CSE Annual Report (2023–2024)

Where Ideas

Merge and

Solutions

Evolve

cse.gatech.edu

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We have seen significant growth in demand of skills in these areas, and we are uniquely well position to continue to lead in CSE, especially with the strong support from the College of Computing and Georgia Tech. Our world-class faculty have been recognized with numerous awards and for their leadership roles. Stakeholders in national laboratories, industry, and academia continually seek our students through fellowships and as new hires following graduation.

GROWTH AND IMPACT HAVE PREVAILED AS RECENT themes in the School of Computational Science and Engineering (CSE), and I am excited to tell you more about our accomplishments through this publication.

Since the inception of the School, we have been leading the field of CSE through foundational and multi-disciplinary research and education programs.

Since 2020, the School has grown to 23 full-time and five joint-appointment, tenure-track faculty. We recently welcomed 13 new assistant professors: Spencer Bryngelson, Florian Schäfer, Nabil Imam, Yunan Luo, Anqi Wu, Nisha Chandramoorthy, Peng Chen, Victor Fung, Elizabeth Qian, Bo Dai, Raphaël Pestourie, Kai Wang, and Helen Xu. As more disciplines continue to benefit from computational and data centric approaches, the demand from CSE has been growing fast and our impact has been expanding. This trend is expected to continue for the foreseeable future. Our current strategic research directions involving Scientific AI, computing in the post Moore’s law era, data science for fighting disease, and expansion to areas such as urban analytics are based on our current strengths.

Our educational programs are established around the core body of CSE research such as high-performance computing, data science and visual analytics, scientific computing and simulation, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and computational bioscience and biomedicine. We apply our studies in these research areas to overcome the greatest challenges facing life and society.

Our CSE Ph.D. and M.S. degree programs comprise of 12 schools across Georgia Tech participating as home units, ensuring a truly multidisciplinary experience for students and faculty.

In addition, our School participates in four other Ph.D. programs and seven other M.S. programs such as M.S. in Analytics, recently joining the Machine Learning Ph.D., and M.S. in Urban Analytics programs.

The School now resides on the entire 13th floor of CODA building, a 21-story state-of-the-art home in the fast-developing technology hub in Midtown Atlanta, where our researchers have access to the CODA’s data center facility that houses multiple supercomputer clusters.

We remain committed to advancing Computational Science and Engineering and invite you to join us.

Haesun Park Regents’ Professor and Chair, School of Computational Science and Engineering

BY THE NUMBERS FY24 Students

372

86

159

47

80

Total enrollment

CSE Ph.D.

CSE M.S.

CS/ML Ph.D.

M.S. Analytics

(Male: 278/75%, Female: 94/25%

(Male: 73/85%; Female: 13/15%)

(Male: 107/67%; Female: 52/33%)

(Male: 43/91%; Female 4/9%)

(Male: 55/69%; Female 25/31%)

5 Participating Ph.D. Programs Computational Science and Engineering Computer Science n Machine Learning n Bioinformatics n Bioengineering n n

8 Participating M.S. Programs Computational Science and Engineering Computer Science n Analytics n Urban Analytics n Bioengineering n OMS Analytics n OMS Computer Science n Dual Degree in Quantitative and Computational Finance n n

12 CSE Programs Home Units School of Computational Science and Engineering n Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering n School of Biological Sciences n Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering n School of Chemistry and Biochemistry n School of Civil and Environmental Engineering n School of Electrical and Computer Engineering n H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering n School of Materials Science and Engineering n School of Mathematics n George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering n School of Physics n

FY24 People

48

Total Faculty and Staff

5

Full Professor

28

Academic Faculty

3

Associate Professors

13

7

Adjunct Appointments

15

Assistant Professors

Staff

5

Joint Appointments

Research Funding (FY2023):

$14,136,517 Total Active Funding

$4,826,341

Research Expenditures

$241,317

Research Expenditures by faculty

81

CSE Active Research Projects:

Air Force (1): $10,000

Navy (1): $148,300 CDC, NIH (3): $1,658,950 NSF (13): $8,101,457 National Labs (3): $458,389 Georgia Tech Foundation (36): $1,745,652 Industry/Research Gifts (Facebook, Bosch, JP Morgan, etc.) (15): $1,498,584 Other (Subawards, etc.) (9): $2,666,694

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FACULTY AWARDS Assistant Professors Srijan Kumar, Chao Zhang, and Xiuwei Zhang each received National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Awards in the 2022-2023 year. Kumar received the award to invent methods to detect and correct misinformation on online platforms. C. Zhang’s award will

Srijan Kumar

Chao Zhang

fund development of a “predict-and-optimize” learning framework to achieve fast and resilient design of spatial networks. X. Zhang will use the award to develop computational methods to learn mechanisms in cell differentiation and development, and to provide open-source tools that

Yunan Luo

Xiuwei Zhang

can be integrated with educational activities and outreach.

Assistant Professor Yunan Luo received the Amazon Research Award (ARA) in the AWS AI area for his title work Calibrated and interpretable geometric deep learning for robust drug screening. This cycle, ARA granted

C. David Sherrill

Spencer Bryngelson

79 research awards to recipients who represent 54 universities in 14 countries. The ARA provides recipients unrestricted funds, AWS Promotional Credits, access to more than 300 Amazon public datasets, utilization of AWS AI/ML services and tools, and an assigned Amazon research contact for consultation and advice.

Srinivas Aluru

Assistant Professors Xiuwei Zhang and Yunan Luo each

Polo Chau

received Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA) grants in 2021 and 2023 respectively. Funded by the National Institute of Health (NIH) and National

Regents’ Professor C. David Sherrill received the 2023

Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), MIRA is

Charles H. Herty Award. Presented by the Georgia Sec-

oriented toward launching the research endeavors of

tion of the American Chemical Society, the Herty Award

young career faculty. The grant provides researchers

recognizes research, education, and service activities in

with more stability and flexibility through five years of

the Southeast by a chemist.

funding. This enhances scientific productivity and improves the chances for important breakthroughs.

