The mission of Performance Optimizations for LARge-scale cyberInfrastructure and Systems (Polaris) Laboratory is to develop high-performance and scalable middleware for large-scale data management, storage, and analytics on cutting-edge computing systems, which will advance multiple domains including scientific simulations, big data analytics, artificial intelligence, and quantum computing. Driven by the actual needs from various science applications, research in the Polaris lab aims to address the perform issues raised by the big data challenges in real-world applications via deep collaborations with computational scientists. The research products are widely used in multiple DOE laboratories and will be validated on current and next-generation supercomputers including Summit, Aurora, and Frontier.

Xin Liang

Dr. Xin Liang is a tenure-track assistant professor with the Department of Computer Science at University of Kentucky (UKY). He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from University of California, Riverside in 2019. Prior to that, he received his B.S. in Computer Science from Peking University in 2014, with a minor in Math and Applied Math. Prior to joining UKY, he worked as an assistant professor at Missouri University of Science and Technology and a Computer/Data Scientist in the Workflow Systems Group at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). Contact him at xliang@uky.edu.

Pu Jiao

Mr. Pu Jiao earned a master’s degree from the Institute of Engineering Mechanics of China Earthquake Administration in 2019 and a bachelor’s degree from Xi’an Jiaotong University in 2016. Pu joined Polaris Lab in Spring 2022, and he is currently working on improving the compression quality of scientific lossy data compressors. His research interest includes high-performance computing and data mining. Contact him at pujiao@uky.edu.

Mingze Xia

Mr. Mingze Xia joined Polaris Lab in Fall 2022. He received his B.Math(Hons) in Statistics from the University of Waterloo in 2017 and Master’s degree in Data Science from The University of Melbourne in 2019. Previously, he worked at Duke Kunshan University as an Research Fellow and Huawei from 2020 to 2022 as a Data Scientist. His research interests focus on lossy compression, deep learning, and data mining. Contact him at mingze.xia@uky.edu.

Xuan Wu

Ms. Xuan Wu received her bachelor’s degree in Statistics from Wuhan University in 2022. Xuan joined Polaris lab in Fall 2023. Previously, she worked on developing computational algorithms in the field of statistical genetics. Her research interests include high-performance computing and scientific data compression. Contact her at xuan.wu@uky.edu.