Graph computing on linked or connected data is central to many applications across diverse industries such as FinTech, Pharma and Manufacturing. Data volumes are growing at a staggering rate, and graphs with hundreds of billions edges are not uncommon. Computations on such data sets include querying, analytics, pattern mining, and learning. In many use cases, it is necessary to combine these operations seamlessly to extract actionable intelligence as quickly as possible. In 2021, Pingali cofounded a start-up to meet these needs, based on high-performance graph computing technology developed by his research group at the University of Texas at Austin. Pingali will discuss this journey, and the challenges of running a startup while continuing to be active in research at a top-flight university. To welcome him on stage, Fernando Silva, Full Professor at the University of Porto, and a former Co-Director of the area of Advanced Computing in the previous phases of the Program.
Keshav Pingali has been invited to deliver the Keynote Speech for this year’s edition. Dr Pingali is a Professor and W.A.”Tex” Moncrief Chair of Computing, Department of Computer Science and Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin. He served as Area Director for Advanced Computing in Phases 1 and 2 of the UT Austin Portugal. Pingali has been recently awarded the 2024 ACM SIGPLAN Programming Languages Achievement Award, which is a lifetime achievement award and the highest given by the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Programming Languages (SIGPLAN).