The University System of Georgia promoted C. David Sherrill and Srinivas Aluru to Regents’ Professor in

Assistant Professor Spencer Bryngelson received the

2021 and 2023, respectively. In 2021, Sherrill was also

2022 Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award.

appointed director of Georgia Tech’s Center for High

The Powe Award enriches research skills and profession-

Performance Computing (CHiPC).

al growth of young faculty members at Oak Ridge Associ-

4

ated Universities (ORAU) member institutions. Bryngelson

Associate Professor Polo Chau received Georgia Tech’s

also received the Georgia Tech Class of 1969 Teaching

Senior Faculty Outstanding Undergraduate Research

Fellowship for the 2022-2023 year. The fellowship forms

Mentor Award for 2023. This award recognizes faculty

interdisciplinary cohorts of early career faculty for peda-

who have sustained outstanding achievement in mentor-

gogically focused support and professional development.

ing undergraduates in research activities. n

School of Computational Science and Engineering / College of Computing

SPOTLIGHT ON FACULTY FELLOWSHIPS

Edmond Chow

Srijan Kumar

Anqi Wu

The University System of Georgia promoted Edmond

Wu received both honors for her impactful research

Chow to Professor in 2022. This comes after he was

in the fields of computational neuroscience and machine

selected as a fellow of the Society for Industrial and

learning. Her research interest is to develop probabi-

Applied Mathematics (SIAM) in 2021. SIAM is one of

listic modeling approaches and scalable and efficient

three major professional societies in the Computational

inference algorithms, with applications to neural and

Science and Engineering field, along with the Associa-

behavior analyses, as well as many real-world problems,

tion of Computing Machinery (ACM) and the Institute of

such as robotics.

Electrical and Electronics Engineering (IEEE).

***

SIAM quickly recognized Chow’s leadership ability by selecting him as co-chair of the 2022 annual meeting.

Following that, SIAM assigned Chow as program director

Assistant Professor Srijan Kumar has been selected as a

for the activity group on computational science and

Kavli Fellow by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS)

engineering.

for back-to-back years in 2022 and 2023. Every year, NAS

***

selects the nation’s brightest young scientists under the age of 45 from industry, academia, and government to

Assistant Professor Anqi Wu received two notable rec-

participate in Kavli Frontiers of Science symposiums.

ognitions in the 2022-2023 year when she was selected

Attendees of these symposiums receive the designation

as a Sloan Research Fellow and DARPA Riser.

of Kavli Fellows. The Kavli Frontiers of Science symposia

Funded by the Alfred P. Sloan foundation, the Sloan Research Fellowship is one of the most competitive and prestigious awards available to early-career researchers

are sponsored by the NAS, with major support provided

by The Kavli Foundation.

Kumar is best known for his work in innovating

in the fields of chemistry, computer science, earth sys-

scalable and efficient methods for online safety by

tem science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience, and

detecting and mitigating malicious actors and dangerous

physics. DARPA Risers are up-and-coming standouts in

content. Kumar’s research group uses terabytes of data

their fields whose research is related to national security

from multiple online platforms spanning different modal-

and demonstrates the potential to lead to technological

ities and languages to build models powered by artificial

surprise. Risers were nominated by DARPA program

intelligence and machine learning to detect and counter

managers and stakeholders at their home universities.

online misinformation. n

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RESEARCH AREAS AND STORIES HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING

HPC is all about speed, and one of the fastest ways for researchers to refine their projects is through

R

esearch in high-performance computing (HPC)

hackathons where they have access to the latest HPC

designs practical algorithms and software that run at

hardware and support from experts.

the absolute limits of scale and speed.

The brightest highlight in high performance com-

CSE hosted a virtual hackathon in January 2023 where participants tooled and tested ongoing software

puting research came at Supercomputing 2022 where

on powerful HPC hardware. Researchers from academia,

School of CSE faculty, students, and alumni formed the

national laboratories, and industry formed six teams that

core of a research team nominated for the Gordon Bell

developed applications for particle assemble simulation,

Prize. There, Ramakrishnan Kannan (Ph.D. CS 2016) and

particle tracking through electric and magnetic fields, and

Piyush Sao (Ph.D. CSE 2018) led the team that included

photon tracking during oxygen exchange between body

Professor Rich Vuduc and Ph.D. student Vijay Thakkar.

tissues.

Assistant Professor Spencer Bryngelson coordinated

Together, they developed the first algorithm to run over one exaflop on a graph intelligence demonstration.

Called COAST (Exascale Communication-Optimized All-Pairs Shortest Path), the algorithm could help future

the event with NVIDIA and the OpenACC Organization.

This is the second hackathon Bryngelson has organized since arriving to Georgia Tech in 2021.

researchers solve medicine’s most challenging myster-

“Overall, this hackathon went really well once

ies by revealing hidden connections across large bodies

again,” Bryngelson said. “I am impressed with the pre-

of research. This would revolutionize medical research

sentations, and I hope that the teams leave satisfied with

by developing better treatment plans, creating more

the progress made on their projects.”

effective drugs, and improving efficiency of resource allocations.

“Within HPC, COAST shows that classical ideas in algorithms and performance engineering are still critical to scaling to big machines, like ORNL’s Frontier,” Vuduc said. “More importantly, we now have a new capability that may help speed up the search for new ideas in the biomedical domain.”

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DATA SCIENCE AND VISUAL ANALYTICS

C

reation of new data and visual analytics approaches from CSE research transforms large and complex

datasets into knowledge and actionable information.

