Dr.-Ing. habil. Josef Spillner

Work at ZHAW

Position

Deputy Head Distributed Systems

Teaching

• Operating Systems and Infrastructure
• Serverless and Cloud-native Application Development

Professional development teaching

• CAS Machine Intelligence
• CAS Information Engineering

Network

ORCID digital identifier

ORCID ID: 0000-0002-5312-5996

Projects

• Microcredentials-as-a-Service – Cloud Platform / Co-project leader / ongoing
• Migration towards Managed Microcredentials / Project leader / ongoing
• Labelling and Segmentation of Graphene Characterisation Images / Project leader / ongoing
• Towards Sustainable Software Architectures for Cyber-physical Systems of Systems / Project leader / ongoing
• Cloud Open Source Research Mobility Network / Project leader / ongoing
• Microcredentials-as-a-Service / Co-project leader / completed
• Containerised Microcredentials in Academic Practice / Project leader / completed
• Advanced Microcredentials Platform: Builder, Integration and Delivery / Project leader / completed
• WebAssembly application orchestration platform / Project leader / completed
• On-chain Microcredentials Architecture and Open Source Toolbox Prototype / Project leader / completed
• Second-Generation Alptrackers with Hub-and-Spoke Signalling and Herd Awareness / Project leader / completed
• Audit Logging, Robustness and Resilience in Large-Scale Cloud-Based IoT Event Processing / Project leader / completed
• Revolutionizing Skill Development: How AI Can Enhance Training for Decent Work and Climate Resilience / Project leader / completed
• Decentrally verified and stacked microcredentials on the Internet Computer / Project leader / completed
• Creating informal learning spaces using QR codes and beacons / Project leader / completed
• Serverless data analytics and data-centric consensus for sensed data in public transport / Project leader / completed
• Dark Energy: Accurate estimation and awareness of cloud-induced power consumption / Project leader / completed
• MA4K8s: Machine advice for GitOps-managed Kubernetes configuration optimisation / Project leader / completed
• Indoor Navigation for Personalised Shopping / Project leader / completed
• Runtime-Optimised Business Object Transformation / Project leader / completed
• Actionable Insights and Business Intelligence based on Applied Sciences Messaging Patterns / Project leader / completed
• RACCOON – Rapid Application-Centric Composition and Online Orchestration iNvestigation / Project leader / completed
• Digital Mobility/Logistics Hub / Project leader / completed
• GitOps for Kubernetes Platform / Project leader / completed
• ADDSA - Advanced Diagnostics Data and Service Architecture / Project leader / completed
• Fog-Cloud Continuum Framework for Near-Data Computing / Project leader / completed
• Marketing insights from open/public data / Project leader / completed
• Smart policy-driven scanning of Docker images / Project leader / completed
• Supporting the adoption of FAIR and reproducible digital scholarship with Renku / Project leader / completed
• Smart City Simulation Platform / Project leader / completed
• Application of stealth computing in highly information-sensitive cloud environments / Project leader / completed
• COMBuST / Co-project leader / completed
• MOSAIC – Monitored Platform for Container Based Applications / Project leader / completed
• Amysta SaaS / Project leader / completed
• Architectural Renovation of Kendox InfoShare / Project leader / completed

Publications

Articles in scientific journal, peer-reviewed

• Bittencourt, L. F. et al. (2025) ‘The computing continuum : past, present, and future’, Computer Science Review, 58(100782). doi: 10.1016/j.cosrev.2025.100782.
• Gkikopoulos, P. et al. (2024) ‘Reliable IoT analytics at scale’, Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, 187(104840). doi: 10.1016/j.jpdc.2024.104840.
• Gkikopoulos, P., Schiavoni, V. and Spillner, J. (2022) ‘Decentralised data quality control in ground truth production for autonomic decisions’, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, 33(10), pp. 2416–2427. doi: 10.1109/TPDS.2022.3142967.
• Spillner, J. et al. (2022) ‘Towards reproducible software studies with MAO and Renku’, SoftwareX, 17(100947). doi: 10.1016/j.softx.2021.100947.
• Taibi, D., Spillner, J. and Wawruch, K. (2021) ‘Serverless computing : where are we now, and where are we heading?’, IEEE Software, 38(1), pp. 25–31. doi: 10.1109/MS.2020.3028708.
• Patros, P. et al. (2021) ‘Toward sustainable serverless computing’, IEEE Internet Computing, 25(6), pp. 42–50. doi: 10.1109/MIC.2021.3093105.
• Leitner, P. et al. (2019) ‘A mixed-method empirical study of Function-as-a-Service software development in industrial practice’, Journal of Systems and Software, 149, pp. 340–359. doi: 10.1016/j.jss.2018.12.013.
• Toffetti Carughi, G. et al. (2017) ‘Self-managing cloud-native applications : design, implementation and experience’, Future Generation Computer Systems, 72, pp. 165–179. doi: 10.1016/j.future.2016.09.002.

