2021 ANNUAL REPORT
Collaboration
Welcome to the 2021 annual report for the School of Computer Science
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Note from the
Chair
Our community includes academic and research faculty, administrative staff, Ph.D. students, and affiliated Master’s and undergraduate students. In these pages, you will find snapshots of what we have accomplished in the past year. Our school’s vision is to power the future of computing by advancing the foundations
of computer science (CS) in novel ways to address society’s most urgent CS-related challenges. Our research mission is holistic in its integration of multiple areas within the school, collaboration with other schools and colleges, and the adoption of responsible computing as a guiding principle. Our engagement with undergraduate students on campus includes our leadership of three of eight threads in Georgia Tech’s unique undergraduate CS curriculum, as well as extensive mentorship through undergraduate research. The school continues to grow and is currently experiencing a youthful burst of vitality with eight assistant professors who have joined us since 2018. We also celebrate the achievements of all our B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. students who graduated this year despite the challenges of a pandemic. The dedication and hard work of our staff and faculty have been especially critical in enabling the progress that we have made this year. These are exciting times. We look forward to you joining us in our journey as we continue to advance foundational CS research areas, grow as a community, and step up to broadening the use of computing for societal good. Vivek Sarkar, Professor, Chair School of Computer Science Stephen Fleming Chair for Telecommunications
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Collaborating for a Better Future
SCS brings expertise across disciplines at Georgia Tech
S
olving society’s challenges requires different fields to work together, and the School of Computer Science is at the forefront of this effort with other schools at Georgia Tech. From physics to earth sciences, SCS faculty
partner with many schools across campus. Together, these groups work on cutting-edge research with a broad impact across areas such as climate change, future hardware, and emergent behavior. Monitoring Climate Change Two years ago, Senior Research Scientist Russell Clark was working in Savannah on a mobile Internet of Things (IoT) project for Georgia Tech’s Smart Cities program when he heard from a community partner in emergency management. Chatham County Assistant Director Randall Matthews wanted to know how Tech could help monitor rising sea levels so that the county could better allocate resources for flooding. “My background is connectivity and devices that use those networks, so I came into the sensor space very much as a networking guy looking for an application for my networking interests,” Clark said. At the same time, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Professor Kim Cobb was looking for coastal applications as a climate scientist when she saw Tech’s presence in Savannah. As an oceanographer, she made her mark deploying monitoring systems within the natural world and measuring long-term rainfall. “My question was how do we apply good technology to generate highquality data meeting a need for community and researchers working on coastal flooding?” Cobb said. When Clark and Cobb decided to collaborate on adding sea-level sensors to Savannah’s bridges, theirs wasn’t the only new partnership. They knew the community needed to be involved, too. With that in mind, they started partnering with environmental justice organization Harambee House and Chatham County schools who integrated sensors into their science curriculum. “If we’re here to raise people’s awareness about coastal flooding and what is causing it, part of the way that conversation happens is engaging in schools,” Clark said. The project has been so successful that Cobb and Clark hope to expand it to
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“How do we encourage established researchers to take these risks and build new ties? In our case we were spurred along by the pressing needs that a community laid on our doorstep, and along the way we learned about the importance of community collaborations and stretching yourself.”
the neighboring communities of St. Marys and Brunswick. “How do we encourage established
– Kim Cobb Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Professor
software?” Krishna said. Their two groups created MAESTRO, an open-source infrastructure for modeling deep-
researchers to take these risks and build new
learning accelerator architectures and exploring
ties?” Cobb said. “In our case we were spurred
compilation strategies for mapping deep neural
along by the pressing needs that a community
networks on them. MAESTRO has received
laid on our doorstep, and along the way we
wide attention from the external research
learned about the importance of community
community and was selected as a “top pick” by
collaborations and stretching yourself.”
the IEEE Micro journal. Krishna’s partnership with Professor
Helping Hardware Run
Hyesoon Kim was similarly easy. As
In the School of Electrical and Computer
computer architects, both are in the same field
Engineering (ECE), researchers work on
but approach it from different angles: Krishna
hardware, so it’s only natural they would
focuses on interconnection networks, and Kim’s
join forces with SCS professors in computer
emphasis is on memory systems and graphics
architecture and software.
processing units (GPUs). Many projects initially
ECE Assistant Professor Tushar Krishna, who is also an SCS adjunct, has found most of
start from class assignments. “Our work is spurred by these course
his collaborations have happened organically.
projects that lead to papers,” she said. “We need
When Professor Vivek Sarkar joined SCS in
each other’s kind of expertise.”