One place where CSE research in data science progressed scientific development comes from Polymer

School of Computational Science and Engineering / College of Computing

Scholar, a data extraction tool that can facilitate discovery

also shows how the page is connected in a web with

of new polymers. Ph.D. student Pranav Shetty (Ph.D. ML

other misinformation sources. As a result, MisVis helps

2023) is the architect of the pipeline that extracts materi-

casual and skeptical internet users alike identify misinfor-

al property records from published papers and populates

mation and better understand how content is untrue.

the data into a usable application.

The platform works like a browser to search poly-

“While working on this project, I found that many people are actually very worried and concerned about

mers and materials properties by keyword, rather than

misinformation,” Lee said. “Misinformation is a big issue

reading through countless articles. The application makes

and visualization is a good way to solve a lot of problems.”

materials research more efficient, which could lead to the discovery of new polymers.

“Essentially, we have created an index on materials science literature that is much more granular than ones in a typical index that a search engine would create,” Shetty said. “Our hope is that materials science research-

SCIENTIFIC COMPUTING AND SIMULATION

A

t its core, CSE develops mathematical models that replicate and simulate natural and engineered sys-

tems that are impossible or too difficult to study through

ers can make use of this capability in their day-to-day

experimental means. CSE research dealing in scientific

lives and workflows, and therefore, allow their work to

computing and simulation can be found everywhere from

have much more usability toward studying polymers and

the heavens above to below the surface of Earth.

developing new materials.”

Visualization is an effective means of presenting key

Assistant Professor Elizabeth Qian, joint with the School of CSE and the Daniel Guggenheim School of

insights found in an ocean of data. From there, identifi-

Aerospace Engineering, presented a new computational

cation becomes the first step of action. One example of

framework for engineering analysis that was applied to

this was the creation of MisVis, a tool that can help online

the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST).

users identify and stop the spread of misinformation. Led

The method proved to reduce the time required to

by Ph.D. student Seongmin Lee, MisVis is an interactive

perform a design analysis from more than two months

platform that alerts internet users they are on a website

to less than two days. In addition to reducing the time

containing misinformation via a visual display. MisVis

required to perform this analysis, the framework also

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A methodology and algorithm used on the Perseverance rover’s PIXL tool to detect geological anomalies on the surface of Mars

makes results more consistent and robust. These tech-

The introduction of applications like ChatGPT and

nical performance improvements can help keep complex

DALL-E has caused popular interest in generative AI.

space missions, like the JWST, on schedule and on bud-

While people find new uses of generative AI for day-to-

get, contributing to overall mission success.

day life, a School of CSE assistant professor has found

“Working with domain experts at NASA on the analysis of a space system is very exciting,” Qian said. “There are unique challenges that are encountered in the design

a way for generative AI to overcome challenges facing science and engineering.

Victor Fung is the author of the first-of-its-kind

of real-world systems that we don’t encounter when

algorithm that uses generative AI to reconstruct atomic

prototyping methods.”

structures. The algorithm paves the way for generative

Here on Earth, Professor Felix Herrmann, joint with the Schools of CSE, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences,

AI to help develop new materials for applications toward greener energy, pharmacology, and electronics.

and Electrical and Computer Engineering, is taking the

“Structural representations are a well-known

fight against climate change underground by applying his

concept people have used in other machine learning

group’s research toward geological carbon storage. One

applications for chemistry and materials, like training

primary focus of Herrmann’s group is the application of

models to predict energies and forces,” Fung said. “But

Fourier neural operators to map potential storage reser-

this is really the first time that anyone has used this in

voirs and predict behavior of stored carbon dioxide.

generative models.”

“One area where our group excels is that we care

School of CSE research in AI is also being used to

about realism in our simulations,” Herrmann said. “We

make new discoveries beyond Earth. Ph.D. student Austin

worked on a real-sized setting with the complexities one

Wright is the lead researcher of ISHMAP, a methodology

would experience when working in real-life scenarios to

and algorithm used on the Perseverance rover to detect

understand the dynamics of carbon dioxide plumes.”

geological anomalies on the surface of Mars.

ISHMAP bridges methodologies from AI and

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND MACHINE LEARNING

C

for designing more effective and interpretable anomaly

SE devotes research to construction and study of

detection tools. ISHMAP’s spectral anomaly algorithm re-

algorithms that build models and make data-driven

sulted in a 93.4% accuracy rate when detecting diffraction

predictions and decisions.

8

human-computer interaction (HCI) into a framework

anomalies.

School of Computational Science and Engineering / College of Computing

“I think that researchers can consider using ISHMAP

well-being,” Rodríguez said. “Forecasting with EINNs

simply because these kinds of collaboration between data

allows us to see further into the future, which it critical to

scientists and domain scientists are difficult,” Wright said.

planning and decision-making in public health.”

“A resource like ISHMAP can give structure to both par-

Mihir Bafna is an undergraduate student studying

ties, and make the whole process easier and more likely

under Xiuwei Zhang, the J.Z. Liang Early-Career Assistant

to result in good science.”

Professor in the School of CSE. He accepted the best poster prize at the Atlanta Workshop on Single-cell

COMPUTATIONAL BIOSCIENCE AND BIOMEDICINE

Omics (AWSOM 2023) for their work on CLARIFY. This tool connects biochemical signals occurring

C

SE develops algorithms for analysis and interpreta-

within a cell and intercellular communication molecules.

tion of biological and biomedical data, helping make

Previously, the inter- and intra-cell signaling were

sense of our living world and improve quality of life.

One example of School of CSE research devoted to

often studied separately due to the complexity of each problem.

computational biomedicine comes from the laboratory of

Oncology is one field that stands to benefit from

Associate Professor B. Aditya Prakash. He and his Ph.D.

CLARIFY. CLARIFY helps to understand the interactions

students Jiaming Cui and Alexander Rodríguez created a

between tumor cells and immune cells in cancer micro-

new machine learning framework that improves accuracy

environments, which is crucial for enabling the success

of long-range epidemic forecasting.

of cancer immunotherapy.