Books, peer-reviewed

• Spillner, J. (2023) Operating systems and infrastructure in data science. 1. Auflage. Zürich: vdf Hochschulverlag. doi: 10.3218/4168-2.
• Spillner, J. (2015) Untersuchungen zur Risikominimierungstechnik Stealth Computing für verteilte datenverarbeitende Software-Anwendungen mit nutzerkontrollierbar zusicherbaren Eigenschaften. Dresden: Technische Universität Dresden. doi: 10.21256/zhaw-1139.
• Spillner, J. (2010) Methodik und Referenzarchitektur zur inkrementellen Verbesserung der Metaqualität einer vertragsgebundenen, heterogenen und verteilten Dienstausführung. Doctoral dissertation. Technische Universität Dresden. doi: 10.21256/zhaw-1138.

Book chapters, peer-reviewed

Cvetkovski, O., Gkikopoulos, P. and Spillner, J. (2023) ‘Digitalisation in shopping : an IoT and smart applications perspective’, in Klymash, M. et al. (eds) Emerging Networking in the Digital Transformation Age. Cham: Springer, pp. 197–213. doi: 10.1007/978-3-031-24963-1_11.

Written conference contributions, peer-reviewed

• Sakman, M. C., Spillner, J. and Schiavoni, V. (2025) ‘Speeding up the development for the computing continuum with WebAssembly’. IEEE, pp. 12–22. doi: 10.1109/prdc67299.2025.00012.
• Santellán, A. et al. (2025) ‘Demo: Cyber-physical immersive learning spaces with sustainable private cloud operation’. IEEE, pp. 81–82. doi: 10.1109/ic2e65552.2025.00022.
• Shamsizadeh, S. and Spillner, J. (2025) ‘Sheep behavior recognition using sensor data’. IEEE, pp. 298–300. doi: 10.1109/dcoss-iot65416.2025.00055.
• Wahler, M. and Spillner, J. (2025) ‘Sustainable bytes : embedding sustainability awareness in computer science education’, in 2025 11th International Conference on ICT for Sustainability (ICT4S). IEEE. doi: 10.1109/ict4s68164.2025.00026.
• Cvetkovski, O. et al. (2023) ‘ZVAX : a microservice reference architecture for nation-scale pandemic management’, in Dorai, G. et al. (eds) Joint Post-proceedings of the Third and Fourth International Conference on Microservices (Microservices 2020/2022). Wadern: Schloss Dagstuhl - Leibniz Center for Informatics. doi: 10.4230/OASIcs.Microservices.2020-2022.4.
• Sakman, M. C. et al. (2023) ‘Indoor navigation for personalised shopping : a real-tech feasibility study’, in Hammoudi, S., Wijnhoven, F., and van Sinderen, M. (eds) Proceedings of the 20th International Conference on Smart Business Technologies. Setúbal: SciTePress, pp. 43–53. doi: 10.5220/0012085100003552.
• Spillner, J. (2023) ‘Demo: SLASH: Serverless Apache Spark Hub’, in DEBS ’23: Proceedings of the 17th ACM International Conference on Distributed and Event-based Systems. Association for Computing Machinery. doi: 10.1145/3583678.3603277.
• Gkikopoulos, P. et al. (2022) ‘AVOC : history-aware data fusion for reliable IoT analytics’, in Proceedings of the 23rd International Middleware Conference Industrial Track. Association for Computing Machinery. doi: 10.1145/3564695.3564772.
• Hass, D. and Spillner, J. (2022) ‘Workload deployment and configuration reconciliation at scale in kubernetes-based edge-cloud continuums’, in 2022 21st International Symposium on Parallel and Distributed Computing (ISPDC). IEEE, pp. 121–128. doi: 10.1109/ISPDC55340.2022.00026.
• Spillner, J. (2022) ‘Tabular data insights and synthesis with the AutoTable approach’, in Proceedings 2022 9th Swiss Conference on Data Science (SDS). IEEE, pp. 69–70. doi: 10.1109/SDS54800.2022.00020.
• Bucchiarone, A. et al. (2022) ‘A MAPE-K approach to autonomic microservices’, in 2022 IEEE 19th International Conference on Software Architecture Companion (ICSA-C). IEEE, pp. 100–103. doi: 10.1109/ICSA-C54293.2022.00025.
• Spillner, J., Liu, M. and Zhan, P. (2022) ‘Demo: Smart waste disposal with edge-cloud continuum architecture’, in Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on the Internet of Things. Association for Computing Machinery. doi: 10.1145/3494322.3494357.
• Spillner, J. (2022) ‘Self-balancing architectures based on liquid functions across computing continuums’, in Proceedings of the 14th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing Companion. Association for Computing Machinery. doi: 10.1145/3492323.3495589.
• Klingler, R., Trifunovic, N. and Spillner, J. (2021) ‘Beyond @CloudFunction : powerful code annotations to capture serverless runtime patterns’, in Proceedings of the Seventh International Workshop on Serverless Computing (WoSC7) 2021. Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 23–28. doi: 10.1145/3493651.3493669.
• Spillner, J. (2021) ‘FixMyStadtmelder : challenges and solutions in civic services for smart cities and regions’, in Mugellini, E. and Carpanzano, E. (eds) Proceedings of the 2nd FTAL Conference 2021 Sustainable Smart Cities and Regions. CEUR Workshop Proceedings. doi: 10.21256/zhaw-29523.
• Gkikopoulos, P., Schiavoni, V. and Spillner, J. (2021) ‘Analysis and improvement of heterogeneous hardware support in Docker images’, in Distributed Applications and Interoperable Systems. Cham: Springer, pp. 125–142. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-78198-9_9.
• Hass, D. and Spillner, J. (2021) ‘Interactive application deployment planning for heterogeneous computing continuums’, in Advanced Information Networking and Applications. Cham: Springer, pp. 551–560. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-75078-7_55.
• Spillner, J. (2021) ‘Education support structure for teaching multimodal programming in the cyber-physical space’, in Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Computer Supported Education. SciTePress, pp. 225–232. doi: 10.5220/0010446002250232.
• Spillner, J. (2021) ‘Examination cheat risk reduction through FIPEs’, in Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Computer Supported Education. SciTePress, pp. 579–586. doi: 10.5220/0010479805790586.
