Tobias Pfandzelter

I’m a Research Associate and PhD student at the Scalable Software Systems research group at Technische Universität Berlin and Einstein Center Digital Future. My research interests include edge computing, modern software architectures and abstractions such as serverless computing, and novel LEO satellite networks.

I received my Master of Science in Computer Science from Technische Universität Berlin in 2019 with a 1.0 grade (equiv. to 4.0 GPA). While studying in Berlin, I worked as a Systems Administrator at audibene/hear.com. In 2022, I completed a 6-month research associate internship at the Systems Architecture Lab at Hewlett Packard Labs in Milpitas, California.

GitHub | Google Scholar | LinkedIn

Experience

since 10/2019 – Research Associate & PhD student @ Scalable Software Systems Research Group (Technische Universität Berlin & Einstein Center Digital Future)

05/2022 - 11/2022 – Research Associate Intern @ Hewlett Packard Labs

09/2019 – Smart Shanghai Summer School @ Tongji University (同济大学) Shanghai

10/2017 - 09/2019 – M.Sc. Computer Science (Grade 1.0) @ Technische Universität Berlin

03/2015 - 08/2019 – Systems Administrator @ audibene GmbH

10/2014 - 03/2018 – B.Sc. Computer Science @ Technische Universität Berlin

Publications

Tobias Pfandzelter, Nikita Bauer, Alexander Leis, Corentin Perdrizet, Felix Trautwein, Trever Schirmer, Osama Abboud, David Bermbach Trabant: A Serverless Architecture for Multi-Tenant Orbital Edge Computing arXiv:2504.08337 [cs.DC] 2025 PDF Cite

Sergiy Melnyk, Qiuheng Zhou, Hans D. Schotten, Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach, Robert Vilter, Nick Stuckert 6G NeXt - Split Computing for Smart Drones Proceedings of the 2025 European Conference on Networks and Communications (EuCNC '25) 2025 Cite

Mohammadreza Malekabbasi, Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach Umbilical Choir: Automated Live Testing for Edge-To-Cloud FaaS Applications 9th IEEE International Conference on Fog and Edge Computing 2025 PDF Cite

Alireza Furutanpey, Qiyang Zhang, Philipp Raith, Tobias Pfandzelter, Shangguang Wang, Schahram Dustdar FOOL: Addressing the Downlink Bottleneck in Satellite Computing with Neural Feature Compression IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing 2025 PDF Cite

Minghe Wang, Tobias Pfandzelter, Trever Schirmer, David Bermbach LLM4FaaS: No-Code Application Development using LLMs and FaaS arXiv:2502.14450 [cs.SE] 2025 PDF Cite

Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach Komet: A Serverless Platform for Low-Earth Orbit Edge Services 15th ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing (SoCC '24) 2024 PDF Cite

Trever Schirmer, Joel Scheuner, Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach Fusionize++: Improving Serverless Application Performance Using Dynamic Task Inlining and Infrastructure Optimization IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing 2024 PDF Cite

Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach, Robert Vilter, Ingo Friese, Sergiy Melnyk, Qiuheng Zhou, Hans D. Schotten Towards Anti-Collision Coordination for UAVs with Serverless Edge Computing 12th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Engineering (IC2E '24) 2024 PDF Cite

Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach Lessons Learned from Building Edge Software System Testbeds Technical Report 3S.2024.2, Technische Universität Berlin, Scalable Software Systems Research Group 2024 PDF Cite

Tim C. Rese, Nils Japke, Sebastian Koch, Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach Increasing Efficiency and Result Reliability of Continuous Benchmarking for FaaS Applications 12th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Engineering (IC2E '24) 2024 PDF Cite

Trever Schirmer, Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach ElastiBench: Scalable Continuous Benchmarking on Cloud FaaS Platforms 12th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Engineering (IC2E '24) 2024 PDF Cite

Mohammadreza Malekabbasi, Tobias Pfandzelter, Trever Schirmer, David Bermbach GeoFaaS: An Edge-to-Cloud FaaS Platform 12th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Engineering (IC2E '24) 2024 PDF Cite

Valentin Carl, Trever Schirmer, Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach GeoFF: Federated Serverless Workflows with Data Pre-Fetching 12th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Engineering (IC2E '24) 2024 PDF Cite