Called Epidemiologically-Informed Neural Networks

“We want to answer certain basic questions in

(EINNs), the framework also presents a new path toward

biology, like how we get these different cell types like

optimization for current models based on neural net-

skin cells, bone cells, and blood cells,” Zhang said. “If

works and differential equations.

we understand how things work in normal and healthy

“Predicting and preventing epidemics are ma-

cells, and compare that to the data of diseased cells,

jor challenges for the World Health Organization and

then we can find the key differences between those two

the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with

and locate the genes, proteins, and other molecules that

far-reaching effects on health, economy, and social

cause problems.” n

cse.gatech.edu

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NEW FACULTY

Georgia Tech’s School of Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) is continuing to grow with the hire of eight tenure-track faculty in 2022-2023

Assistant Professors Peng Chen, Victor Fung, and Elizabeth Qian began at Georgia Tech in Fall 2022. Nisha Chandramoorthy, Bo Dai, and Raphaël Pestourie later joined CSE in Spring and Summer 2023. Hired in 2023, Kai Wang and Helen Xu started at CSE in Spring 2024. The addition of these professors increases the School of CSE’s full-time and joint faculty total to 28, the highest in School history. This expansion is emblematic of the School’s enduring mission to develop scholars who solve real-world problems through advances in computational modeling methods and techniques.

Peng Chen

Victor Fung

Elizabeth Qian

Nisha Chandramoorthy

Peng Chen comes to CSE from the

Before arriving to Georgia Tech, Victor

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

University of Texas at Austin where he

Fung was the Eugene P. Wigner Fellow

(MIT). These include a S.B. in 2014 and

was a research scientist with the Oden

at Oak Ridge National Laboratory where

S.M. in 2017, both in aerospace engi-

Institute for Computational Engineering

he worked in the Nanomaterials Theory

neering, as well as her Ph.D. in 2021 in

and Sciences. Prior to that, he was a post-

Institute.

computational science and engineering.

doctoral associate and instructor at ETH

Fung studied physical chemistry at

(Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule),

the University of California, Riverside

tant professor remind me a little of the

a public research university in Zürich,

where he completed his Ph.D. in 2019. He

first few weeks of college — there are a

Switzerland.

attained his B.S. in 2015 from Cornell Uni-

lot of new people and new systems to get

versity where he majored in chemistry.

to know, and all the faculty and staff have

putational mathematics and M.S. in 2011

“CSE attracted me due to being a

been really welcoming and eager to help

in mathematical sciences at EPFL (École

uniquely multidisciplinary department in

Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne)

the country which is well-situated to be at

in Switzerland. In 2009, he received his

the forefront of research at the inter-

the swing of things and teaching my first

B.S. in mathematics from Xi’an Jiatong

section of artificial intelligence, machine

course in Spring 2023.”

University.

learning, and the sciences,” Fung said.

Chen attained his Ph.D. in 2014 in com-

“The first few weeks of being an assis-

me figure things out,” Qian said.

“I’m looking forward to getting into

“So far, I have very much enjoyed

Nisha Chandramoorthy also has ties

at CSE very generous and supportive in

being in the Atlanta area and also talking

to MIT where she most recently was a

helping junior faculty for career devel-

with all the students and faculty across

postdoctoral associate with their Institute

opment by providing various, interactive

various departments in the Institute.”

for Data, Systems, and Society.

The addition of Elizabeth Qian raises

in 2021 and S.M. in 2016, both from MIT.

at Georgia Tech, which has ten interdis-

CSE’s joint appointment professors total

Her doctorate is in mechanical engineer-

ciplinary research institutes that bring

to five. She comes to Atlanta following a

ing and computation while her master’s

researchers from different disciplines

postdoctoral appointment as von Karman

degree is in computation for design and

to work together in addressing topics of

Instructor at CalTech in the Department of

optimization. She completed her B. Tech

strategic importance such as data science,

Computing + Mathematical Sciences.

in mechanical engineering in 2014 at the

“I found the faculty and staff members

opportunities,” Chen said.

“I also like the collaborative culture

AI, energy, climate, and human health.”

Chandramoorthy attained her Ph.D.

Qian received all her degrees from the

10 School of Computational Science and Engineering / College of Computing

Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee.

He earned a Ph.D. in applied math-

This collaboration assists the organiza-

computational mathematics is motivat-

“By its nature, foundational research in

ematics and A.M. in statistics in 2020,

tion in its mission to improve access to

ed by and can prove useful to practical

both from Harvard University. By 2014,

maternal healthcare in the country.

questions in a variety of scientific and

Pestourie attained four master’s degrees

engineering fields,” said Chandramoorthy.

in his native France.

“I sensed that CSE recognizes this and

These include degrees in physics from

Wang also worked with the World Wildlife Fund and Citizen of the Earth, Taiwan, toward environmental and wild-

offers a place where applied mathe-

École Centrale Paris, both business and

life conservation. Through this collabora-

maticians asking questions at various

management from École Supérieure des

tion, Wang applied his ML research and

levels of abstractions can coexist and

Sciences Economiques et Commerciales

multi-agent systems in satellite imaging

collaborate.”

(ESSEC), and nanoscience from Universi-

to detect illegal factory expansion and

té Paris-Saclay.

animal poaching.

Before joining academia, Bo Dai worked

Pestourie’s research specialization

“Applying AI to create social impact is

as a staff research scientist at Google

is scientific ML and inverse design in

one of the greatest responsibilities and op-

Brain. He will have a part-time affiliation

electromagnetism.

portunities in our generation,” Wang said.

with Google while at Georgia Tech.

“The goal of my group is to create

“I am excited to work with talented

accurate models that enable previously

students, researchers, and practitioners

to the School as a faculty member. He

unreachable engineering solutions via

at Georgia Tech CSE to build reliable and

earned his Ph.D. in computational science

optimization. We will create scientific

scalable AI, conquer societal challenges,

and engineering in 2018, studying under

artificial intelligence (AI) models that

and make a better future together.”