• Buzachis, A. et al. (2021) ‘Modeling and emulation of an osmotic computing ecosystem using OsmoticToolkit’, in 2021 Australasian Computer Science Week Multiconference. Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 1–9. doi: 10.1145/3437378.3444366.
• Spillner, J. et al. (2020) ‘Rule-based resource matchmaking for composite application deployments across IoT-fog-cloud continuums’, in 2020 IEEE/ACM 13th International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing (UCC). IEEE, pp. 336–341. doi: 10.1109/UCC48980.2020.00053.
• Spillner, J. (2020) ‘Resource management for cloud functions with memory tracing, profiling and autotuning’, in Proceedings of the 2020 Sixth International Workshop on Serverless Computing. Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 13–18. doi: 10.1145/3429880.3430094.
• Spillner, J. (2020) ‘Hierarchical topic aggregation for geospatial applications through processing extensions in message brokers’, in Middleware ’20 Demos and Posters. Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 1–2. doi: 10.1145/3429358.3429370.
• Gkikopoulos, P. et al. (2020) ‘Given 2n eyeballs, all quality flaws are shallow’, in Middleware ’20 Demos and Posters. Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 3–4. doi: 10.1145/3429358.3429371.
• Spillner, J. and López, M. R. (2020) ‘Transactional migration of inhomogeneous composite cloud applications’, in Advances in Service-Oriented and Cloud Computing. Cham: Springer, pp. 34–45. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-63161-1_3.
• Spillner, J. (2020) ‘Comparison and model of compression techniques for smart cloud log file handling’, in 2020 International Conference on Communications, Computing, Cybersecurity, and Informatics (CCCI). IEEE, pp. 1–6. doi: 10.1109/CCCI49893.2020.9256609.
• Qasse, I. A. et al. (2020) ‘A study on ĐApps characteristics’, in 2020 IEEE International Conference on Decentralized Applications and Infrastructures (DAPPS). IEEE, pp. 88–93. doi: 10.1109/DAPPS49028.2020.00010.
• Bogado-Sarubbi, Y. et al. (2019) ‘Towards sustainable ecosystems for cloud functions’, in Proceedings of the European symposium on serverless computing and applications. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, pp. 18–24. doi: 10.21256/zhaw-3270.
• Al-Ameen, M. and Spillner, J. (2019) ‘A systematic and open exploration of FaaS research’, in Proceedings of the European symposium on serverless computing and applications. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, pp. 30–35. doi: 10.21256/zhaw-3271.
• Serhiienko, O., Gkikopoulos, P. and Spillner, J. (2019) ‘Extensible declarative management of cloud resources across providers’, in 2019 19th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Grid Computing (CCGRID). IEEE, pp. 678–683. doi: 10.1109/CCGRID.2019.00087.
• Dorodko, S. and Spillner, J. (2019) ‘Selective Java code transformation into AWS Lambda functions’, in Proceedings of the European symposium on serverless computing and applications. CEUR Workshop Proceedings, pp. 9–17. doi: 10.21256/zhaw-3269.
• Spillner, J. (2019) ‘Serverless computing and cloud function-based applications’, in UCC ’19 Companion. Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 177–178. doi: 10.1145/3368235.3370269.
• Spillner, J. et al. (2018) ‘Co-transformation to cloud-native applications : development experiences and experimental evaluation’, in Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Cloud Computing and Services Science. Setúbal: SciTePress. doi: 10.21256/zhaw-3508.
• Serhiienko, O. and Spillner, J. (2018) ‘Systematic and recomputable comparison of multi-cloud management platforms’, in 2018 IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science (CloudCom). IEEE, pp. 107–114. doi: 10.1109/CloudCom2018.2018.00032.
• Spillner, J., Ramírez López, M. and Toffetti Carughi, G. (2017) ‘Cloud-native databases : an application perspective’, in Mann, Z. Á. and Stolz, V. (eds) Advances in Service-Oriented and Cloud Computing... Autor: Zoltán Ádám Mann Advances in Service-Oriented and Cloud Computing : Workshops of ESOCC 2017, Oslo, Norway, September 27-29, 2017, Revised Selected Papers. Cham: Springer, pp. 102–116. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-79090-9_7.
• Spillner, J. (2017) ‘Practical tooling for serverless computing’, in 10th International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing (UCC ’17), Austin, USA, 5-8 December 2017. Austin: Association for Computing Machinery. doi: 10.1145/3147213.3149452.
• Spillner, J., Mateos, C. and Monge, D. A. (2017) ‘FaaSter, better, cheaper : the prospect of serverless scientific computing and HPC’, in Mocskos, E. and Nesmachnow, S. (eds) High Performance Computing. Cham: Springer, pp. 154–168. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-73353-1_11.
• Spillner, J., Stefan, K. and Vumo, A. P. (2017) ‘Analysis of Mozambican websites : how do they protect their users?’, in 2017 Information Security for South Africa (ISSA 2017). IEEE, pp. 90–97. doi: 10.1109/ISSA.2017.8251780.
• Toffetti Carughi, G. et al. (2017) ‘Cloud robotics : SLAM and autonomous exploration on PaaS’, in UCC ’17 Companion Companion Proceedings of the10th International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing. Association for Computing Machinery, pp. 65–70. doi: 10.1145/3147234.3148100.
• Ramírez López, M. and Spillner, J. (2017) ‘Towards quantifiable boundaries for elastic horizontal scaling of microservices’, in 10th International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing Companion (UCC 2017). Austin: Association for Computing Machinery. doi: 10.1145/3147234.3148111.
• Spillner, J. et al. (2015) ‘Stealth databases : ensuring user-controlled queries in untrusted cloud environments’, in 2015 IEEE/ACM 8th International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing (UCC), Limassol, Cyprus, 7-10 December 2015. IEEE, pp. 261–270. doi: 10.21256/zhaw-3775.

