The new Frontiers in Computing Systems group, part of Columbia’s Data Science Institute, is hosting an inaugural full-day symposium, with leading speakers and panelists, to highlight the advances and grand challenges in Big Data infrastructure: extreme-scale computing systems (hardware, parallel computing, software, databases) and their application to solve diverse cutting-edge problems in climate and ocean science, population-scale biomedical informatics, genomics, materials science, neuroscience, astrophysics and engineering.
The symposium includes an exciting keynote by Ruchir Puri, the chief architect of IBM’s Watson system, on "Engineering the Future of Cognitive Systems." Other speakers include those developing state-of-art high-performance parallel computers and large-scale Python-based software platforms, as well as experts on computational problems in climate science, astrophysics, and protein folding simulation.
The event will include a keynote talk, lunch, two talk presentation sessions, a networking and poster session, and a panel of experts with audience participation.
STEVEN M. NOWICK is a Professor of Computer Science at Columbia University, and former chair and co-founder of the Computer Engineering Program. He is the chair and founder of the Frontiers in Computing Systems working group in Columbia's Data Science Institute. He received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University in 1993, and a B.A. from Yale University.
His main research is on design methodologies and CAD tools for synthesis and optimization of asynchronous and mixed-timing digital systems. His current interests include: scalable and low-latency on-chip interconnection networks for shared-memory parallel processors and embedded systems, extreme low-energy digital systems, neuromorphic computing, hardware accelerators, and variation-tolerant global communication.
Dr. Nowick is an IEEE Fellow, and recipient of an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, and NSF CAREER and RIA Awards. He received Best Paper Awards at the IEEE International Conference on Computer Design (1991, 2012) and IEEE Async Symposium (2000). He co-founded the IEEE "Async" Symposia series (1994), and was Program and General Co-Chair. He was Program Chair of the IEEE/ACM International Workshop on Logic and Synthesis, and program track/subcommittee chair at DAC, DATE and ICCD conferences. He is on the editorial boards of IEEE Design & Test Magazine and ACM Journal on Emerging Technologies in Computer Systems, and formerly on the editorial boards of IEEE Transactions on Computer-Aided Design and IEEE Transactions on VLSI Systems. He was selection committee chair of the ACM/SIGDA Outstanding Dissertation in Electronic Design Automation Award, and a member of the best paper award committees of DAC and ICCAD conferences. He received the Columbia Engineering School Alumni Distinguished Faculty Teaching Award. He holds 13 issued US patents.
