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 (UK). 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 UK, 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.

Jiannan Tian

Dr. Jiannan Tian Received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Engineering (Intelligent Systems Engineering, Computer Engineering Track) from Indiana University Bloomington in 2024. His research interests include High-Performance Computing, Heterogeneous Computing, Big-Data Analytics, and Accelerated Scientific Compression. During his Ph.D. study, he works as a student intern at Argonne National Laboratory (ANL). He is also the leading developer of open-source pSZ/cuSZ, a GPU-accelerated error-bounded lossy compressor for scientific data. Contact him at jiannan.tian@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.

Boyi Zhang

Mr. Boyi Zhang joined the Polaris Lab in Fall 2024. He received his bachelor's degree in Software Engineering from Dalian University of Technology in 2022 and Master degree in Computer Science from the University of California, Riverside in 2024. Previously, he worked on fault-tolerance BLAS algorithms. His research interests include but not limited to lossy compression, GPU computing and fault tolerance algorithms. Contact him at boyi.zhang@uky.edu.

Wenbo Li

Mr. Wenbo Li received his bachelor’s degree in Bioinformatics from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2024. Wenbo joined Polaris lab in Fall 2024. Previously, he worked on proteomics and protein language models for the prediction of post-translation modifications. His research interests include high-performance computing, GPU computing, and scientific data compression. Contact him at wenbo.li@uky.edu.