2017, Krishna was hoping to partner with him,
Together, Kim and Krishna worked on
but it wasn’t until one of Sarkar’s students took
running deep-learning models on embedded
Krishna’s Interconnection Networks class that
Raspberry Pis and running sparse machine
the opportunity presented itself.
learning workloads on central processing units
“We were developing our own new cool hardware platforms, but how could we use
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(CPUs). As more and more papers get published,
the three find more funding and opportunities
into a $6.25 million Department of Defense
for their research that helps everyone.
grant to study how to use collective emergent
“The benefits of collaboration are huge if the culture enables it,” Sarkar said. “When
behavior to achieve task-oriented objectives. The grant is part of the Multidisciplinary
someone external looks at us, they don’t pay
University Research Initiatives (MURI)
attention to who is in ECE or SCS; they look at
Program that funds projects that bring
the collective impact.”
researchers together from diverse backgrounds to work on a complex problem. The MURI
Studying Collective Emergent Behavior
group, which Randall leads, also includes
For Professor Dana Randall, working with
chemical engineering, mechanical engineering,
School of Physics Professor Daniel Goldman
physics, and computational science researchers
all started with robots. Goldman’s lab was
from other universities.
studying smarticles, or very simple robots that
“A MURI lets us take a deep dive toward
can’t accomplish much on their own but can
understanding how many computationally
work as a collective.
limited components at the micro-scale can be
Their behavior is similar to swarms of
programmed to work collectively to produce
bees or colonies of ants, otherwise known
useful behavior at the macro-scale,” said
as collective emergent behavior. Emergent
Randall. “Our interdisciplinary team combines
phenomena aren’t just a concept in the animal
expertise in many fields, mimicking the
kingdom, but also theoretical algorithms,
research by forming a collaboration that is also
Randall’s area of expertise.
greater than the sum of its parts.”
Understanding how this phenomenon
Their overarching goal is to find how
works and applying it to computing has been
simplistic the computation can be for this
Randall and Goldman’s project since 2016. What
level of complexity, leading to advances in
started as developing an algorithm to ensure the
engineered systems achieving specific task-
smarticles were coordinated has now morphed
oriented goals. n
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Socially Responsible
Computing is the Future
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ative Americans have some of the lowest internet connectivity in the U.S., but Professor Ellen Zegura and other researchers are developing a new network to ensure everyone has access. LoRa is a long-range, low-power wireless network
that will bring adaptive connectivity to tribal lands. The researchers are also providing technical training to ensure the community can maintain the network even when the project ends. This is just one example of a socially responsible computing project that the School of Computer Science (SCS) is behind (see sidebar for a sample of projects). Socially responsible computing is about approaching research with fairness, accountability, and ethics in mind. “Novel technology is often not sustainable — researchers deploy something, but a few months later it breaks, and the stakeholders have to spend time and money to fix it,” said Professor Santosh Vempala. “Socially responsible computing should involve developing sustainable technology, thinking about effects of technology on the ecosystem, and making a sincere commitment to follow through.” Sometimes called Computing for Good (C4G) or sustainable computing, the term has evolved with society. SCS has always been on the forefront by centering it in curriculum at Georgia Tech. In 2008, Vempala and Zegura started the first Computing for Good class with Professor Michael Best in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs. It combined undergraduate and master’s students who wanted to work on applying computing to real-world problems. Each semester ended with a group project, like tracking data for the mayor’s after-school programs or creating campus crime heatmaps. “One of the things that emerged as a best practice was to take the most-promising projects and continue them beyond one class,” Zegura said. “We would use the semester as a prototype and carry the projects forward because delivering something that is debugged is difficult to do in a single semester.” The course was taught annually for a decade, often by Zegura or Vempala, who is now creating an online (OMSCS) version of the course. From that core idea, two models that were more skills than project-based have
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PROJECTS FOR GOOD C4G BLIS This open-source system tracks patients, specimens, and laboratory results in over a dozen African countries and hundreds of hospital laboratories. Professor Santosh Vempala developed it with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Ministries of Health of several emerged: Serve Learn Sustain (SLS) and Civic Data Science
African countries.
