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Sep 23, 2026 Keynote, Fifty Years at the Electronic Visualization Laboratory, at NASA’s 2026 Earth Science Technology Interchange Meeting (ESTIM2026) in Chicago, IL, reflecting on five decades of visualization, virtual reality, advanced computing, and interdisciplinary research at UIC’s Electronic Visualization Laboratory.
Sep 22, 2026 UIC Students Present Research at IEEE CLUSTER 2026
Sep 17, 2026 Leading the Argonne OutLoud discussion The Next Frontier: How AI Is Reshaping Discovery at Argonne, with Ilke Arslan, Katrin Heitmann, and Ravi Madduri, on how artificial intelligence is changing scientific discovery at Argonne.
Sep 09, 2026 Talk, Computing at Argonne National Laboratory: Past, Present, and Future, at the 92nd HPC User Forum, hosted at Argonne National Laboratory in Lemont, IL.
Aug 24, 2026 Teaching Edge Computing Systems (CS494) for the second time, starting Fall 2026, a repeat of the Spring 2026 offering with a number of improvements.
Jul 21, 2026 Gave the ALCF facility update, Current and Future HPC Systems: Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, in the Genesis Infrastructure, Current and Future HPC Systems plenary at the 2026 DOE ASCR Computer Science PI Meeting in Rockville, MD, alongside facility updates from NERSC, OLCF, ESnet, and HPDF.
Jul 20, 2026 Participated in the 2026 Sage Summer Hackathon at UIC’s Electronic Visualization Laboratory, July 19–28, including the hack-a-thon, PI meeting, and advisory meeting.
Jul 14, 2026 At HPDC 2026: gave a Kizashi Talk, The Next User Never Sleeps (chaired by Devesh Tiwari); chaired the Scientific Applications at Scale session; and was a panelist on Barney Maccabe’s panel, Data Centers: Information, Misinformation, and the Future of Large-Scale Computing.
Jun 09, 2026 Served as a panelist on Future of HPC Systems and Infrastructure at the Bill Gropp Workshop, chaired by Daniel S. Katz, alongside Larry Kaplan, Bill Kramer, and Irene Qualters.
Jun 02, 2026 Presented From Batch to Service at the TPC26 BoF AI Frameworks for Multimodal Data Access and Use, organized by Manish Parashar and Ilkay Altintas.
May 26, 2026 UIC Students Present Research at JSSPP 2026
May 07, 2026 UIC Students Highlight Research at GCASR 2026
Apr 29, 2026 Delivered the keynote From Array of Things to Sage Grande: A Decade of Intelligent Edge Computing for Science at Cities in Motion: Transportation Data Innovation Challenge, a joint UIC and University of Toronto workshop.
Dec 17, 2025 Congratulations to Kunting Qi on Best Paper Award at IEEE HiPC 2025
Dec 10, 2025 Argonne PI for the American Science Cloud, bringing $4M in new funding to Argonne as part of the multilab effort led by Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The American Science Cloud is a multilaboratory effort to host and distribute AI models and scientific data across DOE’s National Labs, industry partners, and the research community in support of the Genesis Mission.
Nov 16, 2025 Invited talk, A Director’s Perspective on Digital Twin Use at Leadership Facilities, at the 3rd Digital Twins Workshop for High-Performance Computing.
Oct 21, 2025 Congratulations to my PhD student Carla Floricel on successfully defending her dissertation, Patient Cohort Visual Analytics for Post-Treatment Care.
Sep 19, 2025 Our paper Intuitive Computational Steering Using Ascent and Trame (Thomas Marrinan, Andres Sewell, Victor Mateevitsi, Steve Petruzza, Jifu Tan, Dimitrios Fytanidis, and Michael E. Papka) was selected as a Best Paper Finalist at eScience 2025.
Sep 18, 2025 Participated in the eScience 2025 panel Future of AI in eScience with Daniel S. Katz (NCSA and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign), Carl Kesselman (University of Southern California), Tanu Malik (University of Missouri) and Kyle Chard (moderator, University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory).
Sep 18, 2025 UIC Students Highlight Research at eScience 2025
Aug 20, 2025 Participated in the Monterey Data Conference panel Future HPC Systems and Challenges in the Changing Landscape with Jim Lujan (LANL), Hai Ah Nam (LBNL/NERSC), and Matt Sieger (ORNL).
Jul 29, 2025 🏆 Part of the team recognized with the Best Visualization Award at the 2025 PEARC Conference for the paper, Real-time Scientific Visualization and Interactive Steering for High-Performance Computing Simulations.
Jul 20, 2025 Keynote, Rethinking Specialization and Thinking about the Evolution of HPC Facilities, at FlexScience25.
