big blue" family, I led research and engineering efforts to build distributed cloud infrastructure in space at a startup in the San Francisco Bay area. Prior to earning my startup battle scars, I spent six years as a PhD student and postdoctoral associate in Computer Science at Cornell University, where I conducted research in the area of hybrid cloud computing for digital agriculture with an emphasis on societal impact. I was co-advised by Hakim Weatherspoon and Phoebe Sengers.

Research

As a researcher, I am driven to advance the state of the art in resilient networked systems in ways that center their societal impacts at the earliest design stages. To do so, I strategically combine techniques from networking and critical human-computer interaction (HCI) into a single approach that I call trilingualism, which continuously integrates (1) networked systems building, (2) critical domain applications, and (3) critical reflections on the technical decisions. As a result, I produce sociotechnical insights. In my PhD, I implemented and deployed data-driven agricultural applications in rural areas of the United States (US). I am excited to build on this track record to continue pushing the state of the art in networking and HCI to new frontiers such as space.

Recent News

• Sept. 2025: I have re-joined IBM as Research Scientist to advance research in distributed cloud and AI infra.
• Jul. 2025: Awarded a NASA STTR Phase I Grant to build a mobile edge cloud for space with Satlyt.
• Oct. 2024: I have joined Satlyt as head of engineering for edge computing
• Oct. 2024: I am on the academic job market for 2025!
• Sept. 2024: I successfully defended my dissertation and became Dr. Rubambiza!
• Aug. 2024: I am staying as a postdoctoral associate with Cornell CS
• Apr. 2024: I am nominated as a Ph.D. Degree Marshal to represent Cornell Bowers CIS in the 156th Cornell University Commencement!
• Apr. 2024: Excited to give a LEAP Alliance Invited Research Talk in the HCI Seminar at Princeton University CS!
• Mar. 2024: Excited to present a poster on our SDF 2.0 work at KubeCon/CloudNativeCon Europe in Paris, France
• Jan. 2024: Our simulacra of societal impact paper is accepted at ACM CHI '24. We're going to Hawaii!
• Jan. 2024: Photo and video recap from my wedding in Uganda
• Dec. 2023: Excited to travel to back to Uganda for my upcoming wedding
• Dec. 2023: Excited to give a LEAP Alliance Invited Research Talk in the Systems Seminar at UIUC CS!
• Nov. 2023: News article by Cornell CIS covering my participation in the Tapia conference
• Nov. 2023: Excited to give a LEAP Alliance Invited Research Talk in the Systems Seminar at UT Austin CS!
• Nov. 2023: I was awarded the SUNY Provost Diversity Fellowship for Spring '24 as a Graduate School Dean's Scholar!
• Oct. 2023: Video from my Comosum presentation at USENIX ATC '23 now available on YouTube
• Sept. 2023: I won Best Doctoral Presentation in the DC at Tapia based on my thesis work!
• Sept. 2023: I participated in the Doctoral Consortium (DC) at Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference in Dallas
• Sept. 2023: I co-organized the SNIP2+ Workshop at SIGCOMM '23 in New York City
• Sept. 2023: The Los Angeles Times covers our work on spotting wine grape disease from the sky
• Aug. 2023: I was selected for the NextProf Nexus future faculty development program at Georgia Tech
• Aug. 2023: I received a one-year extension on the NSF NRT Fellowship in Digital Plant Science at Cornell
• July 2023: Comosum is presented at USENIX ATC '23 (slides)
• July 2023: EdgeRDV is presented at IEEE Edge '23 (slides) , (video - starts at 01:27:30)
• June 2023: Comosum receives all badges in the USENIX ATC '23 Artifact Evaluation
• May. 2023: EdgeRDV is accepted at IEEE Edge '23. We're going to Chicago!
• May. 2023: Fresh paper on cloud-based disease detection in the Journal of Geophysical Research
• Apr. 2023: Comosum is accepted at USENIX ATC '23. We're going to Boston!
• Apr. 2023: I was recognized with the Cornell Bowers CIS Distinguished Leadership in Service Award
• Apr. 2023: I was selected to attend the CSST Summer Institute. Yay for new sociotechnical connections!
• Mar. 2023: I am co-organizing SNIP2+ at SIGCOMM '23. Please submit your work!
• Sept. 2022: Excited to return to IBM as a Research Intern with the Distributed Cloud Management group
• June 2022: Our paper on Seamlessness in DA is featured in Cornell News. Read more: here and here
• May. 2022: Excited to join Meta (Facebook) as a UX Research Intern in the Privacy group
• May. 2022: Our paper on Seamlessness in DA is presented at CHI '22
• Mar. 2022: I successfully proposed my dissertation topic and passed my A-exam! (see Research)
• Feb. 2022: Our paper on Seamlessness in DA is accepted at CHI '22. We're going to New Orleans!
• May. 2021: Excited to join IBM as a Research Intern in the EDA group
• Apr 2021: I told School News Network 'I’m hoping the world will be my oyster' about my career
• Feb. 2021: Our paper on the Future of Farm Work is accepted at the Automation XP workshop @ CHI '21
• Apr. 2020: I received a two-year NSF NRT Fellowship in Digital Plant Science at Cornell
• Mar. 2020: I received an Honorable Mention in the 2020 NSF GRFP competition
• Oct 2019: I am featured in the Cornell CIS@20 Celebratory Video
• (show/hide older news)