Professor Le Song.

efficiently combine information from data

Dai is the first CSE alumnus to return

and scientific knowledge toward simula-

Helen Xu comes to Georgia Tech from

ing principled and practical machine

tions that drive engineering discovery,”

Lawrence Berkely National Laboratory

learning (ML) techniques for real-world

said Pestourie.

(LBNL) where she was the 2022 Grace

Dai’s research focuses on develop-

applications. This includes creating better

“With this research agenda, I could

Hopper Postdoctoral Scholar. She com-

reinforcement learning models and da-

not find a better home than CSE—the

pleted her Ph.D. in computer science at

ta-driven decision-making models.

academic discipline devoted to systematic

MIT the same year.

“I am honored and grateful to have the privilege of returning to my alma mater

computer models to solve real-world problems.”

Along with her time at LBNL, Xu as worked with NVIDIA, Microsoft Research,

as a faculty member,” Dai said. “I am

and Sandia National Laboratories.

excited to use this unique opportunity to

Kai Wang recently earned his Ph.D. in

Her research examines high-perfor-

inspire and guide the next generation of

computer science at Harvard Univer-

mance computing (HPC), with interests in

students, and to give back and contribute

sity as a Siebel Scholar. His expertise

parallel computing, cache-efficient algo-

to Georgia Tech.”

lies in ML and optimization, focusing on

rithms, and performance engineering.

data-driven decision-making and AI for Raphaël Pestourie comes to CSE from

social impact.

“I joined CSE because of its research strengths in many areas of HPC, which I

MIT where he was a postdoctoral asso-

Wang’s work is currently making an

hope will lead to fruitful collaborations,”

ciate in the mathematics department. He

impact is in India. ARMMAN, a non-profit

Xu said. “I was also impressed by the

arrives at Tech with a diverse educational

organization, is using his algorithms to

extensive computing resources at Georgia

background that fosters new insights for

connect pregnant women and mothers

Tech, which will help expand and acceler-

the ML field.

and their infants with health providers.

ate my research.” n

Bo Dai

Raphaël Pestourie

Kai Wang

Helen Xu

cse.gatech.edu

11

builds financial and economic infrastructure for the internet. Park’s employment stems from 2022 when she first interned with company under Revanth Rameshkumar.

During her internship, Park helped Stripe design and implement a deep neural network for detecting fraud transactions. The model’s advanced design resulted in a remarkable 8x increase in training speed, offering customers a significant boost in the volume of fraud transactions detected.

“I attribute my success at Stripe to the compre-

CSE STUDENT SPOTLIGHT

hensive computer science education at Georgia Tech.

The cutting-edge research opportunities equipped me with the innovative problem-solving skills necessary to succeed,” Park said.

“Georgia Tech’s balanced approach, blending theoretical insights with practical experiences, and its focus on collaboration, were crucial in seamlessly applying my academic expertise into tangible, real-world solutions.”

Later in 2022, Park was selected as a Rising Star in

Haekyu Park

EECS, held that year at the University of Texas at Austin.

Haekyu Park is a CS Ph.D. graduate advised by Associ-

uate students and postdocs of historically marginalized

ate Professor Polo Chau. She defended her dissertation

or underrepresented genders who are interested in

in October 2023 and graduated the following December.

pursuing academic careers in electrical engineering and

Park’s research addresses how machine learning

Rising Stars in EECS is an intensive workshop for grad-

computer science.

models work and how they evolve over time. Specif-

EECS followed after Park attended and presented

ically, she creates novel tools that enable interactive

research at the Women in Machine Learning workshop,

scalable discovery of concepts, evolutions, and vulnera-

co-located at NeurIPS 2019. Her active participation in

bilities in deep learning.

these workshops and her new employment underscore

Park’s research and dissertation were supported through the J.P. Morgan AI Research Fellowship which she received in 2021. She was one of a class of 15

the expanding support for diversity across the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

“The computer science and machine learning fields

young researchers from around the world to receive the

have seen a marked increase in diversity and repre-

fellowship.

sentation since I started my Ph.D. in 2018,” Park said.

After defending her dissertation, Park began

“These specialized workshops offered me invaluable in-

working as a machine learning engineer at Stripe, an

sights and learning opportunities, and I grew immensely

Irish-American multinational technology company that

through these experiences.” n

“Georgia Tech’s balanced approach, blending theoretical insights with practical experiences, and its focus on collaboration, were crucial in seamlessly applying my academic expertise into tangible, real-world solutions.”

12 School of Computational Science and Engineering / College of Computing

“It was a particularly rewarding experience. Not only did I develop an understanding of how these search systems operate, but I also learned about the broader impacts of users’ interactions with conversational search systems.”

Gaurav Verma is a CS Ph.D. student advised by Assistant

Later, Verma capped off 2022 by receiving a Snap

Professor Srijan Kumar. Verma studies robust vision-lan-

Research Fellowship in December. He is one of a class

guage and natural language processing models, specializ-

of 12 young researchers from around the world to

ing in problems that impact safety, equity, and well-being.

receive the award.

Verma was selected to the prestigious 2023 class

“The key to attaining these fellowships is to apply.

of the J.P. Morgan AI Research Ph.D. Fellowship Awards.

As you apply, you go through the process of articulating

He is among 13 scholars from around the world honored

your research vision and highlighting aspects that are

by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. for AI research projects

more relevant to certain parties – and you get better at

taking on real-world challenges.

it,” Gaurav said.

