April Colloquium

Our department will host an online colloquium on “The Quest for Efficient and Thrustworthy Systems” with Dr. Barış Kaşıkçı from Michigan University as the speaker. It will take place on April 8, 2021 at 14:30 on Microsoft Teams. You can join using this link.

Dr. Baris Kasikci is an assistant professor in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of Michigan. His research is centered around building efficient and trustworthy computer systems. His group has built a number of techniques to improve the efficiency of datacenter applications, provide systems support for heterogeneous platforms, verify properties of complex distributed systems, analyze and fix failures, and improve the security of modern hardware. Previously, Dr. Kasikci was a researcher in the Systems and Networking Group at Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK. He completed his PhD in Computer Science at EPFL. He also held roles at Intel, VMware and Siemens. He is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award, Intel Rising Star Award, Google Faculty Award, two Intel Faculty Awards, Jay Lepreau Best Paper Award at OSDI, IEEE MICRO Top Picks Award, multiple IEEE MICRO Top Picks Honorable Mentions, VMware fellowship, Roger Needham PhD Award for the best PhD thesis in computer systems in Europe, and the Patrick Denantes Memorial Prize for best PhD thesis in the Department of Information and Communication Sciences at EPFL.

Abstract:

The current growth of the software ecosystem is faster than ever before. Software systems are increasingly more complex and consist of deep stacks. Software’s soaring complexity combined with the halt of Moore’s Law and Dennard Scaling is causing a shift to a more heterogeneous hardware landscape, comprising CPUs, GPUs, FPGAs, fast networks, and denser memory technologies. For the foreseeable future, improving the efficiency of computer systems will be crucial to enable society’s growing reliance on feature-rich software. Alas, trustworthiness in this complex ecosystem is often an afterthought. Consequently, software and hardware have been plagued with bugs that cause data loss, security vulnerabilities, and failures of critical infrastructure. Building systems that are simultaneously efficient (i.e., deliver high performance at scale, leverage heterogeneous resources) and trustworthy (i.e., contain fewer bugs, achieve greater security, and have verified properties) is extremely challenging. This talk will give an overview of the techniques developed by Dr. Kaşıkcı’s group in Michigan University to build systems that are simultaneously efficient and trustworthy, with a focus on real-world technical and societal impact.