The Sustainable Orchestration in Computing Continuum Lab (SOC² Lab) is a Distributed Systems research lab at the School of Computer Science, University College Dublin.
What we study
SOC² Lab treats sustainability and resilience as coupled orchestration problems in distributed systems. Modern services and AI workloads increasingly operate across end devices, edge infrastructure, cloud platforms, federated multi-site systems, multi-cloud environments, and emerging terrestrial–orbital computing infrastructures, including space–air–ground settings.
In these environments, orchestration decisions must account not only for performance and scalability, but also for energy use, carbon intensity, renewable availability, reliability, connectivity, and operational uncertainty.
SDG-Driven Research
SOC² Lab was established to address the sustainability gap in distributed digital infrastructure. By reducing the energy and carbon impact of service and AI workload orchestration while improving resilience and access to intelligent digital services, the lab contributes directly to the aims of the UN Sustainable Development Goals:
- SDG 7: energy-aware digital infrastructure
- SDG 9: resilient and sustainable computing systems
- SDG 11: smart and sustainable cities and communities
- SDG 13: reduced carbon impact of digital services and AI workloads
Application contexts include smart cities, intelligent buildings, resilient digital services, and sustainability-driven AI services.
Research Programme
Our research connects three strands:
- sustainability-aware resource management
- resilience-aware service orchestration
- distributed AI and LLM@Edge orchestration
These strands share a common systems concern: how orchestration decisions can remain effective when workloads, resources, carbon intensity, connectivity, and reliability conditions change over time.
We develop models, algorithms, and systems for orchestration across edge–cloud, federated multi-site, multi-cloud, and emerging terrestrial–orbital computing infrastructures. The lab investigates orchestration across VM-based, container-based, serverless, edge AI, and distributed AI execution models, including multi-access edge computing and space–air–ground settings.
The lab builds on prior work in multi-access edge computing, smart urban systems, service placement, complex event processing, and sensor-based intelligence, extending this foundation toward sustainable and resilient orchestration of modern distributed systems.
Active Research and Infrastructure
SOC² Lab’s current work is carried out through active PhD projects at UCD and evaluated using an in-house edge–cloud testbed. The testbed supports experimentation with distributed services, AI workloads, orchestration mechanisms, monitoring pipelines, and heterogeneous edge–cloud resources.
The latest publications, code, datasets, and research artefacts are maintained on the Publications and Resources pages.
Our Values
- Open Science and Reproducible Systems Research: We aim to make research outputs, including algorithms, code, datasets, experiment configurations, and reproducibility artefacts, openly available where publication, licensing, data protection, and collaboration constraints allow. By sharing tools, data, and documentation through appropriate open platforms, we support transparency, reuse, and independent validation of our work.
- Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion: We aim to build an inclusive research environment in which students, researchers, and collaborators from diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and expertise can contribute meaningfully. We support fair recruitment, respectful collaboration, constructive mentoring, and a research culture in which diverse viewpoints strengthen the way we address complex problems in sustainable and resilient distributed systems.
- Collaboration for Impact: We welcome collaboration with academic partners, research groups, industry organisations, public-sector bodies, and community stakeholders where there is a clear alignment with SOC² Lab’s research agenda. Our goal is to co-develop research that combines technical depth with practical relevance, from sustainable orchestration and resilience-aware operations to distributed AI deployment and sustainable digital infrastructure.
Collaboration and Opportunities
SOC² Lab welcomes collaboration on aligned research problems, especially where sustainable orchestration, resilience-aware operations, distributed AI, and edge–cloud experimentation intersect. Collaboration may include joint proposals, co-supervision, research visits, shared experimental artefacts, and testbed-based studies.
For PhD, postdoctoral, visiting researcher, and internship opportunities, please see the Join Us page.