Cristina Abad was elected to the SPEC board of directors in August 2026 to fill a vacant seat until January 2028. She is the primary representative to the SPEC Research Group (RG) for Escuela Superior Politecnia del Litoral (ESPOL), as well as the Research Group Steering Committee (RGSC) Vice Chair. Cristina is currently helping organize ICPE 2027 as General Co-Chair.

Prior SPEC Roles

Cristina has been involved with the SPEC RG since 2017, a member of the SPEC RG Steering Committee since 2021, and its Vice-Chair since 2024. She served as Secretary from 2021 to 2024. In addition, she has taken on several roles at ICPE, including General Co-Chair (2027), Tutorial Co-Chair (2025), Program Committee Co-Chair (2024), and Vision and Work-In-Progress Co-Chair (2022).

Academia Role

Cristina has taught at ESPOL University in Ecuador since 2004. She holds MS and PhD degrees in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Her research lies at the intersection of Distributed Systems and Performance Engineering, with a focus on cloud deployments and applications. Her publications include high-impact papers in serverless computing in collaboration with other members of the SPEC RG Cloud Computing Working Group. Cristina has been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship and two Google Faculty Research Awards.