Martin Grambow, Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach Application-Centric Benchmarking of Distributed FaaS Platforms using BeFaaS Technical Report 3S.2024.1, Technische Universität Berlin & ECDF, Scalable Software Systems Research Group 2024 PDF Cite

Minghe Wang, Trever Schirmer, Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach ShutPub: Publisher-side Filtering for Content-based Pub/Sub on the Edge 7th International Workshop on Edge Systems, Analytics and Networking (EdgeSys 2024) 2024 🏆 PDF Cite

Felix Moebius, Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach Are Unikernels Ready for Serverless on the Edge? 12th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Engineering (IC2E '24) 2024 PDF Cite

Sergiy Melnyk, Qiuheng Zhou, Hans D. Schotten, Wolfgang Rüther-Kindel, Fabian Quaeck, Nick Stuckert, Robert Vilter, Lisa Gebauer, Mandy Galkow-Schneider, Ingo Friese, Steffen Drüsedow, Tobias Pfandzelter, Mohammadreza Malekabbasi, David Bermbach, Louay Bassbouss, Alexander Zoubarev, Andy Neparidze, Arndt Kritzner, Jakob Hartbrich, Alexander Raake, Enrico Zschau, Klaus-Jürgen Schwahn 6G NeXt — Joint Communication and Compute Mobile Network: Use Cases and Architecture Kommunikation in der Automation: 14. Jahreskolloquium (KommA '23) 2023 PDF Cite

Tobias Pfandzelter Serverless Abstractions for Edge Computing in Large Low-Earth Orbit Satellite Networks 24th International Middleware Conference Doctoral Symposium 2023 PDF Cite Recording

Malte Janßen, Tobias Pfandzelter, Minghe Wang, David Bermbach Supporting UAVs with Edge Computing: A Review of Opportunities and Challenges Technical Report MCC.2023.3, Technische Universität Berlin & ECDF, Mobile Cloud Computing Research Group 2023 PDF Cite

Tobias Pfandzelter, Aditya Dhakal, Eitan Frachtenberg, Sai Rahul Chalamasetti, Darel Emmot, Ninad Hogade, Rolando Pablo Hong Enriquez, Gourav Rattihalli, David Bermbach, Dejan Milojicic Kernel-as-a-Service: A Serverless Programming Model for Heterogeneous Hardware Accelerators 24th International Middleware Conference (Middleware 2023) 2023 PDF Cite Recording

Ingo Friese, Mandy Galkow-Schneider, Louay Bassbouss, Alexander Zoubarev, Andy Neparidze, Sergiy Melnyk, Qiuheng Zhou, Hans D. Schotten, Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach, Arndt Kritzner, Enrico Zschau, Prasenjit Dhara, Steve Göring, William Menz, Alexander Raake, Wolfgang Rüther-Kindel, Fabian Quaeck, Nick Stuckert, Robert Vilter True 3D Holography: A Communication Service of Tomorrow and Its Requirements for a New Converged Cloud and Network Architecture on the Path to 6G 2nd International Conference on 6G Networking (6GNet '23) 2023 PDF Cite

Trever Schirmer, Valentin Carl, Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach ProFaaStinate: Delaying Serverless Function Calls to Optimize Platform Performance 9th International Workshop on Serverless Computing (WoSC '23) 2023 PDF Cite

Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach Enoki: Stateful Distributed FaaS from Edge to Cloud 2nd International Workshop on Middleware for the Edge (MiddleWEdge '23) 2023 PDF Cite Recording

Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach Edge Computing in Low-Earth Orbit -- What Could Possibly Go Wrong? 1st ACM Workshop on LEO Networking and Communication (LEO-NET '23) 2023 PDF Cite

Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach Can Orbital Servers Provide Mars-Wide Edge Computing? 1st ACM MobiCom Workshop on Satellite Networking and Computing (SatCom '23) 2023 PDF Cite

Nick Stender, Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach Fog System Configuration Management with CRDTs Technical Report MCC.2023.1, Technische Universität Berlin & ECDF, Mobile Cloud Computing Research Group 2023 PDF Cite

Simon Huber, Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach On the Applicability of Network Coordinate Systems for Fog Computing Technical Report MCC.2023.2, Technische Universität Berlin & ECDF, Mobile Cloud Computing Research Group 2023 PDF Cite

Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach Evaluating LEO Edge Software in the Cloud with Celestial 11th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Engineering (IC2E 2023) 2023 PDF Cite

Simon Huber, Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach Identifying Nearest Fog Nodes With Network Coordinate Systems 11th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Engineering (IC2E 2023) 2023 PDF Cite

Nick Stender, Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach Eventually Consistent Configuration Management in Fog Systems with CRDTs 11th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Engineering (IC2E 2023) 2023 PDF Cite

Emil Balitzki, Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach Predicting Temporal Aspects of Movement for Predictive Replication in Fog Environments Technical Report MCC.2023.4, Technische Universität Berlin & ECDF, Mobile Cloud Computing Research Group 2023 PDF Cite

Marvin Kruber, Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach A Hybrid Communication Approach for Metadata Exchange in Geo-Distributed Fog Environments Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Cloud, IoT and Fog Systems (CIFS '23) 2023 PDF Cite

Dejan S. Milojicic, Aditya Dhakal, Eitan Frachtenberg, Ninad Hogade, Rolando Pablo Hong Enriquez, Gourav Rattihalli, Tobias Pfandzelter Automated Program Conversion for Heterogeneous and FaaS Computing with Minimal Human Intervention US Patent Application US20240362000A1 2023 PDF Cite

Sergiy Melnyk, Qiuheng Zhou, Hans D. Schotten, Mandy Galkow-Schneider, Ingo Friese, Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach, Louay Bassbouss, Alexander Zoubarev, Andy Neparidze, Arndt Kritzner, Enrico Zschau, Prasenjit Dhara, Steve Göring, William Menz, Alexander Raake, Wolfgang Rüther-Kindel, Fabian Quaeck, Nick Stuckert, Robert Vilter 6G NeXt — Towards 6G Split Computing Network Applications: Use Cases and Architecture 27th ITG-Symposium on Mobile Communication - Technologies and Applications (MKT '23) 2023 PDF Cite

Trever Schirmer, Nils Japke, Sofia Greten, Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach The Night Shift: Understanding Performance Variability of Cloud Serverless Platforms 1st Workshop on SErverless Systems, Applications and MEthodologies (SESAME '23) 2023 PDF Cite

Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach Towards a Benchmark for Fog Data Processing 11th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Engineering (IC2E 2023) 2023 PDF Cite

Minghe Wang, Trever Schirmer, Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach Lotus: Serverless In-Transit Data Processing for Edge-based Pub/Sub 6th International Workshop on Edge Systems, Analytics and Networking (EdgeSys 2023) 2023 PDF Cite

Tobias Pfandzelter, Nils Japke, Trever Schirmer, Jonathan Hasenburg, David Bermbach Managing Data Replication and Distribution in the Fog with FReD Wiley - Software: Practice and Experience 2023 PDF Cite

Haidong Zhao, Zakaria Benomar, Tobias Pfandzelter, Nikolaos Georgantas Supporting Multi-Cloud in Serverless Computing 11th International Workshop on Cloud and Edge Computing, and Applications Management (CloudAM 2022) 2022 PDF Cite

Trever Schirmer, Joel Scheuner, Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach Fusionize: Improving Serverless Application Performance through Feedback-Driven Function Fusion 10th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Engineering (IC2E 2022) 2022 PDF Cite

Tobias Pfandzelter, Sören Henning, Trever Schirmer, Wilhelm Hasselbring, David Bermbach Streaming vs. Functions: A Cost Perspective on Cloud Event Processing 10th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Engineering (IC2E 2022) 2022 PDF Cite

Soeren Becker, Tobias Pfandzelter, Nils Japke, David Bermbach, Odej Kao Network Emulation in Large-Scale Virtual Edge Testbeds: A Note of Caution and the Way Forward 2nd International Workshop on Testing Distributed Internet of Things Systems (TDIS 2022) 2022 PDF Cite

Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach Celestial: Virtual Software System Testbeds for the LEO Edge 23rd International Middleware Conference (Middleware 2022) 2022 PDF Cite Slides

Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach Testing LEO Edge Software Systems with Celestial Technical Report MCC.2022.1, Technische Universität Berlin & ECDF, Mobile Cloud Computing Research Group 2022 PDF Cite

Tobias Pfandzelter, Trever Schirmer, David Bermbach Towards Distributed Coordination for Fog Platforms 22nd IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Internet Computing (CCGrid 2022) Poster Track 2022 PDF Cite Slides

Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach QoS-Aware Resource Placement for LEO Satellite Edge Computing 6th IEEE International Conference on Fog and Edge Computing (ICFEC 2022) 2022 PDF Cite Slides

Malte Bellmann, Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach Predictive Replica Placement for Mobile Users in Distributed Fog Data Stores with Client-Side Markov Models 14th IEEE/ACM International Conference on Utility and Cloud Computing (UCC 2021) Companion (UCC 2021 Companion) 2021 PDF Cite Slides

David Bermbach, Jonathan Bader, Jonathan Hasenburg, Tobias Pfandzelter, Lauritz Thamsen AuctionWhisk: Using an Auction-Inspired Approach for Function Placement in Serverless Fog Platforms Wiley - Software: Practice and Experience 2021 PDF Cite

Martin Grambow, Tobias Pfandzelter, Luk Burchard, Carsten Schubert, Max Zhao, David Bermbach BeFaaS: An Application-Centric Benchmarking Framework for FaaS Platforms 9th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Engineering (IC2E 2021) 2021 PDF Cite

Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach Towards Predictive Replica Placement for Distributed Data Stores in Fog Environments 9th IEEE International Conference on Cloud Engineering (IC2E 2021) 2021 PDF Cite Slides

Tobias Pfandzelter, Jonathan Hasenburg, David Bermbach From Zero to Fog: Efficient Engineering of Fog-Based Internet of Things Applications Wiley - Software: Practice and Experience 2021 PDF Cite

Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach Edge (of the Earth) Replication: Optimizing Content Delivery in Large LEO Satellite Communication Networks 21st IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Cluster, Cloud and Internet Computing (CCGrid 2021) 2021 PDF Cite Recording

Tobias Pfandzelter, Jonathan Hasenburg, David Bermbach Towards a Computing Platform for the LEO Edge 4th International Workshop on Edge Systems, Analytics and Networking (EdgeSys 2021) 2021 PDF Cite Recording

Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach tinyFaaS: A Lightweight FaaS Platform for Edge Environments 2nd IEEE International Conference on Fog Computing (ICFC 2020) 2020 PDF Cite Recording

David Bermbach, Setareh Maghsudi, Jonathan Hasenburg, Tobias Pfandzelter Towards Auction-Based Function Placement in Serverless Fog Platforms 2nd IEEE International Conference on Fog Computing (ICFC 2020) 2020 PDF Cite

Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach IoT Data Processing in the Fog: Functions, Streams, or Batch Processing? 1st Workshop on Efficient Data Movement in Fog Computing (DaMove 2019) 2019 PDF Cite

Martin Grambow, Jonathan Hasenburg, Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach Is it Safe to Dockerize my Database Benchmark? 34th ACM Symposium on Applied Computing, Posters Track (SAC 2019) 2019 PDF Cite

Martin Grambow, Jonathan Hasenburg, Tobias Pfandzelter, David Bermbach Dockerization Impacts in Database Performance Benchmarking Technical Report MCC.2018.1, Technische Universität Berlin & ECDF, Mobile Cloud Computing Research Group 2018 PDF Cite

Miscellaneous

06/2024 – Are Unikernels Ready for Serverless on the Edge?, Third International Workshop on Serverless Computing Experience (WoSCx3) YouTube

03/2024 – German Federal Ministry of Education and Research Software Campus Grant Recipient

02/2024 – My work featured in ScienceNews, Phys.org, and Interesting Engineering

04/2023 – Poisoning SIGBOVIK-Scale Training Datasets is Practical, SIGBOVIK 2023 PDF PDF

10/2022 – Testing LEO Edge Software Systems in Virtual Testbeds, Tutorial @ LEOCONN 2022 PDF Recording

04/2022 – On the Possibilities and Challenges of Organic UAV-Assisted MEC, SIGBOVIK 2022 PDF

04/2022 – Infrastructure-as-PowerPoint: A No-Code Approach to Cloud Infrastructure Management, SIGBOVIK 2022 PDF

09/2019 – PROMOS Scholarship for Smart Shanghai Summer School at Tongji University (同济大学) Shanghai

05/2019 – Cert. Ubiquiti Enterprise Wireless Admin from Ubiquiti Inc.