Dr. Puneet Sharma

HPE Fellow, Vice President, and Director of the Networking and Distributed Systems Lab

HPE Labs

3 Feb 2026

CNI recently hosted Dr. Puneet Sharma, who is an HPE Fellow, Vice President, and Director of the Networking and Distributed Systems Lab at HPE Labs. During his visit, he engaged with the CNI community through a seminar talk.

Talk

Rethinking Networking through the Lens of AI

How artificial intelligence can be applied to networking challenges, drawing on practical experiences from recent projects to explore when and how AI truly enhances networking systems, the trade-offs involved, and how embedding domain knowledge in AI-driven solutions can reshape network design.

Event page

Biography

Dr. Puneet Sharma is an HPE Fellow, Vice President, and Director of the Networking and Distributed Systems Lab at HPE Labs, leading research in Edge-to-Cloud-to-Exascale Infrastructure, Multi-Cloud Resource Orchestration, AI for Infrastructure, 5G/WiFi, and Security. Since joining HP Labs in 1998 after earning his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California, he has driven innovations in software-defined networking (SDN), GPU virtualization, container orchestration, edge computing, Private 5G, and AI/ML systems, enabling major technology transfers across HPE business units.

A recognised global thought leader, Puneet has authored 150+ papers, holds 90+ patents, co-authored IETF RFCs, and delivered keynote talks at IEEE and industry events. He is an IEEE Fellow, ACM Distinguished Scientist, and two-time Tsinghua AI 2000 Most Influential Scholar. He earned his B.Tech from IIT Delhi. His leadership continues to advance AI-powered, distributed computing and networking infrastructure worldwide.

Research interests

AI-driven networking and networked systems
Distributed computing and edge-to-cloud infrastructure
Multi-cloud resource orchestration
Software-defined networking (SDN) and 5G/WiFi systems

About the visit

The visit was part of the CNI seminar series.

Engagements

During their time at CNI, Dr. Sharma interacted with faculty through research discussion. Dr. Sharma also engaged with students through a seminar talk.

We were glad to host Dr. Puneet Sharma at CNI and appreciate their thoughtful perspectives and contributions to ongoing conversations around AI-driven networking, distributed systems, and intelligent infrastructure design. Interactions like these continue to strengthen CNI's role as a hub for networked intelligence research.