I am an Assistant Professor in Computer Science at Columbia University. I got my Ph.D. at the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University advised by Christos Kozyrakis. My research has been supported by NSF, Google, DreamSports, Amazon, Meta, and the generous DAPLab sponsors.
My research lies at the intersection of computer systems, artificial intelligence, and cloud infrastructure, aiming to enable both robust agentic AI deployments and next-generation cloud performance. On the AI front, we are building the systems and data scaffolding necessary for the reliable, safe, and efficient operation of LLM agents. On the cloud computing front, we are working to make secure virtualized environments as fast as bare-metal servers. Bringing these two threads together, we also explore how AI agents can automate performance engineering for cloud workloads.
I am a founding member of the Data, Agents, and Processes Lab (DAPLab) at Columbia University where we are building the foundations for a future where AI agents safely and reliably automate complex work.
I also hold a M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. Before coming to Stanford, I worked for a year on distributed storage for the cloud at Arrikto. I received my undergraduate degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from National Technical University of Athens in Greece, where I was advised by Nectarios Koziris. In Summer 2017, Summer 2018, Summer 2019, and Fall 2019, I worked as a PhD intern at Google for the NetInfra and Borg teams in Sunnyvale, CA. After my Ph.D., I spent a year at Google SRG.
You can contact me at kkaffes@cs.columbia.edu or X, or find me at CSB 508.