Human-Centred Computing News

Gunduz Vehbi Demirci has been awarded with the Faculty of Science, Engineering and Medicine Post-Doctoral Research Prize 2022 for his paper jointly with Prof. Hakan Ferhatosmanoglu, "Partitioning sparse deep neural networks for scalable training and inference", published in the Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Supercomputing (ICS '21) (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3447818.3460372).

Training large-scale deep learning models is notoriously difficult. Gunduz develops a highly parallel solution to scale training of sparse deep learning models, which is combined with a novel combinatorial optimisation built on a hypergraph partitioning model, reducing parallelisation overheads and achieving computational balance among processors. An end-to-end software solution is released, enabling competing with big tech companies that have access to large infrastructures and datasets.

The work is summarised in a paper accepted by the 2021 ACM International Conference on Supercomputing, which is a premier conference in high-end systems. The research output will have a great potential to bring significant practical impact in long term as developing such comprehensive solutions takes time and is typically achieved only within large groups.

Colleagues, friends, family and former students of Professor Roland Wilson gathered last Friday to celebrate his life and to inaugurate a bench in his memory. The bench is located outside the Department, surrounded by daisies at this time of year, overlooking the lake and the fountains.

Roland's son and daughter toured the Department and visited one of the research groups which is building on Roland’s intellectual legacy under the leadership of his former PhD student Nasir Rajpoot (now a Professor in the Department). Dr Abhir Bhalerao, also a former student and close colleague of Roland, said a few words about Roland's contribution to our community and his lasting importance to us. Head of Department Professor Yulia Timofeeva cut a ribbon on the bench before we all returned to the common room to share memories and anecdotes.

Although an emotional occasion for many of us, it was very nice to be able to gather together again after the restrictions of the last two years and to remember Roland and his legacy.

We are happy to announce that Dr Dmitry Chistikov has been promoted to Associate Professor from 1 April 2022. Since joining Warwick in 2017, Dmitry has made a significant contribution to the department with his research, teaching, and administrative and supportive roles. Many congratulations to Dmitry for all his achievements!