(CDS). SLS is a class with less emphasis on ongoing projects and more focus on the concepts of sustainable computing.
MENTAL HEALTH
Zegura developed CDS with School of Interactive Comput-
PROGRAM LIBERIA
ing and School of Literature, Media, and Communications’
In collaboration with the Carter
Associate Professor Christopher LeDantec. The National
Center, Professor Ellen Zegura
Science Foundation–funded program is a 10-week summer
helped create software and sup-
workshop when undergraduates from across the country
port for the Liberian government
learn how to use data science to tackle civic problems like
to monitor the development of
emergency vehicle traffic flow and sea level sensors.
a sustainable mental healthcare
Zegura is also working to expand socially responsible
system.
computing in all classes by working with teaching assistants to help them develop assignments that have ethics components. “A lot of students come to Georgia Tech with a good
LIFENET LifeNet is free open-source
sense of personal responsibility, like social clubs and
software that enables consum-
high school volunteering, but don’t connect that to their
er-devices like laptops, android
profession,” Zegura said. “It’s a growing recognition there
phones, and battery-powered
are a lot of places where some technical skill could be helpful
routers to instantly form an ad
that often local governments and nonprofits won’t have on
hoc WiFi network with little or
their staff.”
no infrastructure. It is designed
Students are interested. Socially responsible computing
for providing connectivity when
is also happening outside of the classroom. Bits of Good is a
communication infrastructure is
student-run organization that works with local nonprofits to
damaged or does not exist.
create web apps. Zegura now advises a team. Yet ultimately socially responsible computing goes back to the community.
TRIBAL NET For this NSF-funded project,
“It’s about solving societal problems in resource-
Zegura is deploying white space
constrained settings when training, money, education etc.
networking to extend the TDV
are limited,” Vempala said. “Standard/existing solutions
network on tribal lands.
typically don’t work or are not sustainable.”
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SCS Threads Weave the
Foundation T
of Computer Science
he College of Computing’s Threads pro-
all levels from networking systems to protocols
gram is part of what makes its under-
and related problems of media and distributed
graduate education unparalleled, and the
system applications.
School of Computer Science plays a crucial role.
Systems & architecture teaches how
Threads enable undergraduates to tailor
computer systems are organized, built using
their studies to their interests in the last two
different hardware and software layers, and
years of their degree.
programmed. Students see the full stack,
“What we have achieved through our
from processor design to the programming
threads program at Georgia Tech is to enable
interfaces, languages, and the tool chains.
students to focus on the special aspect of
Yet practical system properties are a focus,
computing they can emphasize in their course
including performance, reliability, availability,
and project work and thereby become more
power consumption, and security.
focused in terms of their career trajectory,” said Professor Shamkant Navathe, who runs the
Impact
information internetworks thread.
Learning from top research faculty lets students be at the cutting edge of each field.
SCS’s threads
“The topics are extremely fast changing;
Three of these eight threads are managed by
theoretical understandings of fairness and
SCS professors: information internetworks,
privacy was only in their infancy a decade ago,
systems & architecture, and theory.
and I’m still not aware of a good text book on
“SCS represents the foundation of the
analyzing machine learning algorithms, yet the
field,” said Professor Thomas Conte, who
theory thread has offered courses on both of
runs the systems & architecture thread. “The
these topics,” said Assistant Professor Richard
three threads that the school leads educate
Peng, who manages the theory thread. “Having
undergraduates in the core of computer
faculty who actively work on these new topics
science.”
is very helpful for bringing some of the latest
The theory thread focuses on key concepts such as discrete math, algorithms, and models
development to students.” Students finish a thread with a graduate-
of computation. It also introduces important
level understanding of an area and an ability to
topics students will encounter later in their
apply their research. The industry is noticing. In
degree, including parsing, finite state machines,
2020, the US News and World Report ranked
dynamic programming, and probability.
