Wrapping Up ICPE 2025: A Milestone Event in Performance Engineering
Friday, June 13, 2025 00:00
We are delighted to share highlights from the recently concluded 16th annual ACM/SPEC International Conference on Performance Engineering (ICPE) 2025, held May 5-9 in Toronto, Canada.
By Marin Litoiu, Evgenia Smirni, Katinka Wolter, Alessandro V. Papadopoulos
ICPE has been the flagship conference in the area of performance engineering over the years and has a tradition of bringing together both academic scholars and industrial practitioners in discussing the recent advances in the area.
Global Perspectives & Inspiring Keynotes
This year’s event, located at York University, hosted more than 130 registered participants who contributed to a rich program spanning keynote speeches, research and industrial presentations, and collaborative workshops. The conference facilitated discussions and networking among attendees from across the globe, including academia, industry, and research institutions.
Our keynote sessions featured talks from three distinguished keynote speakers:
- Prof. Lizy Kurian John (UT Austin, USA) provided an overview of opportunities and challenges of the combination of AI and Performance Engineering.
- Prof. Ahmed E. Hassan (Queen’s University, Canada) discussed the importance of software performance engineering for foundation model software.
- Dr. Marc Broooker (AWS, USA) presented an industrial perspective on how to deal with performance during adverse conditions.
These talks sparked lively discussions and set the tone for the innovative and forward-thinking atmosphere of the conference.
A Rich, Diverse Program
This year’s technical track delivered a record number of contributions: 17 full research papers, 7 short papers, 8 industrial submissions (plus 5 industry talks), 3 artifact evaluations, 2 data challenges, 3 emerging-research pieces, and 3 journal-first presentations. Notably, for the first time ICPE featured industry speakers without accompanying full-paper publications, alongside our inaugural virtual PC-meeting discussions of research submissions.
Five co-located workshops and two tutorials explored cutting-edge topics, from cloud performance testing and benchmarking to AI-driven performance analysis—fostering hands-on collaboration across academia and industry.
A panel, “Software Performance Engineering: Past, Present, and Future – A Word from the Pioneers,” featured three distinguished researchers: Connie Smith, Dorina Petriu, Murray Woodside.
Awards & Special Moments
A highlight of ICPE 2025 was the presentation of the SPEC Kaivalya Dixit Distinguished Dissertation Award to Dr. Jingzhi Gong of Loughborough University (UK), whose dissertation on “Pushing the Boundary: Specialising Deep Configuration Performance Learning,” made significant advancements in the usage of machine learning in combination with performance engineering.
Additionally, the Best Paper Award was given to “Introducing GPU persistent graphs for time-sensitive workflows,” authored by Cyril Cetre (Thales Research & Techonology, Palaiseau, France); Florian Ferreira (LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, Université PSL, CNRS, Université Sorbonne, Université Paris Cité, Meudon, France); Remi Barrere (Thales Research & Technology, Palaiseau, France); and Damien Gratadour (LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, Université PSL, CNRS, Université Sorbonne, Université Paris Cité, Meudon, France).
Gratitude and Looking Forward
We would like to express our gratitude to all the attendees, speakers, and sponsors of ICPE 2025. Heartfelt thanks to our general chairs, program chairs, track and workshop organizers, sponsors, and every volunteer who made ICPE 2025 a resounding success.
General Chairs
- Marin Litoiu, York University, Canada
- Evgenia Smirni, College of William and Mary, USA
Research Program Chairs
- Katinka Wolter, Freie Universitat Berlin, Germany
- Alessandro Papadopoulos, Mälardalen University, Sweden
Journal-First Chairs
- Raffaela Mirandola, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany
- Weiyi (Ian) Shang, University of Waterloo, Canada
Industry Track Chair
- Lishan Yang, George Mason University, USA
- Alexander Podelko, Amazon, USA
Emerging Research Track Chairs
- Ana Lucia Varbanescu, University of Twente, Netherlands
- Y.C. Tay, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Artifact Evaluation Chairs
- Nikolas Herbst, University of Würzburg, Germany
- Sören Henning, Dynatrace Research, Austria
Workshop Chairs
- Luca Traini, University of L’Aquila, Italy
- Marios Fokaefs, York University, Canada
Tutorial Chair
- Vittoria de Nitto Personè, Tor Vergata University of Rome, Italy
- Cristina Abad, ESPOL, Ecuador
Posters and Demos Chair
- Emilio Incerto, IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, Italy
Data Challenge Chairs
- André Bauer, University of Chicago, USA
- Naser Ezzati-Jivan, Brock University, Canada
Awards Chairs
- William Knottenbelt, Imperial College London, UK
- Diwakar Krishnamurthy, University of Calgary, Canada
Publicity & Social-Media Chairs
- Alim Gias, Queen Mary University of London, UK
- Joydeep Mukherjee, California Polytechnic State University, USA
- Nasim Beigi Mohammadi, University of Toronto, Canada
- Guocong Quan, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China
Finance Chair
- Hamzeh Khazaei, York University, Canada
Sponsorship Chair
- Zhen Ming (Jack) Jiang, York University, Canada
Panel Chair
- Antinisca Di Marco
Proceedings Chair
- Vincenzo Stoico, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, Netherlands
Local and Social Events Co-chairs
- Hung Viet Pham, York University, Canada
- Arik Sendorovich, York University, Canada
Web Chairs
- Komal Sarda, York University, Canada
- Hamza Hussain, York University, Canada
Registration Chair
- Zhenhao Li, York University, Canada
Mark Your Calendars ICPE 2026 will be in May 2026 in the historic city of Florence, Italy. The call for papers will be announced in late 2025.
Thank you once again for being a part of ICPE 2025. We hope to see you next year in Florence!
