Towards Application-oriented Big Data and ML Systems

Speaker: Dr. Hong Zhang
         Cheriton School of Computer Science
         University of Waterloo

Title:  "Towards Application-oriented Big Data and ML Systems"

Date:   Thursday, 15 June 2023

Time:   10:30am - 11:30am

Venue:  Lecture Theater G (Chow Tak Sin Lecture Theater)
        near lift 25/26, HKUST


Abstract:

The world is undergoing a data revolution. Emerging big data and ML
applications are harnessing massive volumes of data to uncover hidden
patterns, correlations, and other valuable insights, transforming
information and knowledge production. As the data volume keeps growing
explosively, these applications require high-performance big data and ML
systems to efficiently transfer, store, and process data at a massive
scale.

In this talk, I advocate an application-oriented principle to design big
data and ML systems: fully exploiting application-specific structures —
communication patterns, execution dependencies, ML model structures, etc.
— to suit application-specific performance demands. I will present how I
have developed the application-oriented principle throughout my
PhD-Postdoc-Faculty research, and how I have applied it to build systems
tailored for different big data and ML applications.


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Biography:

Hong Zhang (https://hongzhangblaze.github.io/) is currently an assistant
professor at the Cheriton School of Computer Science at the University of
Waterloo. Previously, he was a postdoctoral scholar at UC Berkeley and
obtained his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science and Engineering from HKUST.
Hong is broadly interested in computer systems and networking, with
special focuses on distributed data analytics and ML systems, data center
networking, and serverless computing. His research work appeared in
prestigious systems and networking conferences, such as SIGCOMM, NSDI, and
EuroSys. He has been awarded the Google Ph.D. Fellowship in systems and
networking.