Muhammad Abdullah

I’m a final-year Ph.D. student in Computer Science at the Network Architecture Lab (NAL), EPFL, supervised by Prof. Katerina Argyraki. Prior to this, I completed my MS in CS at LUMS, where I was part of Network and Systems Group (NSG@LUMS), working under the guidance of Prof. Ihsan Qazi and Prof. Zafar Qazi.

My research interests span Internet Measurement, Network Inference, Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), Adaptive Video Streaming, Causal Inference, and Applied Machine Learning. Broadly, I work at the intersection of Computer Networks and Applied Data Science, with the goal of making the Internet more fair, transparent, and inclusive for everyone. Currently, my research focuses on empirically analyzing the performance of services—such as adaptive video streaming and social media platforms—deployed on public clouds. If you have aligned interests, please feel free to reach out via email.

Education

EPFL (École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne), Switzerland
Ph.D. in Computer Science (2021-Present)
Advised by Dr. Katerina Argyraki

LUMS (Lahore University of Management Sciences), Pakistan
M.Sc in Computer Science (2019-21)
CGPA: 3.93/4.00 (Rank: 1/75 - President's Gold Medal)
Thesis: "Causal Inference on the Impact of Android Go on Mobile Web Performance"

NUST (National University of Sciences & Technology)[Link], Pakistan
B.Eng in Electrical Engineering (2014-18)
CGPA: 3.70/4.00 (Rank: Top 5%)

Work Experience

M-Lab (led by Google) (Jan 2022 - May 2022)
Research Fellow

KAIST, South Korea (Sep 2018 - Jan 2019)
Research Assistant
(Networks & Systems Lab)

XGrid, Pakistan (May 2019 - Aug 2019)
Software Engineer
(AWS Cloud Deployment Team)

CERN, Switzerland (Jul 2017 - Sep 2017)
Software Engineer Intern
(Datacenter Networking Team)

Publications

• Edge Caching as Differentiation.
  Muhammad Abdullah, Mughees Ur Rehman, Pavlos Nikolopoulos, Katerina Argyraki
  ACM SIGCOMM 2025

• Caching and Neutrality.
  Muhammad Abdullah, Pavlos Nikolopoulos, Katerina Argyraki
  ACM Hot Topics in Networks (HotNets) 2023

• Localizing Traffic Differentiation.
  Zeinab Shmeis, Muhammad Abdullah, Pavlos Nikolopoulos, Katerina Argyraki, David Choffnes , Phillipa Gill
  ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC) 2023

• Causal Impact of Android Go on Mobile Web Performance.
  Muhammad Abdullah, Zafar Qazi, Ihsan Qazi
  ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC) 2022

• Rethinking Web for Affordability and Inclusion.
  Ihsan Qazi, Zafar Qazi, Ayesha Ali, Muhammad Abdullah, Rumaisa Habib
  ACM Hot Topics in Networks (HotNets) 2021

• Using Application Layer Banner Data to Automatically Identify IoT Devices.
  Talha Javed , Muhammad Haseeb , Muhammad Abdullah , Mobin Javed
  ACM SIGCOMM Computer Communication Review (CCR) 2020
  

Teaching

• Head TA — COM407: TCP/IP networking (Fall ‘24, EPFL).
• Head TA — CS202: Computer Systems (Spring ‘24, EPFL).
• Head TA — CS332: Introduction to Database Systems (Spring ‘23, EPFL).
• Head TA — COM208: Computer Networks (Fall ‘22, EPFL).
• Head TA — CS334: Principles and Techniques of Data Science (Spring ‘21, LUMS).
  

Talks

• Presented our paper “Causal impact of Android go on mobile web performance”
  Internet Measurement Conference (IMC) at Nice, France (Oct 2022)
• A Primer on Zeek IDS
  National Centre for Cyber Security at Lahore, Pakistan (Oct 2020)
• Network Automation with Brocade Workflow Composer
  Lightning Talks at CERN, Switzerland (Jul 2017)
  

Awards & Honors

• Received Research Fellowship from M-Lab (led by Google) for our work on localizing network neutrality violations (Dec 2021)
• Gold Medal Awarded by the President of Pakistan for securing 1st position in Master’s program (Jun 2021)
• EDIC Computer Science Fellowship, EPFL (Jan 2021)
• Dean’s High Achievers Award, NUST (Jan 2018)
• One of the 40 students selected globally for KAIST Electrical Engineering Camp (Jan 2018)
• One of the 37 students selected globally for CERN Openlab Internship Program (Jan 2017)