Select Publications

Gloire Rubambiza, "Towards Resilient Rural Networking Infrastructure: Seamless Visions, Seamful Realities", Cornell University Dissertation and Theses. 2024. [free full PDF]

Gloire Rubambiza, Phoebe Sengers, Hakim Weatherspoon, and Jen Liu, "Seam Work and Simulacra of Societal Impact in Networking Research: A Critical Technical Practice Approach", ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM CHI 2024). (Acceptance Rate: 24%). [PDF], [video]

Vesna Bacheva, Imani Madison, Mathew Baldwin, Mark Beilstein, Douglas F. Call, Jessica A. Deaver, Kirill Efimenko, Jan Genzer, Khara Grieger, April Z. Gu, Mehmet Mert Ilman, Jen Liu, Sijin Li, Brooke K. Mayer, Anand Kumar Mishra, Juan Claudio Nino, Gloire Rubambiza, Phoebe Sengers, Robert Shepherd, Jesse Woodson, Hakim Weatherspoon, Margaret Frank, Jacob Jones, Rosangela Sozzani, and Abraham Stroock, "Transdisciplinary Collaborations for Advancing Sustainable and Resilient Agricultural Systems", Global Change Biology.

Lara Roeven, Steven A. Wolf, Phoebe Sengers, Jen Liu, Gloire Rubambiza, Donny Persaud and Hakim Weatherspoon, "Analyzing Abstraction in critical Agri-food Studies and Computer Science: Toward Interdisciplinary Analysis of Digital Agriculture Innovation" , Agriculture and Human Values.

Gloire Rubambiza, Shiang-Wan Chin, Sachille Atapattu, Mueed Rehman, José F. Martínez, and Hakim Weatherspoon, "Comosum: An Extensible, Reconfigurable, and Fault-Tolerant IoT Platform for Digital Agriculture", USENIX Annual Technical Conference (USENIX ATC 2023) (Acceptance Rate: 18%). [PDF], [video], [slides], [code].

Gloire Rubambiza, Braulio Dumba, Andrew J. Anderson, and Hakim Weatherspoon, "EdgeRDV: A Framework for Edge Workload Management at Scale", IEEE International Conference on Edge Computing and Communications (IEEE Edge 2023) (Acceptance Rate: 17%). [PDF], [video, 01:27:30], [slides].

Gloire Rubambiza*, Fernando Romero Galvan*, Ryan Pavlick, Hakim Weatherspoon, and Kaitlin M. Gold, "Toward Cloud-Native, Machine Learning Based Detection of Crop Disease with Imaging Spectroscopy", Journal of Geophysical Research (Biogeosciences), Volume 128, Issue 6, 2023. [PDF].

Gloire Rubambiza, Phoebe Sengers, and Hakim Weatherspoon, "Seamless Visions, Seamful Realities: Anticipating Rural Infrastructural Fragility in Early Design of Digital Agriculture", ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM CHI 2022). (Acceptance Rate: 23%). [PDF], [video], [slides].

Gloire Rubambiza, Phoebe Sengers, and Hakim Weatherspoon, "Paradoxes in Creating the Future of Farm Work: Anticipating Social Impact through the Lens of Early Adopters", Automation Experience at the Workplace Workshop at the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (ACM CHI 2021). [PDF].

Gloire Rubambiza, Hakim Weatherspoon, José F. Martínez, and Abraham Stroock, "WaterGuard: Toward Cheap Automated Irrigation Systems Powered by the Cloud and TV White Spaces", CMD-IT/ACM Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing Conference (TAPIA 2020). [PDF].

Martin M. Perez, Gloire Rubambiza, Brandon Barker, Hakim Weatherspoon, and Julio O. Giordano, "Automated real-time integration of data from multiple sensors and nonsensor systems for prediction of dairy cow and herd status and performance", Journal of Dairy Science, Vol. 103, Suppl. 1, 2020. [PDF].