Tech’s undergraduate areas in the top 10:
Information internetworks prepares
cybersecurity (No. 1), software engineering (No.
students to face the challenges of the volume
2), computer systems (No. 8), data analysis/
and complexity of data and constantly
science (No. 8), and theory (No. 10).
evolving networks. Undergraduates learn
“Our threaded degrees result in the most
the latest research on new data management
current, best informed, and most thoroughly
systems, data analytics, and machine learning
prepared bachelor’s of computer science
techniques. They also understand networks at
graduates in the world,” Conte said. n
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Meet the Newest Faculty Members A major part of recent faculty growth in the School of Computer Science has been the addition of eight new assistant professors since 2018. Now assistant professors span all research areas in the school. This contributes to exciting new opportunities for cross-area research, including combinations of computer architecture, computer systems, cybersecurity, data systems, machine learning, networking, programming languages, software engineering, and theory.
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Joy Arulraj is the inaugural holder of the
Faculty Award. Since coming to Georgia Tech,
Barry Dickman Term Professorship, a two-
Chu’s research has been exploring various
year appointment. He received his Ph.D.
synergies between database and machine
from Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer
learning (ML). Specifically, he focuses on
Science in 2018, and his doctoral research on
(1) how to leverage ML for data integration
non-volatile memory database systems was
and cleaning; and (2) how to build data
recognized by the ACM SIGMOD Jim Gray
management system for practical ML.
Doctoral Dissertation Award in 2019. A principal theme in his research is the development of
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Alexandros Daglis received his Ph.D. in
systems for accelerating and simplifying data
2018 from École Polytechnique Fédérale de
analytics — making it easy for users to leverage
Lausanne (EPFL), where he studied computer
and make sense of their large and complex
architecture. He is interested in rack-scale
datasets. He received a Class of 1969 Teaching
computing and network-compute integration
Fellowship in 2019 for helping to develop a new
to target the most challenging communication-
series of courses on implementing database
intensive services in datacenter environments.
systems.
His Ph.D. thesis was awarded an EPFL thesis distinction and an ACM SIGARCH/IEEE CS
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Xu Chu obtained his Ph.D. in 2017 from the
TCCA Outstanding Dissertation Honorable
University of Waterloo. He is a recipient of the
Mention. Daglis’s research is supported by the
Microsoft Ph.D. fellowship award, the David R.
National Science Foundation and a Google
Cheriton fellowship award, and the JP Morgan
Faculty Research award.
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n
David Devecsery earned his Ph.D. in
Berkeley in 2019 and his Ph.D. from Carnegie
computer science and engineering from the
Mellon University in 2016, where he received
University of Michigan in 2018. His research
the NSERC Alexander Graham Bell Canada
focuses on software systems and program
Graduate Scholarship. His research interests
analysis, with the goal of creating systems
are in systems for distributed machine learning
and tools that enable efficient monitoring and
(ML), with a focus on soft-real-time ML inference
understanding of complex system behavior.
and heterogeneous resource management. Since joining SCS, Tumanov has published
Ashutosh Dhekne obtained his Ph.D. in
seven conference papers in a combination of
2019 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-
systems and ML venues, including European
Champaign, where he was a recipient of
Conference on Computer Systems (EuroSys)
the Richard T. Cheng Fellowship award. As
and International Conference on Learning
a networking researcher, his emphasis is
Representation (ICLR). Most recently, Tumanov
in wireless networking, mobile computing,
is exploring applications of systems for ML in a
embedded systems, and the Internet of Things.
healthcare setting, focusing on clinical tasks that
These areas have applications in RF sensing,
benefit from soft real-time ML inference.
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5G cellular networks, and cyber-physical systems. Currently, he is working on creating
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Qirun Zhang joined SCS in 2018 after
wireless devices that can simplify implementing
completing a post-doctoral fellowship in the
physical distancing at schools, hospitals,
Department of Computer Science at University
grocery stores etc. using wireless localization.
of California, Davis. He graduated from the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2013 with a
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Paul Pearce received his Ph.D. in 2018 from
Ph.D. in computer science and engineering. His
the University of California, Berkeley, where he
general research interests are in programming
won the EECS Distinguished GSI Award. His
languages and software engineering, with
dissertation was recognized by ACM SIGSAC
a focus on the development of new static
as a Doctoral Dissertation Award Runner-Up
program analysis frameworks to improve
in 2018. His interest is in network security and
software reliability. His compiler testing work
measurement on politically and economically
has led to 300+ confirmed/fixed bugs in
motivated attacks, such as censorship,
important production/research compilers (such
cybercrime, and advanced persistent threats.
