I direct the Artificial Intelligence and Systems Laboratory (AISys). AISys is located at 2212 Storey Innovation Center.
The AISys lab welcomes people of any race, religion, national origin, gender identity, family commitments, political affiliation, sexual orientation, and eligible age or ability.
We investigate a variety of open problems that sit at the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and computer systems. We investigate the development of novel algorithmic and theoretically principled methods that are grounded in mathematics for systems problems with the ultimate goal of building reliable and high-performance machine learning systems. On the application side, we aim to develop the next generation of autonomous systems (on-device, embedded, heterogeneous, cloud, robotics) that can perceive, reason, and react to complex real-world environments and users with high levels of precision and efficiency. Overall, we aim to conduct cutting-edge and high-impact research through full-stack approaches that encourage lab members with skills in algorithms, systems, statistics, mathematics, and software to work closely together to solve critical and practical challenges in the areas at the intersection of AI+Systems.
Core technical areas: Transfer learning, representation learning, deep learning, non-convex optimization, causal inference, reinforcement learning, concept learning, and robust optimization.
At AISys, fruitful collaborations and constant learning matter a lot to all of us. We have a culture where students frequently collaborate. We typically combine theoretical and empirical insights to build a principled and thorough understanding of key techniques in machine learning, such as deep learning, as well as the challenges we face in this context. Currently, a major theme in our lab is to develop secure, robust, reliable, and performant machine learning systems.
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Are you a current Ph.D. student at UofSC interested in working with me? The door of my office is always open and I love discussing research with students, please stop by and let’s chat about your interests.
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Are you a prospective Ph.D. student interested in working with me? I am always looking for highly-motivated students to join our AISys Lab at UofSC. Please drop me an email and share your interests (reading some of our recent publications would help a lot to get an idea of what kind of research we have been doing). If you already have published at top-tier Systems, ML, or Software Engineering conferences, the chances for you to be admitted here are high. If not, don’t worry, there would be chances for everyone, but you need to show me some evidence of high motivation. I strongly recommend to put one of the previous work that you are proud of on GitHub and share details with me. This can be in a form of an industrial project, a research project, a replication of the result of a good paper in your area, a replication of one of our recent papers, or even better a contribution to an open-source project. Apply to the CS Ph.D. program at UofSC.
- If you are a US citizen or a permanent resident of the US there are some opportunities that you may consider applying and I am happy to work with you on these to secure a grant: e.g., NSF Graduate Research Fellowships Program (GRFP), and The DOE Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) program.
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Are you a UofSC undergraduate student interested in working with me on research? Please email me your resume and a description of why you want to get involved. You have a very good chance if: you have contributed to a project in the past (e.g., via prior experience, or even some personal projects); You have a strong background in computer science and programming (and ideally good in math); You can commit 15+ hours/week.
Current Members
Jianhai is a PhD student in computer science. He is interested in transfer learning, autonomic computing, and reinforcement learning.
Shahriar is a PhD student in computer science. He is interested in multi-objective optimization of deep neural networks in embedded systems.
Peter is a PhD student in computer science. He is interested in autonomic computing and reinforcement learning.
Mohammad Ali Javidian research associate
Mohammad Ali is a postdoctorate student in computer science. He is interested in probabilistic graphical models, Bayesian networks, and transfer learning.
Blake is a honors college undergraduate student in computer science and math. He is interested in deep neural network model compression and distillation.
Stephen is a honors college undergraduate student in computer science and math. He is interested in deep neural network model compression and distillation.