Dr.-Ing. Pratyush Agnihotri

Dr.-Ing. Pratyush Agnihotri

Postdoctoral Researcher

Hi, I’m Pratyush Agnihotri 🙏

Researching AI. Developing Distributed Stream Processing. Impacting Systems. Educating the Next Generation.

I am a Senior Researcher at Systems AI for Decision Support (SAIDE) research department, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). DFKI is Germany’s leading AI research institute, and one of the largest non-profit AI research centers in the world. At DFKI, I’m leading the federal ministry funded project. My work here focuses on designing and evaluating energy-efficient LLM architectures, especially for industrial environments. In addition, I am working as Postdoctoral Reseacher at Systems Group at TU Darmstadt. Previously, I completed my Ph.D. in ETiT department at TU Darmstadt, where my research focused on Distributed Stream Processing, AI-driven Optimization Models, and Efficient System Design for Heterogeneous Environments.

From June 2021 to 2024, I worked as a Research Scientist at the Multimedia Communication Lab (KOM) at TU Darmstadt, contributing primarily to the C2 subproject of the DFG Collaborative Research Center MAKI. Prior to Ph.D., I worked as a Software Developer at axxessio GmbH in Darmstadt, engaging in applied research and development in the fields of Internet of Things (IoT), Smart City Solutions, and Voice Assistants.

I began my academic journey by joining the Master’s program in Computer Science at TU Darmstadt in 2013. My Master’s thesis involved proposing and developing a decentralized crowd-sensing data collection framework based on Information-Centric Networking (ICN) to address post-disaster communication challenges. This work was conducted in close collaboration with Prof. Dr.-Ing. Michael Zink from the University of Massachusetts Amherst (USA).

Research Interests

  • Distributed and Resource-efficient Stream Processing
  • Autonomous Resource Management
  • Performance Benchmarking and Optimization
  • Heterogenous Cloud Environment
  • Internet of Things (IoT)

Experience

  • 06/2025 (Current): Senior Researcher at SAIDE Lab, DFKI GmbH, Germany 🇩🇪

    Leading the federal ministry funded project which focuses on designing and evaluating energy-efficient LLM architectures for industrial environments.

    In parallel, I am also working as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Systems Group at TU Darmstadt.

  • 06/2021 – 12/2024: Research Scientist at Multimedia Communication Lab, TU Darmstadt, Germany 🇩🇪

    Working on AI-based cost models and adaptive stream processing for heterogeneous environments.

  • 01/2023 – 12/2024: Associate Research Assistant at Distributed and Operating Systems Group, TU Ilmenau, Germany 🇩🇪

  • 06/2021 – 12/2024: Associate Research Assistant at Distributed Systems Group, Faculty of Science and Engineering - University of Groningen, Netherlands 🇳🇱

  • 03/2017 – 07/2023: Associate Team Lead and Technology Consultant at axxessio GmbH, Darmstadt, Germany 🇩🇪

    Worked on smart city platforms, IoT solutions, and digitalization strategies across German municipalities and telecom sectors.

  • 10/2014 – 02/2017: Graduate Student Assistant at Telecooperation Group – TU Darmstadt

    Assisted in teaching and research for distributed systems and IoT applications.

  • 06/2014 – 12/2016: Quality Engineer & Automation Developer at Kobil System GmbH, Darmstadt, Germany

    Led QA and automation for secure web servers and enterprise mobile applications in finance/retail sectors.

  • 08/2010 – 09/2013: Software Engineer at HCL Technologies, Noida, India 🇮🇳

    Developed embedded and mobile applications for consumer electronics and telecom clients including Sony and NTTDocomo.

Education

  • 06/2021 – 09/2024: Ph.D. in ETiT at TU Darmstadt, Germany 🇩🇪

    Focused on performance modeling and optimization of distributed stream processing systems.

  • 10/2013 – 11/2016: Master’s in Computer Science at TU Darmstadt, Germany 🇩🇪

    Master thesis on decentralized crowd-sensing data collection using ICN, in collaboration with UMass Amherst.

  • 07/2006 – 06/2010: B.Tech in Computer Science & Engineering at Amity University, Noida, India 🇮🇳

    Graduated with distinction and completed foundational training in distributed systems and software engineering.

Current Projects

DFG: Collaborative Research Centre 1053 MAKI I am working as Researcher for MAKI Subproject C2 which explores transitions in communication systems from an information-centric view. A central paradigm for information processing are event-based systems (EBS), which model the information flow as streams of events and help to recognize certain patterns over the event streams at runtime. The goal of C2 is to explore methods for transition-based adaptation of event-processing systems and thereby achieve a significant increase in the quality of service under dynamically varying conditions.

Parrot: Privacy Engineering for Real-Time Analytics in Human-Centered Internet of Things I am working as Associated Researcher for Parrot project which is a collaborative research between the University of Oslo (Norway) and the Technical University of Darmstadt (Germany) funded by the Research Council of Norway (2020 – 2023). The aim of this project is to find user-centric methods for real-time privacy protection for stream processing applications.

Previous projects

Recent Publication

  • Agnihotri, Pratyush and Binnig, Carsten. (2025). "Demonstrating PDSP-Bench: A Benchmarking System for Parallel and Distributed Stream Processing." SIGMOD 2025.

  • Agnihotri, Pratyush and Koldehofe, Boris and Stiegele, Paul and Heinrich, Roman and Binnig, Carsten and Luthra, Manisha. "ZeroTune: Learned Zero-Shot Cost Models for Parallelism Tuning in Stream Processing." IEEE ICDE 2024.

  • Agnihotri, Pratyush and Koldehofe, Boris and Heinrich, Roman and Binnig, Carsten and Luthra, Manisha. "PDSP-Bench: A Benchmarking System for Parallel and Distributed Stream Processing." TPCTC@VLDB 2024.

Previous publications

Academic Services

  • 2025
    • PC Member: DE4DS @ BTW, aiDM @ SIGMOD, TPCTC@VLDB
  • 2024
    • External Reviewer: VLDB (Demo Track), DEBS, Middleware
  • 2023
    • External Reviewer: IFIP Networking Conference
  • 2022
    • Reviewer: PeerJ Journal
    • External Reviewer: IEEE Fog & Edge, Middleware (22nd & 23rd), EdgeSys 2022
    • Web Co-Chair: 23rd ACM/IFIP Middleware
  • 2021
    • Web Co-Chair: 22nd ACM/IFIP Middleware
  • 2020
    • Registration Co-Chair: 14th ACM DEBS
  • 2019
    • Web Co-Chair: 13th ACM DEBS
  • 2010
    • Web Co-Chair: IEEE Confluence, IEEE MECON

Current Teaching Activities

I am actively involved in teaching activities focused on distributed systems, communication networks, and stream processing technologies. I have contributed as a Teaching Assistant for undergraduate and graduate courses, including “Communication Networks 2,” and regularly supervise Master’s theses, Bachelor’s theses, seminars, and lab projects. My teaching emphasizes hands-on experience, research-driven learning, and bridging theory with real-world system design. Read more

Open PhD, Theses and HiWi Positions

I am looking for motivated students who are interested to work on cutting edge technologies and IoT applications area. If you are interested to do PhD or write a Bachelor or Master Thesis or gain experience in my current ongoing projects as HiWi then please feel free to contact me. Send your CV and Transcript list on my email address.