News and Announcements
25 Years of Innovative Computing
As many of you know, the 2014-2015 academic year marks ICL’s 25th year of Innovative Computing. To commemorate this milestone, ICL is hosting a 25th anniversary workshop on April 1 – 2, with a welcome reception on March 31 and a banquet on April 1. The workshop will feature presentations from our current and former group members, and the reception and banquet are open to family and spouses.
Although we do not have an agenda at this time, we have a rough schedule to assist in planning.
| Draft schedule | |
|---|---|
| March 31, 2015 | Welcome Reception, Downtown Hilton, 6pm |
| April 1-2 | 25 years of Innovative Computing, UT Conference Center, Henley Street, 9am-5pm |
| April 1 | Banquet celebrating 25 years, UT’s Neyland Stadium Skybox, 6pm |
If you wish to attend, please fill out the registration page no later than February 14, 2015. Keep in mind that ICL will pay for up to 3 nights of lodging from March 31 – April 2, and you also have the option of extending your stay with the Hilton at the state employee rate of $88/night (+ taxes). If you require a letter of invitation, please let Tracy Rafferty know as soon as possible (rafferty@icl.utk.edu).
If you are unable to attend, please go to the RSVP page and update your contact information for our records. Please note: Campus has changed, even in the past year, so we will be providing maps to relevant venues and areas of campus.
More information available at http://icl.utk.edu/25, and we look forward to seeing you all!
Conference Reports
Big Data and Extreme Scale Computing
The third Big Data and Extreme Scale Computing (BDEC) workshop was held in Barcelona, Spain on January 29th and 30th at the Barceló Sants hotel. This workshop, the third in a series sponsored by the NSF, is premised on the idea that we must begin to systematically map out and account for the ways in which the major issues associated with Big Data intersect with, impinge upon, and potentially change the national (and international) plans that are now being laid for achieving Exascale computing.
The ICL team played a prominent role in this meeting, with Jack Dongarra acting as co-chair, David Rogers designing the meeting’s website and printed materials, and Terry Moore, Tracy Rafferty, and Sam Crawford providing administrative support on site. Members of the Barcelona Supercomputing Center were critical to the meeting’s success and coordinated much of the logistics on the ground; the BSC was also gracious enough to give a tour of their MareNostrum supercomputer, which resides inside a chapel on the BSC campus.
This third BDEC meeting was attended by application leaders confronting diverse big data challenges, alongside members from industry, academia, and government, with expertise in algorithms, computer system architecture, operating systems, workflow middleware, compilers, libraries, languages, and applications.
Barcelona provided an ideal backdrop for the workshop, which was a great success overall, with 40+ individual talks and panel discussions and over 100 attendees from all over the world. Plans are in the works for a comprehensive BDEC report and roadmap, and the foundation for the next iteration of IESP/BDEC meetings is currently being laid.
Recent Releases
2015 ICL Annual Report
For fourteen years, ICL has produced an annual report to provide a concise profile of our research, including information about the people and external organizations who make it all happen. Please download a copy and check it out.
Interview
Amina Guermouche
Where are you from, originally?
I am originally from Algeria; more precisely I am from the capital, Algiers.
Can you summarize your educational background?
I graduated with a degree in computer science from the university USTHB of Algiers in 2007. I then moved to France to earn a PhD. I started with a Master’s degree at the University of Paris Sud. Then I started a PhD in 2008 which I defended in 2011. I was also a teaching assistant during my PhD. After my defense, I started a Post-Doc at ENS Lyon, where I spent a year. Finally I started another Post-Doc at the University of Versailles that I left last December before moving here.
Tell us how you first learned about ICL.
I had worked work with some members of the team in the past, including George Bosilca, Aurélien Bouteiller, and Thomas Hérault.
What made you want to work for ICL?
I really liked working with George, Aurélien, and Thomas, and after hearing them describe the lab and people here—and learning more about the research objectives—I knew I wanted to join the DisCo team at ICL.
What are you working on while at ICL?
I’m currently working on studying communications in MPI applications in order to fully understand their behavior. After that, I’ll mostly be working on fault tolerance for HPC systems.
If you weren’t working at ICL, where would you like to be working and why?
I would probably have stayed in France and continued my Post-Doc and pursued teaching at the University of Versailles.
What are your interests/hobbies outside work?
I like scuba diving, swimming, watching movies and TV shows, reading, traveling, and hiking.
Tell us something about yourself that might surprise people.
I learned to ride a bicycle just 4 months ago. I joined a biking school in Paris and after two sessions, which last 2.5 hours each, I was able to ride a bike.