In the same summer that he received the fellow-

“I also benefitted from talking to previous winners.

ship, Verma traveled to Montreal for an internship with

The College of Computing is great in that sense – you

Microsoft Research. There, he worked in the Fairness,

find winners for every award here and we have a culture

Accountability, Transparency, and Ethics in Artificial

of helping each other grow.” n

Intelligence (FATE) group with Dr. Alexandra Olteanu, Dr. Su Lin Blodgett, and Dr. Koustuv Saha. While at FATE, Verma researched conversational search engines powered by large language models, like Bing Chat.

“It was a particularly rewarding experience. Not only did I develop an understanding of how these search systems operate, but I also learned about the broader impacts of users’ interactions with conversational search systems,” Verma said.

“Of course, being around some of the smartest people – who are also fun to work with – in one of the best cities in North America, made the whole experience even more wonderful.”

This fellowship and internship maintain momentum Verma set in motion in 2022. At the College of Computing awards ceremony in 2022, he received the Rising Star Doctoral Student Research Award.

2022 was a marquee year between Verma and Adobe. That year, he was a finalist for the Adobe Research Ph.D. Fellowship. In summer 2022, Verma interned with Adobe Research. He worked with Dr. Ani Nenkova and Dr. Ryan A. Rossi, working on modeling text visualness using large vision-language models.

CSE STUDENT SPOTLIGHT

Gaurav Verma

cse.gatech.edu

13

lated metrics, such as hospitalizations and mortality.

“The pandemic presented us with an opportunity to demonstrate the usefulness of machine learning in supporting real-world crises, particularly through our partnership with the CDC,” Rodríguez said.

“A number of benefits of our approach stem from allowing the data to speak for itself. This is especially true for data derived from non-traditional sources, like search trends and mobility logs, that have remained underutilized due to technical difficulties in harnessing

CSE STUDENT SPOTLIGHT

Alexander Rodríguez

their full potential.”

As a result of his meaningful research, Rodríguez’s team won first place at the Covid-19 Symptom Data Challenge organized by Catalyst Health, Facebook, and Carnegie Mellon University. At the same time, Rodríguez’s team took second place at the C3.ai Covid-19 Grand Challenge against a field of over 700 participants from over 40 countries.

Rodríguez’s experience during Covid honed his expertise to become program committee chair and co-organizer of the epiDAMIK workshop in 2021, 2022,

Alexander Rodríguez is a CS Ph.D. graduate advised

and 2023. The forum discussed how to further apply

by Associate Professor B. Aditya Prakash. He defend-

data mining toward epidemiological and public health

ed his dissertation in August 2023, which earned him

research. The workshop is held in conjunction with

the Outstanding Dissertation Award at the College of

the annual conference pf the Special Interest Group on

Computing’s 33rd Annual Awards Celebration. Soon after

Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (SIGKDD).

defending, he accepted a faculty position as an assistant

Rodríguez went on to distinguish himself from his

professor at the University of Michigan’s Computer Sci-

peers by being selected by the University of Chicago

ence and Engineering Division.

Data Science Institute as a 2021 Rising Star in Data Sci-

Rodríguez specializes in data science, machine

ence out of a cohort of 30 Ph.D. students and postdoc-

learning, and artificial intelligence with emphasis on

toral scholars. The next year, the University of Southern

time-series and real-world networks. He applies these

California selected him and 16 other Ph.D. students and

interests toward problems facing computational epide-

postdoctoral scholars Rising Stars in ML and AI.

miology and community resilience.

Much of Rodriguez’s graduate experience dealt

Rodríguez capped off 2022 as a participant at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum. The networking conference

with solving real-world challenges in the form of the

hosts every year 200 selected young researchers in

Covid-19 pandemic. His group had already worked with

mathematics and computer science for a week of schol-

the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) for

arship and networking meant to motivate and connect

years on disease forecasting projects. During the Covid

the next generation of scientists.

pandemic, the CDC invited Georgia Tech researchers,

“I feel privileged to have enjoyed such enriching

including Rodríguez, to assist in the response effort.

experiences during my Ph.D.,” Rodríguez said. “I am

Rodríguez developed data-driven frameworks for

grateful to CSE professors, graduate students, and my

forecasting that incorporated domain knowledge. This en-

advisor for helping me prepare for these experiences

abled experts to combine historical data with their exper-

and encouraging me to strive for excellence, which I

tise and key observations to accurately forecast Covid-re-

hope to pass on to my students.” n

14 School of Computational Science and Engineering / College of Computing

Mikhail (Michael) Isaev is a CSE Ph.D. candidate advised

workshop at ISCA 2023, he shared the research through

by Professor Rich Vuduc. His research interests lie at

talks at NVIDIA, Google, Microsoft, IBM, and the Depart-

the intersection of computer architecture, high-perfor-

ment of Energy.

mance computing (HPC), and deep learning. Specifically,

The talks at NVIDIA, Google, and Microsoft are nota-

he focuses on deep learning workload analysis and soft-

ble since Isaev has interned at those companies while

ware-hardware co-design of large-scale deep learning

pursuing his Ph.D. at Georgia Tech. Along with these, he

systems.

has also interned at HP Labs and Meta.

Isaev received notable recognition for his co-de-

Isaev specifically interned at NVIDIA four times,

sign research at ModSim’22 where he received the Dr.

three of which were with the Network Research Group.

Sudhakar Yalamanchili Award. He received the “Sudha”

There he worked on ParaGraph and Calculon under one

Award for his tool, called ParaGraph, that provides an

of his mentors, Nic McDonald.

automated way to emulate application software in ways that a network simulator can understand.

“While Calculon won no award, I feel it was more well received and got better traction with the HPC

By making co-design a bilateral process, ParaGraph

community,” Isaev said. “This is in part due to Calculon

facilitates better supercomputing application and closes

being a product of collaboration between my internships

the gap for hardware and software experts.

and conference presentations. It truly is a tool created

While the award recognizes researchers for contri-

by HPC researchers for HPC research.” n

bution to the field of computer modeling and simulation, the award carried much more sentimental meaning to Isaev. Yalamanchili was a Georgia Tech faculty member who died in 2019. Isaev and his collaborators personally knew and worked with Yalamanchili.

