Oct. 28, 2022 — A Ken Kennedy Institute Distinguished Lecture by David Abramson of the University of Queensland on Thursday, Nov. 10 at 4-6 p.m. Central Time at Duncan Hall, McMurtry Auditorium at Rice University, Houston.
Abramson is director of Research Computing Centre and professor of computer science at The University of Queensland; he is the 2021 ACM-IEEE CS Ken Kennedy Award recipient. He will speak on: Translational Research Computer Science and its Application to Supercomputing
Attendance is free. Click here to register. This lecture is scheduled to be recorded and will be posted to the Ken Kennedy Institute YouTube channel.
Translational Computer Science (TCS) is an analogue of Translational Medicine and builds on three pillars: a laboratory where the work is performed, a locale where it is applied, and a community who are engaged. The benefits include a shorter time to adoption, potentially improved research outcomes and deeper impact. In spite of a number of roadblocks, researchers have used it informally to guide their work. For example, it was clear that Ken Kennedy used TCS – engaging in both deep theoretical research in language compilation for parallel supercomputers but translating it through practical compilers and tools. In this talk, I will provide personal experiences with TCS and how it has shaped my research in supercomputing. I will discuss two exemplar projects: one in distributed supercomputing and another in parallel debugging. I will highlight the role of community, especially the PRAGMA collaboration across the Pacific Rim. I will illuminate the role of undergraduate (and even high school) students in these activities, drawing on Ken Kennedy’s legacy for mentoring the next generation of researchers.
Abramson has been involved in computer architecture and high performance computing research since 1979. He has held appointments at Griffith University, CSIRO, RMIT and Monash University. Prior to joining UQ, he was the Director of the Monash e-Education Centre, Science Director of the Monash e-Research Centre, and a Professor of Computer Science in the Faculty of Information Technology at Monash. From 2007 to 2011 he was an Australian Research Council Professorial Fellow. David has expertise in High Performance Computing, distributed and parallel computing, computer architecture and software engineering. He has produced in excess of 230 research publications, and some of his work has also been integrated in commercial products. One of these, Nimrod, has been used widely in research and academia globally, and is also available as a commercial product, called EnFuzion, from Axceleon. His world-leading work in parallel debugging is sold and marketed by Cray Inc, one of the world’s leading supercomputing vendors, as a product called ccdb. David is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE), and the Australian Computer Society (ACS). His hobbies include recreational cycling, photography and making stained glass windows. He is also an amateur playwright, and author of Purely Academic.
The event is sponsored by The Ken Kennedy Institute .
