1 / 18

The Secret to Making an Impact: Be a Dragon and Train Your Own Dragons

Discover the secret to creating an impactful research group. Samira Khan, Assistant Professor with a Post Doctorate in CMU and PhD from UT San Antonio, shares her insights on building system support for new technologies. Join her research group, ShiftLab, committed to open-source artifacts.

virginiagarcia
Download Presentation

The Secret to Making an Impact: Be a Dragon and Train Your Own Dragons

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. THE SECRET TO MAKING AN IMPACT Samira Khan

  2. WHO AM I? • Samira Khan • Assistant Professor • samirakhan@virginia.edu • https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~smk9u/ • Post Doctorate in CMU • PhD from UT San Antonio • Worked at Intel, AMD, EPFL • Research Interest • Building system support for new technologies • Research group • ShiftLab • Committed to building open-source artifacts

  3. RESEARCH GROUP: ShiftLab The name is inspired by the term “Paradigm Shift”, popularized by Thomas Kuhn Our mission is to make fundamental change to computing

  4. End-to-End System for New Technologies NONO-DRONES SPECIALIZED CORES PERSISTENT MEMORY PROBLEM What interface to expose to applications? APPLICATION Software OS How to partition and offload task? RUNTIME How to manage memory and storage? ARCHITECTURE How to provide efficient Hardware support? Hardware CIRCUITS MEMORY WITH LOGIC Basically a whole system stack problem My group works on hardware, systems, compiler, application

  5. How to Build an Impactful Group? DISCLAIMER SECRET: BE A DRAGON MENTORING: TRAIN YOUR DRAGONS MY OWN PERILS SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

  6. DISCLAIMER: ADVICES ARE TRICKY Many different paths People tend to suggest a superset of wish list from all paths SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

  7. How to Build an Impactful Group? DISCLAIMER SECRET: BE A DRAGON MENTORING TRAIN YOUR DRAGONS MY OWN PERILS SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

  8. THE SECRET TO MAKING AN IMPACT Don’t be a sheep. You are a dragon. Be a dragon.

  9. HOW TO BE A DRAGON Do not follow, find your own path Be bold, be courageous, have a vision for your work “Once you get your courage up and believe that you can do important problems, then you can. If you think you can't, almost surely you are not going to.” Incredible opportunity to make an impact Complete freedom to work on anything you want. Why waste it on smaller things? “Shoot for the moon and even if you miss you will land among the stars!”

  10. WHAT ARE THE DIFFICULTIES? Want to change the world, But first need to train students

  11. How to Build an Impactful Group? DISCLAIMER SECRET: BE A DRAGON MENTORING: TRAIN YOUR DRAGONS MY OWN PERILS SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

  12. BE A DRAGON: IMPORTANCE OF MENTORING Train your own dragons!!! The best leaders only listen and ask questions They do not impose They do not rule Train students to find their own path Students need ownership to flourish

  13. BE A DRAGON: IMPORTANCE OF MENTORING Facilitate an environment where students lead Active group discussion and brainstorming Train students to avoid being a sound absorber Avoid people who merely say “Yes, yes, yes” Students need to learn to defend and push back Critical mass in action, stimulate students right back “Yes, that reminds me of so and so” “Have you thought about that or this?”

  14. How to Build an Impactful Group? DISCLAIMER SECRET: BE A DRAGON MENTORING: TRAIN YOUR DRAGONS MY OWN PERILS SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

  15. MY OWN PERILS: SELECTING STUDENTS Goal: Find students who want to be dragons Only qualities that I look for Motivated Hard working Background/research experience does not matter that much Students pick up skills along the way if they are motivated and hard working

  16. MY OWN PERILS: PROVE YOURSELF Things that worked for others may not work for me Each person is different, circumstance is different Example: Junior vs. established professor Had written 10+ successful proposals during my postdoc Proposals under my name was getting “Not Competitive” – which means do not work on it Resulted in top conference papers in ASPLOS, ISCA, HPCA Know your vision and push for it

  17. SUMMARY The secret to creating an impactful group BE A DRAGON AND TRAIN YOUR OWN DRAGONS

  18. THE SECRET TO MAKING AN IMPACT Samira Khan

More Related