“I felt very honored to receive the award,” Isaev said. “I had the pleasure to meet and talk to Sudha, so it felt great to bring home this award in his name and, in a way, give back to Georgia Tech.”

Another meaningful project Isaev worked on was Calculon, a tool for co-design optimization of large language models (LLMs). The value of Calculon is that it analyzes large co-design spaces of hardware and software configurations, thereby making it possible to discover new, and sometimes surprising, configurations that might outperform current methods.

By focusing specifically on LLMs, Calculon modeled more aspects of performance optimization at high accuracy, all at speeds several orders of magnitude faster than ParaGraph.

Along with presenting Calculon at conferences like Supercomputing 2023, ModSim’23, and the ASSYST

CSE STUDENT SPOTLIGHT

Mikhail (Michael) Isaev

Along with presenting Calculon at conferences like Supercomputing 2023, ModSim’23, and the ASSYST workshop at ISCA 2023, he shared the research through talks at NVIDIA, Google, Microsoft, IBM, and the Department of Energy.

cse.gatech.edu

15

rithms onto single-cell omics data, we have uncovered biological knowledges that was hard to be obtained by conventional methods.”

At the 2023 Atlanta Workshop on Single-Cell Omics (AWSOM 2023), Zhang received the best paper award for the group’s work on their deep learning framework scDisInFact. The framework can carry out multiple key single-cell RNA-sequencing (scRNA-seq) tasks all at once and outperform current models that focus on the same tasks individually. Zhang also received a best post poster award at the 2024 MidSouth Computational Biology and Bioinfor-

CSE STUDENT SPOTLIGHT

Ziqi Zhang

matics Society (MCBIOS) annual meeting for scDisInFact.

2023 also saw a paper that Zhang first-authored published in Nature Communications. The work on scMoMaT, a single cell data integration method that works on mosaic integration scenario. Not only did the framework demonstrates superior performance compared to existing methods, but also learns with high confidence cluster-specific bio-markers from every input modality that can be used to annotate cell types.

Another significant publication occurred in 2022 when Genome Biology accepted Zhang’s work on scDART. This deep learning framework integrates scRNA-

Ziqi Zhang is a CSE Ph.D. student advised by Xiuwei

seq data with scATAC-seq data. scDART is among the

Zhang, the J.Z. Liang Early-Career Assistant Professor

first methods that perform data integration and learn

in the School of CSE. He develops machine learning

cross-modalities relationship simultaneously. scDART’s

algorithms to study cellular functions.

design also allows it to preserve cell trajectories in con-

One area Zhang focuses research is studying cell regulatory mechanisms, including gene regulatory

tinuous cell populations, which is important for trajectory inference on single-cell multi-modal data.

networks and cross-modalities association network with

“scDisInFact, scMoMaT, and scDART all have

graph learning algorithms. He also obtains new biolog-

important applications in the field of single-cell biolo-

ical insight from integrating biological information from

gy. These methods integrate the biological knowledge

single-cell multi-omics datasets and single-cell datasets

from different clinical conditions and data modalities,

across experimental conditions.

empowering the researchers to gain a comprehensive

“I have always been hoping to apply my machine learning education to address real-world challenges,

understanding of the cell regulatory mechanism and cell responses to diseases or drug treatment,” Zhang said.

thereby making meaningful contributions to our commu-

“These methods enhance researcher’s overall

nity. The field of single-cell omics data analysis proved

understanding of human body and diseases, which has

to be the exact platform I hoped for,” Zhang said.

significant implications in drug development and treat-

“By adopting various machine learning algo-

ment design.” n

“I have always been hoping to apply my machine learning education to address realworld challenges, thereby making meaningful contributions to our community. The field of single-cell omics data analysis proved to be the exact platform I hoped for.”

16 School of Computational Science and Engineering / College of Computing

CODA:

WHERE WE WORK The School of Computational Science

memory nodes, as well as fast local

and Engineering relocated to the CODA

storage and GPUs. The system intercon-

building in 2019 after construction was

nect is Mellanox EDR InfiniBand, with

completed that year. The School of CSE

a 100-gigabit link from each compute

resides on CODA’s 13th floor and shares

node to a central core switch. Multiple

space on the 12th floor with the Institute

petabytes of high performance storage

of Data Engineering and Science (IDEaS).

is provided by a DDN SFA 14k storage

This location puts the School of CSE

device running Spectrum Scale (former-

in proximity with the best computing re-

ly GPFS).

sources Georgia Tech can bring to bear.

Georgia Tech’s Partnership for an Ad-

CODA houses the Institute’s two largest

vanced Computing Environment (PACE)

computing clusters: Phoenix and Hive.

is a CODA tenant, and manages the

Phoenix accelerates Georgia Tech’s

Phoenix and Hive clusters. PACE also

computational research efforts in

manages other computing resources

astrophysics, biology, health sciences,

at Georgia Tech that School of CSE stu-

chemistry, materials, manufacturing,

dents and faculty access for research.

public policy, and other disciplines.

CODA is home to ATL1, one of the

Phoenix debuted In Fall 2020 at 1.84

largest data centers in the Southeast

Linpack petaflops of computing power,

managed by DataBank. It includes

earning it a 277th ranking on the Top500.

network availability to multiple top-tier

The cluster has steadily grown with

dark fiber providers with redundant

additional hardware. In addition to its

backbone connectivity, cross connects

34,816 cores from 1,395 nodes, there are

to on-premises carriers, connectivity

57 GPU nodes with 2x Tesla V100, 37

to public cloud providers, and peering

GPU nodes with 4x RTX6000, and 4 GPU

fabric and blended -bandwidth solutions

nodes with 8x NVIDIA H100 GPUs that

to meet any business requirement.

