“Algorithms Research at Maryland”

Location: LTS Auditorium, 8080 Greenmead Drive

Speaker:
Samir Khuller
Professor and Elizabeth Iribe Chair, UMD Computer Science

Abstract:
The first half of this talk will be an overview of algorithms research at Maryland and the second half will focus on my recent research having to do with scheduling to minimize energy.

Traditional scheduling algorithms, especially those involving job scheduling on parallel machines, make the assumption that the machines are always available and try to schedule jobs to minimize specific job-related metrics. Since modern data centers consume massive amounts of energy, we consider job scheduling problems that take energy consumption into account, turning machines off, especially during periods of low demand. The ensuing problems relate very closely to classical covering problems, such as capacitated set cover, and we discuss several recent results in this regard.

This is a survey talk based on several papers with Jessica Chang, Koyel Mukherjee and Frederic Koehler. No prior background in algorithms beyond undergraduate algorithms is necessary.

Bio:
Samir Khuller is a professor and the Elizabeth Iribe Chair in the UMD Department of Computer Science with an appointment in UMD’s Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS).

His research interests are in graph algorithms, discrete optimization, and computational geometry.

Khuller has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the National Science Foundation’s Career Development Award, the Dean’s Teaching Excellence Award and a CTE-Lilly Teaching Fellowship. He received the University of Maryland’s Distinguished Scholar Teacher Award in 2007, as well as a Google Research Award.

Khuller received his M.S. and doctorate from Cornell University. He spent two years as a research associate in UMIACS, before joining the Department of Computer Science in 1992.