as GCC/LLVM/CompCert, Scala, and Rust) and enjoyed wide public acknowledgments from the
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Alexey Tumanov joined SCS after completing a
post-doctoral fellowship at University of California,
community. His work on InterDyck-reachability received a PLDI Distinguished Paper Award. n
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Better Researchers Building
from the Start
SCS Connects Undergraduates to Research
W
hen undergraduate Amaan Marfatia was in his third year, he researched sparse matrix-vector multiplication for a processor design class. His work didn’t end when the class did, though. Thanks
to the School of Computer Science’s commitment to engaging undergraduates in the research process, he has been able to continue. “I loved the idea of doing something completely new and different since I was working with field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) and high-level synthesis compilers and this was an exciting and growing field,” he said. From open-source drones to creating a platform for the hardware acceleration of a distributed robotics system, undergraduates get to work on some of the most exciting research projects the College of Computing has to offer. This is partially thanks to Professor Hyesoon Kim’s efforts. Since she joined Georgia Tech in 2007, she has been at the forefront of coordinating research opportunities for students. “Georgia Tech gives an opportunity that undergraduates don’t get at most other universities to work on large-scale projects and be exposed to cutting-edge technology,” Kim said. Kim organizes the Undergraduate Research Opportunities in Computing (UROC) job fair for the College of Computing every semester, which helps
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COLLEGE OF COMPUTING
match undergraduates with on-campus research positions. Typically around a dozen professors from the school mentor up to three students each on UROC projects each semester. Professors Alessandro Orso, Umakishore Ramachandran, Vivek Sarkar, Santosh Vempala, and Ellen Zegura; Associate Professor Jacob Abernethy; Assistant Professors Joy Arulraj, Ashutosh Dhenkne, David Devecsery, Alexey Tumanov, and Qirun Zhang; and Senior Research Scientist Jeffrey Young have all mentored UROC projects in the recent past. Yet the benefit is for everyone. “I enjoy interacting and researching with undergraduate students and derive satisfaction in helping them advance in their careers,” Arulraj said. “Undergrads are willing to explore uncharted territories, and their enthusiasm is contagious.” Some projects are designed solely for undergraduates to learn research skills and areas, while others combine undergraduate and graduate students. Yet all projects give students insight into their classes. “Researching is trying to find what new ways to solve a problem, which after graduation is what I’ll keep in my mind when solving problems,” said fourth-year Jun Chen. Most students continue research throughout their undergraduate career and end up working on up to six projects before graduation. The skills they develop translate whether they go into industry or academia. “The skills I learned — not only just the technical skills related to the project, but the design and team-related skills — I think will help me throughout the rest of my career,” said third-year Varun Valada. “Doing research was among the most impactful experiences I have had as an undergrad.” n
HIGHLIGHTS KLAUBA This Roomba can navigate inside the Klaus Advanced Computing Building and provide directions and navigation components without GPS. VORTEX This reconfigurable GPGPU accelerator uses an extended open-source reduced instruction set computer (RISC), an open architecture. EVA This database system analyzes visual data at scale. SPITFIRE This buffer manager uses deep learning for intelligently fetching data. SQLCheck This tool identifies antipatterns in database applications. COVID FORECASTS This web-based dashboard aggregates and compares Covid-19 prediction data to determine most likely outcomes.
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Research Highlights
Innovations in everything from networks to algorithms n
N ew Congestion Problem Alleviated in Datacenter Networks Ph.D. alumnus Ahmed Saeed and Professors Mostafa Ammar and Ellen Zegura identified a new congestion problem and created a new congestion control scheme to alleviate the slow down. Annulus decreases datacenter bottleneck by up to 3.5 times and improves datacenter traffic by 56x when the connect is from the wide area network (WAN).