Jul 11, 2025 Co-PI on new NSF project with Professor Zhiling Lan titled SaTC: Core: Small: Towards Secure and Reliable HPC Systems via Intelligent Vulnerability Detection, focused on improving security and resilience in high-performance computing through AI-driven analysis.
Jul 06, 2025 Part of the newly funded NSF project, Sage Grande: An Open Artificial Intelligence Testbed for Edge Computing and Intelligent Sensing. The initiative aims to advance AI research by developing a national-scale testbed that integrates edge computing with intelligent sensing technologies, facilitating real-time data analysis and decision-making in diverse environments.
Mar 20, 2025 Named an Argonne Distinguished Fellow, a recognition given to laboratory researchers for sustained scientific excellence and leadership.
Feb 11, 2025 University of Chicago highlights the power of Aurora supercomputer.
Jan 27, 2025 Department of Energy’s Aurora Supercomputer goes into production at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility, let the science begin!
Dec 10, 2024 🏆 Awarded the IEEE Chicago Section Distinguished Senior Research and Development Award.
Nov 29, 2024 Teaching Introduction to High Performance Computing (CS455) and Creative Coding (CS427) with Daria Tsoupikova, Spring 2025.
Nov 17, 2024 🏆 Best Paper – Bridging Gaps in Simulation Analysis through a General Purpose, Bidirectional Steering Interface with Ascent, 2024 IEEE/ACM International Workshop on In Situ Infrastructures for Enabling Extreme-Scale Analysis and Visualization (ISAV)
Nov 13, 2024 Interviewed for a WGN story on Aurora by Mike Lowe, highlighting Aurora and the Advanced Photon Source (APS) at Argonne National Laboratory.
Oct 25, 2024 🏆 Received the 2024 Distinguished Alumni Award from Northern Illinois University’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
Oct 24, 2024 Undergraduate students Abdullah Ali, Ricky Massa, and Aaqel Shaik showcased their work on two innovative Apple Vision Pro applications during the LAS Faculty Research Symposium – AI IMPACT.
Oct 24, 2024 Presented an Ideas Talk: Environmental Impact of Large Language Models at the LAS Faculty Research Symposium – AI IMPACT.
Oct 23, 2024 Athena Angara, Hal Brynteson, Fatima Jassim, and Hemalatha Ningappa Kondakundi; participated in a NVIDIA Omniverse livestream (YouTube), highlighting our digital twin efforts.
Oct 12, 2024 Presented Keynote; From Data to Discovery: Integration of HPC and Experimental Science, at the IEEE Chicago 130th Annual Fair and Expo, highlighting the role of high-performance computing in driving scientific breakthroughs.
Sep 26, 2024 Appointed as the fifth Director of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory at the University of Illinois Chicago.
Sep 20, 2024 The UIC College of Engineering has honored me as an inaugural Warren S. McCulloch Professorship; along with fellow Computer Science Professor Barbara Di Eugenio.
Sep 20, 2024 Featured on the @HPCpodcast: Aurora Exascale Update and Other HPC-AI Topics with Argonne’s Rick Stevens.
Sep 13, 2024 Presented the keynote talk: Intersection of AI and HPC at the UIC College of Engineering’s AI Ecosystem Symposium.
Sep 06, 2024 Co-PI on new NSF funding with Professor Zhiling Lan on AI-Guided Resource Management for Advanced Cyberinfrastructure.
Sep 03, 2024 Interview with Innovation News Network on Aurora achieving exascale status.
Sep 01, 2024 Talk, Supercomputing to Change the Course of American Science, at NIU’s STEM Café, October 9, 2024.
Aug 05, 2024 Appointed co-Chair of UIC’s CS+DES program, representing Computer Science alongside Daria Tsoupikova representing Design.
Jul 27, 2024 Seven new students join the group.
Jul 23, 2024 Featured speaker at TEDxChicago 2024, Lighting the Way.
Jun 28, 2024 Rolling Stones bassist Darryl Jones visits Argonne National Laboratory.
May 13, 2024 Aurora; the Department of Energy’s newest exascale system at the Argonne Leadership Computing Facility is announced as the fastest AI supercomputer in the world!
May 01, 2024 MIT PRESENCE: Virtual and Augmented Reality publishes Electronic Visualization Laboratory's 50th Anniversary Retrospective Look to the Future, Build on the Past, a look at EVL over the years and the many things the laboratory has accomplished.
