Mission          Apply           Committee          Past uArch

Thank You!!!

• Thanks so much to all the volunteers who made uArch possible -- our amazing speakers, panelists, and mentors!  We are blown away by the support (and enthusiasm!) from the community to help foster the next generations of PhD students.

• In-person Mentors:  Swamit Tannu, Jason Lowe-Power, George Tzimpragos, Matt Sinclair, Mohammad Alian, Onur Mutlu, Hung-Wei Taeng, Jae W. Lee, Adrian Sampson, Christopher Batten, Vijay Nagarajan, Magnus Jahre, Akshitha Sriraman, Jonathan Balkind, Hyesoon Kim, Sandhya Dwarkadas, Timothy M. Pinkston, Scott Beamer, Di Wu, Sabrina Neuman, Hung-Wei Tseng, George Tzimpragos, Jonathan Balkind

• Virtual Mentors: Jishen Zhao, Elaheh Sadredini, Rajeev Balasubramonian, Satish Narayanasamy, Mark Jeffrey, Iris Bahar, Daniel Wong, Rakesh Kumar, Nandita Vijaykumar, Hyeran Jeon, Joshua San Miguel, Xun (Steve) Jian, Di Wu, Hung-Wei Tseng, Akshitha Sriraman, George Tzimpragos, Jonathan Balkind, Scott Beamer

Program

The workshop program for Sunday June 18, 2023 is as follows (all times are in EDT):

7:30 am  - 9:00 am Breakfast

9:00 am  - 9:15 am Welcome

9:15 am - 10:15 am Panel: Life in Grad School

10:15 am - 11:10 am Panel: Life after Grad School

11:10 am - 11:30 am Break

11:30 am - 12:30 pm Keynote 1

Bio: Parthasarathy (Partha) Ranganathan is currently a VP, technical Fellow at Google where he is the area technical lead for hardware and datacenters, designing systems at scale. Prior to this, he was a HP Fellow and Chief Technologist at Hewlett Packard Labs where he led their research on systems and data centers.  Partha has worked on several interdisciplinary systems projects with broad impact on both academia and industry, including widely-used innovations in energy-aware user interfaces, heterogeneous multi-cores, power-efficient servers, accelerators, and disaggregated and data-centric data centers. He has published extensively (including being the co-author on the popular "Datacenter as a Computer" textbook), is a co-inventor on more than 100 patents, and has been recognized with numerous awards. He has been named a top-15 enterprise technology rock star by Business Insider, one of the top 35 young innovators in the world by MIT Tech Review, and is a recipient of the ACM SIGARCH Maurice Wilkes award, Rice University's Outstanding Young Engineering Alumni award, and the IIT Madras distinguished alumni award. He is also a Fellow of the IEEE and ACM, and is currently on the board of directors for OpenCompute.

12:30 pm  - 2:00 pm Lunch

2:00 pm - 2:45 pm Keynote 2

Bio: Reetu Das is an Associate Professor at the University of Michigan. Prior to this, she was a research scientist at Intel Labs, and the researcher-in-residence for the Center for Future Architectures Research. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from Pennsylvania State University, University Park. Some of her recent projects include in-memory architectures, custom computing for precision health and AI, fine-grain heterogeneous core architectures for mobile systems, and low-power scalable interconnects for kilo-core processors. She has authored over 75 papers, filed 7 patents, served on over 40 technical program committees, and served as program co-chair for a flagship computer architecture conference, MICRO-52. She has received two IEEE Top Picks awards, an NSF CAREER award, CRA-W’s Borg Early Career Award, Intel Outstanding Researcher Award, and Sloan Foundation Fellowship. Prof. Das has been inducted into IEEE/ACM MICRO and ISCA Hall of Fame.

2:45 pm - 3:40 pm Panel: Applying to Grad School

3:40 pm - 4:00 pm Break

4:00 pm - 5:45 pm Office Hours

Mechanics

The central theme of this workshop is to attract students who are interested in graduate school in computer architecture. To this end, uArch will likely include:

• The Route to Graduate School: Students will learn how to apply to graduate school, how to find their research interests, how to talk with a potential advisor, etc.

• Life at Graduate School: The workshop will include keynote talks from academic and industry leaders about how to thrive at graduate school.

• Computer Architecture Research Landscape: The workshop will include technical sessions covering history, current state-of-the-art research and challenging problems that are left unsolved.

• Meet an "Architect in Process": As part of the workshop, attendees will be paired with students who are pursuing a Ph.D. degree in computer architecture to hear their first-hand experience about research and life at graduate school and build a mentor-mentee relationship.

• Ask an Architect: The workshop will include a panel of established architects in the industry and academia from whom students can seek career advice.

Applications

This workshop targets undergrads, who typically do not have advisors or departmental support to attend conferences. Early Master's students are also eligible to apply, as well as recent graduates who are currently in industry but are planning to apply to graduate school.

To encourage expanded reach and greater participation by students regardless of financial means, we are enabling professors and universities to cover part of the travel and expenditure through matching travel grants. If no such partial funding is available, students are still eligible to apply for the full grant (limit of $1800), albeit it will be more selective.

Eligibility: uArch welcomes undergrads who may be interested in graduate studies in Computer Architecture, but who do not have an extensive network or guidance to make an informed decision on the topic. Early Master's students are also eligible to apply, as well as recent graduates who are currently in industry but are considering applying to graduate school

Matching Travel Grant: uArch provides a matching grant that covers conference hotel and registration fees for the student with the aim that a professor or the school covers the remaining costs. For local attendees who do not require air travel, we expect this grant to cover most of the costs. The process is detailed here.

Selection Criteria: Applicants will be reviewed by a panel, with factors influencing the decision including: 

• Year in school: Sophomores and Juniors have higher priority, but all applicants, including ones who are considering re-entering graduate school from industry, are encouraged to apply. 

• Statement of interest: Applicants who can benefit from guidance about graduate school, networking contacts, and information about Computer Architecture are prioritized. 

• Diversity and inclusion: Membership in underrepresented groups in computer architecture (e.g., gender, race, ability, first in family to attend college, interdisciplinary educational background, LGBTQ status).

Requirements for Grant Recipients: All grant recipients must attend the uArch workshop and ISCA in person.

We will fund as many students as possible. Note that funding may not be available for students from U.S.-sanctioned countries, but all students are welcome to attend.

Application Form (for Students): To apply to participate in the workshop, fill out the form here.

Matching Travel Grant Form (for Professors/Institutions): To sponsor a student with a matching travel grant, fill out the form here.

Note for women undergraduate and graduate students for additional funding: ACM-W provides support for women undergraduate and graduate students in Computer Science and related programs to attend research conferences. The application deadline is April 15 for conferences taking place in June—July 2023. For more information and to apply visit here.

Organizing Committee

Martha Barker, Columbia University/AMD
Vidushi Dadu, Google

Deeksha Dangwal, Meta
Aamer Jaleel, Nvidia Research
Divya Mahajan, Microsoft
Abdulrahman Mahmoud, Harvard University
Srilatha (Bobbie) Manne, AMD
Tony Nowatzki, University of California, Los Angeles
Lillian Pentecost, Amherst College
Joshua San Miguel, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Irene Wang, University of British Columbia