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F uzzing Framework Finds File System Bugs Associate Professor Taesoo Kim and his Ph.D. students Seulbae Kim, Meng Xu, Sanidhya Kashyap, Jungyeon Yoon, and Wen Xu have developed a new tool that can find one of the most challenging types of bug. Called Hydra, the framework provides building blocks for file system fuzzers to find semantic errors, helping developers save time. Using Hydra, the researchers have found 155 new bugs in Linux file systems.
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O penMP Tool Helps Heterogeneous Computing Chair Vivek Sarkar, his Ph.D. student Prithayan Barua, and Research Scientist Jun Shirako are at the forefront of making Open Multi-Processing (OpenMP) more usable for heterogeneous computing. OpenMP Sanitizer (OMPSan) uses an advanced data flow analysis to determine the correctness of target data mappings in OpenMP programs. OMPSan has already been used in hackathons for application developers trying out the latest OpenMP standard.
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M anaging Memory with Machine Learning (ML) Associate Professor Ada Gavrilovska and her Ph.D. student Thaleia Dimitra Doudali developed Kleio, a hybrid memory management system that uses ML and more common historical methods to predict which data is most frequently accessed. The tool is 80 percent more effective than prior methods and shows the potential for applying ML to systems research.
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N ew Approach to Solving Linear Systems Assistant Professor Richard Peng and Professor Santosh Vempala developed a new approach to solving linear systems. By combining symbolic computing tools with random matrix theory, sparse linear systems can be solved slightly faster than directly invoking matrix multiplication / inversion operations.
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COLLEGE OF COMPUTING
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S ocial Distancing with Smartphone Technology Assistant Professor Ashutosh Dhekne, Professor Mostafa Ammar, and Ph.D. student Yifeng Cao created a custom wearable device that helps users stay safely apart in public places during the Covid-19 pandemic. 6Fit-A-Part performs wireless localization using ultra-wideband radios to determine if two or more devices are in close proximity. Within seconds of contact, the device emits a red light and a beep to alert the wearer. It can be worn by users or placed on objects in hospitals, schools, grocery stores, warehouses, and similar locations.
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V irtual Assistant Stops Robocalls Professor Mustaque Ahamad, Adjunct Professor Roberto Perdisci, and Ph.D. student Sharbani Pandit developed a virtual assistant (VA) that screens calls to block 97 percent of scammers. The researchers did a user study with 21 people who determined they were comfortable talking to the VA. They also tested the VA on a database of 8,000 robocall recordings, in which 97.8 percent of the robocalls were correctly labeled as such.
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T oolchain Automatically Finds Database Management System Bugs Assistant Professor Joy Arulraj and Associate Professor Taesoo Kim, and Ph.D. students Jinho Jung and Hong Hu applied fuzzing techniques to find bugs in database management systems (DBMS). Their new toolchain APOLLO automatically detects, reports, and diagnoses a common DBMS bug. The researchers discovered 10 previously unknown and unique performance regressions, reduced query size by 4.2 times, and identified branches related to the root cause.
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N ew Training Data Labeling System for ML Aids Developers Assistant Professor Xu Chu, Ph.D. students Nilaksh Das and Renzhi Wu, and master’s alumni Sanya Chaba and Sakshi Gandhi have created a system that allows users to more effectively label a training dataset with higher accuracy than current methods. GOGGLES labels datasets using affinity coding, a paradigm that allows ML engineers to use various affinity functions that input two unlabeled examples and output a real-valued score.
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N ew Security Problem in Hardware Power Systems Professor Milos Prvulovic and Ph.D. alumnus Nader Sehatbakhsh discovered a new side-channel attack that can be used to extract sensitive data even if the attacker is 10 feet away or even separated by a wall. Passwords can be stolen just by monitoring unintentional electromagnetic emanations from a computer’s power management unit.
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Alumni Spotlight
What some of our recent and earlier graduates are up to
Balasubramaniyan
Chatarasi
Kwon
Kashyap
Khalidi
Narkhede
Schneck
Sehatbakhsh
Vijay Balasubramaniyan (Ph.D.)
and scientific computing applications across a
Advisor: Professor Mustaque Ahamad
wide variety of modern computer architectures,
Current Position: Chief Executive Officer, Chief
including accelerators and specialized
Technology Officer, Co-founder Pindrop
processors. His publication recognitions include a Top Pick selection and a Best Paper nomination.
