Mahadev Satyanarayanan (Satya), the Jaime Carbonell University Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, received a Test of Time Award for his work on a 2009 research paper, "The Case for VM-Based Cloudlets in Mobile Computing."

As part of IEEE Pervasive Computing's 25th anniversary, the publication recognized foundational research that defined this area of inquiry, choosing the "top eight most influential peer-reviewed articles published in IEEE Pervasive Computing based on long-term citation impact and download metrics."

The paper Satya and collaborators published in 2009 went against the conventional thinking about the power of and potential limitations to cloud computing. Their research proposed using nearby, localized mini-clouds, called "cloudlets," to handle heavy processing for mobile devices. Keeping the computing close instead of sending it to a distant cloud eliminated network lag and allowed mobile apps to run instantly and smoothly.

These localized mini-clouds introduced edge computing — a distributed computing model that brings computation and data storage closer to the source of the data — years before the term became mainstream. Along with Satya, the research team on the 2009 paper included Paramvir Bahl, from Microsoft Research; Ramón Cáceres, formerly of AT&T Labs and now with Google; and Nigel Davies of Lancaster University.

"I think the important thing in science is to let the evidence take us where the truth is, and I am glad that the evidence confirmed what we had said," Satya noted. "It's possible that we could have missed something, and the original prediction could have been totally wrong. We obviously didn't feel that, otherwise we wouldn't have published that paper. And it feels very gratifying to know that we made the correct prediction."

Satya's current work in the Computer Science Department focuses on cyberphysical and cyberhuman systems that leverage edge computing, such as new applications and advances in drone usage or wearable cognitive assistance.

For more on the award, visit the IEEE Pervasive Computing website.