News and Announcements
Return to In-Person for ICL
Beginning Monday, March 7, ICL staff and faculty will begin returning to an in-person presence in Claxton at least 2 days per week. These days are not required to be scheduled nor recurring. This will be a transition period for ICL to safely return to a predominantly in-person work environment.
During this limited in-person time, please note that masks will be required in all ICL common areas. Masks will not be required while alone in office, but when meeting someone, please mask up.
Friday “lunches” will continue to be held online, but at this time, no lunches will be provided.
There is an ample supply of masks, hand sanitizers, and cleaning products for use while in Claxton. Check with the main office (Claxton 203) for supplies.
Individuals unable to return to an in-person presence at least 2 days per week at this time will need to send Jack a note regarding their situation.
Clothing and Coat Drive
Please, donate any of the following items:
- New socks and undergarments
- New or gently used long-sleeved clothing
- Coats, hoodies, jackets
Donation boxes available:
- ZEC: all floors
- Claxton: Second floor (in the main shared area close to the vending machines)
Items will be collected until Apr 15, 2022
Conference Reports
Virtual SPARKS: Artificial Intelligence
The Office of Research, Innovation, and Economic Development (ORIED) hosted Virtual SPARKS: Artificial Intelligence on Wednesday, February 2 from 2–5 p.m. Launched in 2017, SPARKS (Seeking Partnerships to Advance Research, Knowledge, and Science) events bring UT faculty from multiple disciplines together around a common theme to learn and network. Attendees highlighted the UT-wide expertise and capacity in artificial intelligence, and fostered collaboration between departments.
ICL’s Deborah Penchoff’s presentation, titled “AI Applications for Multi-disciplinary Solutions,” focused on bias, interpretation, and discrimination in AI categorization, data sets incompleteness, biased labelling, and human interpretation vs. AI logic, vulnerability and manipulation.
Graphic for Deborah Penchoff’s presentation provided by David Rogers
ICL Resources
Friday Lunch Talks Archive Page
Thanks to TSG member David Rogers for developing a new Lunch Talks Archive Page.
This page provides streamlined access to previous speakers’ information that can be sorted by date, speaker’s name, or affiliation. This archive should be more accessible and user friendly than the Lunch Talks Database.
Interview
Sameer Deshmukh
Where are you from?
I am originally from Pune, India.
Can you summarize your educational background?
I finished my undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Pune University, India. I enrolled in a Master’s degree in Computer Science at Tokyo Institute of Technology, and submitted my Master’s thesis under the guidance of Prof. Rio Yokota. I have been a Ph.D. student at Prof. Yokota’s lab since September 2019.
Where did you work before joining ICL?
I worked as a graduate student researcher at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan while being enrolled as a Ph.D. student at Tokyo Institute of Technology.
How did you first hear about the lab, and what made you want to work here?
I was attended SC19 at Denver, Colorado and had chanced upon Prof. George Bosilca and his students at the conference. We had some correspondence after the conference and jointly published work while working remotely. Once the COVID pandemic had reached a local minima we decided that it would be best for me to come to ICL in person in order to better collaborate with Prof. Bosilca’s group at ICL.
What is your focus here at ICL? What are you working on?
I am currently working on a distributed dense direct solver for large dense matrices with low rank off-diagonal structure. My focus is to perform experiments by combining our solver developed at Tokyo Institute of Technology with the distributed computing capabilities of Parsec, which is developed at ICL.
What are your interests/hobbies outside of work?
I enjoy hiking, music, good food and reading. I like to enjoy hikes in the Smoky Mountains over the weekend. I am also on the hunt for the best Southern burger that Knoxville has to offer and have tried out many nice burger joints so far. Live concerts in downtown are also something I look forward to.
Tell us something about yourself that might surprise people.
I went to a shooting range last week and tried my hand at some pistols and rifles for fun.
If you weren’t working at ICL, where would you like to be working and why?
I would like to work at some supercomputing facility in Japan or Europe. I think there are some great opportunities to pursue in these places, and the culture is great too.
