01/29/2021
BATON ROUGE – LSU’s Center for Computation & Technology researchers will launch an innovative, on-going series of virtual Zoom lectures to bring together leaders in artificial intelligence, or AI, high-performance computing, or HPC, and advanced computer systems, or CS, to build synergy and help advance the field further, faster. Artificial Intelligence, and one of its algorithmic engines called deep learning, permeates modern life from smartphones and smart cars to Netflix recommendations. At the same time, solving today’s complex problems, such as how the next storm will impact where you live, requires larger supercomputers, even more complex algorithms and advanced specialized hardware.
“Currently, the problems and computational models are much larger than what the available technology can handle. We want to reduce the time from weeks to hours or minutes, which will make these problems tractable,” said LSU Center for Computation & Technology Director J. “Ram” Ramanujam.
By bringing together the people who are working separately on each of these three components—AI, HPC and CS—the researchers hosting this lecture series plan to develop new algorithms that use high performance computing resources more effectively.
“By working together, we can revolutionize the technology and the industry as well as tackle even larger problems; these efforts will make our students more competitive in the workforce, and will benefit the economy of our state,” said LSU Vice President of Research & Economic Development Samuel Bentley.
The lecture series will include speakers from industry, national laboratories and universities.
“This series is timely and extraordinarily well-aligned with the work we’re doing at Cerebras Systems to vastly accelerate computation for large AI and HPC workloads. Moreover, we are excited to see this at LSU. University-industry partnerships like this are valuable for companies like ours so that we can stay at the forefront of new ideas and technologies,” said Andy Hock, vice president of product at Cerebras Systems, who will present on April 7.
“Participating in the open exchange of ideas between university, national laboratory and industry researchers can generate the spark to ignite innovative R&D. I’m looking forward to being part of this synergistic series,” said Vijay Gadepally, a senior staff member at MIT Lincoln Laboratory and lead for MIT Lincoln Laboratory Supercomputing Center research efforts, who will present on April 21.
The Colloquium on Artificial Intelligence Research and Optimization will be held the first and third Wednesday of every month from 1-2 p.m. CST beginning Feb. 3. Registration for the colloquium is free but required by completing this registration form.
The speakers scheduled thus far include:
Feb. 3: Hongchao Zhang, LSU Department of Mathematics and Center for Computation & Technology professor
Feb. 17: Andrew Lumsdaine, University of Washington’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science and Engineering affiliate professor and Northwest Institute for Advanced Computing chief scientist
March 3: John T. Foster, University of Texas at Austin’s George H. Fancher Professorship in Petroleum Engineering associate professor
March 17: Anshumali Shrivastava, Rice University Department of Computer Science assistant professor
April 7: Andy Hock, Cerebras Systems’ senior director of product management
April 21: Vijay Gadepally, MIT Lincoln Laboratory Supercomputing Center senior staff
The Colloquium on Artificial Intelligence Research and Optimization is organized by the STE||AR Group, an international team of researchers committed to fostering a new approach to parallel computation.
Additional Links:
The Colloquium on Artificial Intelligence Research and Optimization: https://stellar-group.org/research/distributed-machine-learning/
The STE||AR Group: https://stellar-group.org/
Contact Alison Satake
LSU Media Relations
510-816-8161
asatake@lsu.edu
Publish Date:
01-29-2021
