ADA Center hosts fall symposium

The Applications Driving Architectures (ADA) Research Center hosted their 2021 Fall Symposium on November 10-12 . The event brought together 70 in-person participants from across the ADA-participating institutions, with 40 virtual attendees. As the first event with in-person participation since the Fall of 2019, faculty members, post-doctoral fellows, and graduate students were elated to be back together to collectively brainstorm the future of computing for the 2030 decade. 

During the three days of the symposium, the participants worked together to identify promising research directions in data privacy, novel silicon physical platforms, computing sustainability, and addressing the ‘data flood’, due to the growing rate of new data production facing limited data-processing capabilities. They also took part in a tutorial on an open-source augmented reality system modeler developed by Prof. Adve at UIUC,  and an embedded workshop on upcoming computing technologies, spanning carbon nano-tubes, quantum computing, silicon photonics and 3D integration. A highlight of the event was the “students’ job-talks session,” a series of presentations by graduating Ph.D. students pursuing industry or faculty positions, where students could gather feedback from faculty and informally introduce themselves to the institutions represented at the symposium.

For many participants, this was the very first in-person event and the very first travel opportunity since the onset of the pandemic. Participants enthusiastically reported that they plan to return for the next symposium.

The ADA Research Center is funded through a government-industry consortium. It pursues research in the design of computing systems for the 2030 decade by leveraging the collective efforts of 21 faculty members and 130 graduate students from the University of Michigan, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cornell University, New York University, Princeton University, Duke University, Georgia Institute of Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Purdue University, and University of Washington.