Nova Ahmed

are instrumental in accelerating AI/ML/ DL workloads.

A premier, 21-story mixed-use development with 645,000 square feet of office

Hive came online in 2019 through

space, CODA is the core of collaboration

NSF MRI award 1828187: “MRI: Acquisi-

and pinnacle of innovation in Midtown

tion of an HPC System for Data-Driven

Atlanta‘s Technology Square. CODA

Discovery in Computational Astrophys-

integrates business innovation and in-

ics, Biology, Chemistry, and Materials

stitutional research in a completely new

Science.” Architecturally, Hive is similar

way. Fueled by a high-power computing

to the Phoenix cluster. Hive offers a rich

center, CODA connects with the energy

variety of different capabilities from a

of Midtown Atlanta through inspired

base set of CPU nodes to large/extreme

retail and dining elements. n

cse.gatech.edu

17

FACULTY Srinivas Aluru, Regents’ Professor n Executive Director, Institute for Data Engineering and Science n Ph.D., Iowa State University, 1994 n ACM Fellow, AAAS Fellow, IEEE Fellow, SIAM Fellow, IEEE Computer Society Golden Core, NSF CAREER Award, Regents’ Professor, John V. Atanasoff Discovery Award, Outstanding Achievement in Research Program Development Award, Outstanding Faculty Leadership Award Mark Borodovsky, Regents’ Professor, Joint with Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering n Director, Center for Bioinformatics and Computational Genomics n Ph.D. Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, 1976 n ISCB Fellow, AIMBE Fellow Spencer Bryngelson, Assistant Professor n Ph.D., University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, 2017 n ORAU Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Award Ümit V. Çatalyürek, Professor n Ph.D., Bilkent University, Turkey, 2000 n IEEE Fellow, SIAM Fellow, Amazon Scholar, NSF CAREER Award Nisha Chandramoorthy, Edenfield EarlyCareer Assistant Professor n Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2021 Polo Chau, Associate Professor n Associate Director, MS Analytics n Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University, 2012 n Faculty awards from Google, Meta, Intel, Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor Award, Outstanding Mid-Career Faculty Award, 13 Best Paper/Poster/Demo awards Peng Chen, Assistant Professor n Ph.D., École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, 2014

Elizabeth Cherry, Associate Professor, Associate Chair for Academic Programs n Director, CSE Graduate Programs n Ph.D., Duke University, 2000 Edmond Chow, Professor, Associate Chair n Ph.D., University of Minnesota, 1997 n SIAM Fellow, PECASE Award, DOE Early Career Award, Gordon Bell Prize Bo Dai, Assistant Professor n Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology, 2018 Victor Fung, Assistant Professor n Ph.D., University of California, Riverside, 2019 Felix Herrmann, Professor, Joint with School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and School of Electrical and Computer Engineering n Ph.D., Delft University of Technology, 1997 n Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Energy, 2019 Distinguished Lecturer of the Society of Exploration of Geophysicists, Reginal Fessenden Award Nabil Imam, Assistant Professor n Ph.D., Cornell University, 2014 n Misha Mahowald Prize

18 School of Computational Science and Engineering / College of Computing

Surya Kalidindi, Regents’ Professor, Joint with School of Mechanical Engineering n Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1992 n DoD Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship, Alexander von Homboldt Research Award, Khan International Award

FACULTY

Srijan Kumar, Assistant Professor n Ph.D., University of Maryland, 2017 n National Academy of Sciences Kavli Fellow, NSF CAREER Award, Facebook Faculty Research Award, Adobe Faculty Research Award, ACM SIGKDD Doctoral Dissertation Award Runner-up, Forbes 30 under 30 Yunan Luo, Assistant Professor n Ph.D., University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, 2021 n Amazon AWS Machine Learning Research Award, NIH Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award Haesun Park, Regents’ Professor and Chair n Ph.D. Cornell University, 1987 n IEEE Fellow, SIAM Fellow, ACM Fellow, Regents’ Professor, 2019 Faces of Inclusive Excellence, Outstanding Faculty Leadership Award Raphaël Pestourie, Assistant Professor n Ph.D. Harvard University, 2020 B. Aditya Prakash, Associate Professor n Ph.D., Carnegie Mellon University, 2012 n Facebook Faculty Research Award, NSF CAREER Award, IEEE ‘AI 10 to Watch’, 7 ‘Best Paper’/’Best of Conference’ citations Elizabeth Qian, Assistant Professor, Joint with the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering n Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2021

Kai Wang, Assistant Professor n Ph.D. Harvard University, 2023 Anqi Wu, Assistant Professor n Ph.D., Princeton University, 2019 n Sloan Research Fellow

Florian Schäfer, Assistant Professor n Ph.D., California Institute of Technology, 2021 C. David Sherrill, Regents’ Professor, Joint with School of Chemistry and Biochemistry n Associate Director, Institute for Data Engineering and Science n Ph.D., University of Georgia, 1996 n AAAS Fellow, American Chemical Society Fellow, American Physical Society Fellow, Vasser Wooley Faculty Fellow, NSF CAREER Award Rich Vuduc, Professor n Co-Director, Center for Research into Novel Compute Hierarchies n Ph.D., University of California Berkeley, 2004 n NSF CAREER Award, Gordon Bell Prize, Lockheed-Martin Aeronautics Company Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence

Helen Xu, Assistant Professor n Ph.D. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2022 Chao Zhang, Assistant Professor n Ph.D., University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign, 2018 n NSF CAREER Award, Amazon AWS Machine Learning Research Award, Google Faculty Research Award, Facebook Faculty Research Award Xiuwei Zhang, J.Z. Liang Early-Career Assistant Professor n Ph.D., École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, 2011 n NSF CAREER Award, NIH Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award

Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing School of Computational Science and Engineering 756 W Peachtree Street NW Atlanta, GA 30332 cse.gatech.edu