Other publications

• Spillner, J. et al. (2021) Serverless applications and requirement. Edited by C. Abad et al. Leibniz: Schloss-Dagstuhl - Leibniz Zentrum für Informatik. doi: 10.4230/DagRep.11.4.34.
• Gkikopoulos, P., Spillner, J. and Schiavoni, V. (2020) Monitoring data distribution and exploitation in a global-scale microservice artefact observatory. ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften. doi: 10.21256/zhaw-22695.
• Spillner, J. and Sill, A. (2018) ‘Reengineering cloud data centers’, IEEE Cloud Computing, 5(6), pp. 26–27. doi: 10.1109/MCC.2018.064181117.
• Al-Ameen, M. et al. (2018) Service Prototyping Lab Report - 2018 (Y3). Edited by J. Spillner. Winterthur: ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften. doi: 10.21256/zhaw-3945.
• Harsh, P. et al. (2017) Service Prototyping Lab Report - 2017 (Y2). Winterthur: ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften. doi: 10.21256/zhaw-3708.
• Lötscher, T. et al. (2016) Service Prototyping Lab Report - 2016 (Y1). Winterthur: ZHAW Zürcher Hochschule für Angewandte Wissenschaften. doi: 10.21256/zhaw-3709.
• Brunner, S. et al. (2015) ‘Experimental evaluation of the cloud-native application design’, in 2015 IEEE/ACM 8th International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing (UCC). IEEE, pp. 488–493. doi: 10.21256/zhaw-3782.

Research data

Sakman, Mehmet Cihan; Spillner, Josef, 2025. Structured «CPS orchestration» literature dataset. Zenodo. Available from: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17697546

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