Balasubramaniyan co-founded the voice
He joined IBM Research in November 2020.
security start-up Pindrop Security in 2011. Their technology can fingerprint individual
Hyoukjun Kwon (Ph.D.)
phone calls, authenticating calls to save
Advisor: Assistant Professor Tushar Krishna (ECE)
customer time and resources. Prior to Pindrop,
Current Position: Research Scientist, Facebook
Balasubramaniyan worked as a software
Reality Labs
engineer for Siemens, Google, and IBM. Kwon’s research focuses on spatial DNN Prasanth Chatarasi (Ph.D.)
accelerator designs, DNN accelerator dataflow
Advisor: Professor Vivek Sarkar
modeling/optimization, and DNN model-compiler
Current Position: Research Staff Member, IBM T.J.
mapping-HW co-optimization. His publications
Watson Research Center
have received Best Paper and Top Pick recognitions. He joined Facebook Reality Labs in
Chatarasi’s research focuses on optimizing compilers for deep learning, graph analytics, 16
COLLEGE OF COMPUTING
October 2020.
Sanidhya Kashyap (Ph.D.)
Phyllis Schneck (Ph.D.)
Advisor: Associate Professor Taesoo Kim
Advisor: Professor Karsten Schwan
Current Position: Assistant Professor, School of
Current Position: Vice President, Chief
Computer and Communication Sciences, École
Information Security Officer, Northrop Grumman
Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
Corporation
Kashyap designs scalable and robust systems
With a background in high-performance com-
software. His thesis focused on revisiting
puting for cyberthreat intelligence and cryp-
the design of synchronization primitives and
tography, Schneck has held many prominent
their impact across software stack. Through
government and corporate positions. As deputy
his work, he found more than 250 bugs in
undersecretary for cybersecurity and commu-
the Linux file systems and received two best
nications for the Department of Homeland
paper awards. He joined the EPFL faculty in
Security, she led responses to cybersecurity
November 2020.
threats against the government, corporations, and civilians. Currently, she is the VP and CISO
Yousef Khalidi (Ph.D.)
of Northrop Grumman Corporation, and previ-
Advisor: Professor Umakishore Ramachandran
ously she has led cybersecurity at Promontory
Current Position: Corporate Vice-President
and was chief technology officer for the global
Microsoft
public sector at McAfee. She is also a member of the College of Computing’s Advisory Board.
As the CVP for Azure for Operators at Microsoft, Khalidi manages strategy, partnerships, and
Nader Sehatbakhsh (Ph.D.)
technology for Azure. He is also a member of
Advisors: Professor Milos Prvulovic and Professor
the Georgia Tech Advisory Board and QCRI’s
Alenka Zajic (ECE)
Scientific Advisory Committee. He holds over 50
Current Position: Assistant Professor,
patents in distributed systems, networking, and
Department of Electrical Engineering and
computer hardware.
Computer Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles
Neha Narkhede (M.S.) Advisor: Professor Shamkant Navathe
Sehatbaksh’s research is focused on finding
Current Position: Co-founder, Chief Technology
new methods to discover, model, and mitigate
Officer Confluent
unintentional information leakage, known as side-channels, from modern computers. His
Narkhede is CTO of the streaming data
work aims to leverage side-channel signals for
technology company Confluent. She co-founded
useful purposes–like profiling, intrusion de-
it after helping to develop the software platform
tection, and establishing trust to improve the
Apache Kafka while a software engineer at
security and/or performance of resource-con-
LinkedIn. The product is now an industry
strained devices. His publications have received
standard used by everyone from Uber to
Best Paper and Featured Paper recognitions. He
Goldman Sachs.
joined the UCLA faculty in July 2020.
cse.gatech.edu scs.gatech.edu
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Faculty Jacob Abernethy Associate Professor Machine Learning Mustaque Ahamad Professor; Associate Director Educational Outreach, Institute for Information Security & Privacy Cybersecurity, Distributed Systems Mostafa Ammar Regent’s Professor Networking Joy Arulraj Assistant Professor Database systems, machine learning
Thomas Conte Associate Dean for Research, College of Computing Professor, joint with ECE Computer Architecture Alexandros Daglis Assistant Professor Computer Architecture Richard DeMillo School of Cybersecurity and Privacy Interim Chair; Professor, Charlotte B. and Roger C. Warren Chair of Computing, and Executive Director, Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U) Cybersecurity, Computer Architecture, Software Engineering
Alexandra Boldyreva Professor and Associate School Chair Cryptography, Information Security
David Devecsery Assistant Professor Systems, Programming Languages
Ketan Bhardwaj Research Scientist II Systems
Ashutosh Dhekne Assistant Professor Wireless networking, mobile computing, IoT
Xu Chu Assistant Professor Data Management, Machine Learning, Data Science
Constantine Dovrolis Professor Network Science, Data Mining, Computational Science
Pak Ho (Simon) Chung Research Scientist I Cybersecurity Russell Clark Senior Research Scientist Networking, Mobile Computing, IoT 18
COLLEGE OF COMPUTING
Greg Eisenhauer Senior Research Scientist Systems Merrick Furst Professor, Theory, AI
Zvi Galil Former John P. Imlay, Jr. Dean of Computing, Storey Chair, and Professor, Theory Ada Gavrilovska Associate Professor Systems Seymour Goodman Regents’ Professor, Joint with the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs; Co-director of the Center for International Strategy, Technology, and Policy Emerging Technologies and Conflict, Critical Infrastructures Max Grossman Senior Research Scientist Machine Learning, High Performance Computing Akihiro Hayashi Senior Research Scientist Programming Languages, Parallel Computing Hyesoon Kim Professor Computer Architecture Taesoo Kim Associate Professor and Director, GTS3 Systems Security, Operating Systems, Programming Languages, and Distributed Systems Vladimir Kolesnikov Associate Professor Cryptography, Secure Computation
Maria Konte Research Scientist I Cybersecurity
Richard Peng Assistant Professor Algorithms
Wenke Lee Professor, Co-Director of IISP, and John P. Imlay Jr. Chair in Software Systems, Network Security
Milos Prvulovic Professor and Associate School Chair Information Security, Computer Architecture
Ling Liu Professor Big Data Systems and Analytics, Cloud Computing, Deep Learning, Distributed Systems, Mobile Computing, Privacy, Trust
Calton Pu Professor and John P. Imlay, Jr. Chair in Software Systems and Databases
Shamkant Navathe Professor Data Modeling, Database Design, Data Integration, Data Mining, Data Visualization, Bioinformatics Alessandro Orso Professor and Associate Dean for Off-Campus and Special Initiatives Software Engineering, Programming Languages, and Security Santosh Pande Professor Compiler Analysis and Optimizations Sunjae Park Post-doctoral Researcher Computer Architecture Sri Raj Paul Post-doctoral Researcher High Performance Computing Paul Pearce Assistant Professor Cybersecurity
Moinuddin Qureshi Professor, Computer Architecture, Hardware Security, Quantum Computing Umakishore Ramachandran Professor Parallel and Distributed Systems Dana Randall ADVANCE Professor of Computing, Adjunct Professor of Mathematics Theory, Randomized Algorithms Vivek Sarkar Professor, School Chair, Stephen Fleming Chair in Telecommunications, High Performance Computing, Programming Languages Jun Shirako Senior Research Scientist Programming Languages Prasad Tetali Regents’ Professor, Joint with the School of Math; ACO Director, Discrete Mathematics, Theory of Computing, Probability and Geometric and Functional Analysis
Alexey Tumanov Assistant Professor Systems for ML, Resource Management, and Scheduling Santosh Vempala Frederick G. Storey Chair in Computing and Professor Theory of Algorithms Eric Vigoda Professor Randomized Algorithms Qi Xin Post-doctoral Researcher Software Enginerring Jun Xu Professor Networking, Cloud Computing, Randomized Algorithms Jeffrey Young Senior Research Scientist High-performance Algorithms and Architectures Ellen Zegura Professor, Regents and Stephen Fleming Professor in Telecommunications Networking Qirun Zhang Assistant Professor Programming Languages, Software Engineering Jisheng Zhao Senior Research Scientist Parallel Computing
scs.gatech.edu Georgia Institute of Technology 801 Atlantic Drive Atlanta, GA 30332-3000
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COLLEGE OF COMPUTING