Apr 30, 2024 SPEAR lab and EVL are well represented at GCASR Workshop 2024:
  • A Systematic Approach to Advance the Understanding of Digital Twin Technologies, Hal Brynteson, Athena Angara, Fatima Jassim, Victor Mateevitsi, Silvio Rizzi, Nicola Ferrier, Michael E. Papka
  • Digital Twin for Smart Resource Management in HPC, Yash Kurkure, Micheal E. Papka, Zhilling Lan
  • More for Less: The Integration of Capability and Capacity Computing, Zhong Zheng, Zhiling Lan, Michael E. Papka
  • Performance and Power Evaluation of Multi-GPU NCCL Communication with Unified Memory, Riccardo Strina, Ian Di Dio Lavore, Marco Domenico Santambrogio, Michael E. Papka, Zhiling Lan
Apr 03, 2024 Invited back to regive my SparkTalk - 1,000,000,000,000,000,000: Possibility of a Quintillion Calculations from earlier in the semester.
Mar 08, 2024 Lisa Dent invited me speak on WGN Radio about Argonne and Aurora.
Mar 07, 2024 Talked about Aurora on Chicago ABC 7 News with Mark Rivera.
Mar 06, 2024 Greater Chicago Area Systems Research Workshop (GCASR) 2024 at UIC, May 2, 2024.
Feb 19, 2024 Hanging out in Australia with the Trillion Parameter Consortium team learning about Large Language Models for Science!
Feb 01, 2024 Invited to give SparkTalk; a 3-minute talk on something that I’m interested in or research that I’m doing.
Jan 17, 2024 Named a Distinguished Member of the Association for Computing Machinery. This distinction underscores the value of the enduring partnerships and collaborations I’ve been privileged to have throughout my career.
Jan 16, 2024 Teaching Introduction to High Performance Computing(CS494) in Spring 2024.
Dec 05, 2023 Discussed with Ross Kaminsky of KOA Radio (Colorado) the Department of Energy’s newest supercomputer Aurora deployed at Argonne National Laboratory. (Interview)
Nov 28, 2023 🏆 Member of Argonne Commercialization Excellence Award team.
Nov 16, 2023 Argonne’s Aurora Supercomputer debuts at #2 on the Top500 list at SC’23.
Nov 13, 2023 Part of best paper at 2023 IEEE/ACM International Workshop on In Situ Infrastructures for Enabling Extreme-Scale Analysis and Visualization winning team.
Nov 10, 2023 Along with Rick Stevens recorded podcast for @HPCpodcast Aurora, the TOP500, a National Research Infrastructure and Other HPC Thoughts.
Nov 10, 2023 University of Illinois Chicago is a founding partner in the Trillion Parameter Consortium, a global consortium of scientists from federal laboratories, research institutes, academia, and industry has formed to address the challenges of building large-scale artificial intelligence (AI) systems and advancing trustworthy and reliable AI for scientific discovery.
Oct 23, 2023 Part of 2023 IEEE SciVis Contest winning team with EVL alumnus and St. Thomas University students.
Oct 01, 2023 Chicagoland universities partner with Intel on OneAPI Workshop.
Sep 19, 2023 🏆 Awarded 2023 Argonne Board of Governors’ Distinguished Performance Award.
Aug 25, 2023 Awarded new NSF grant to design and build a new national-scale testbed that supports computer scientists developing and exploring novel distributed-AI computing systems.
Aug 21, 2023 Zhiling Lan and Sidharth Kumar join the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois Chicago - growing the High Performance Computing group!
Jul 05, 2023 Congratulations to Boyang Li, on the completion of his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Illinois Institute of Technology, co-advised with Zhiling Lan.
Jun 23, 2023 Congratulations to Bharat Kale, Northern Illinois University’s first Ph.D. in Computer Science, co-advised with Maoyuan Sun.
May 06, 2023 Our STAR paper The State of the Art in Visualizing Dynamic Multivariate Networks by Bharat Kale, Maoyuan Sun, and Michael E. Papka has been accepted to EuroVis2023.
Apr 24, 2023 Invited talk at 10th Greater Chicago Area System Research Workshop (GCASR 2023).
Apr 19, 2023 🏆 Our paper ChemoGraph: Interactive Visual Exploration of the Chemical Space by Bharat Kale, Austin Clyde, Maoyuan Sun, Arvind Ramanathan, Rick Stevens, and Michael E. Papka has been accepted to EuroVis2023 and won Honorable Mention in Best Paper Category.
Apr 13, 2023 Story on the integration of APS and ALCF; Bright lights, big data: how Argonne is bringing supercomputing and X-rays together for scientific breakthroughs, discusses how experimental science and high performance computing are joining forces.
Feb 23, 2023 Article Leveraging National Laboratories to increase Black representation in STEM: recommendations within the Department of Energy, published in the International Journal of STEM Education.
Feb 08, 2023 IEEE Computing in Science and Engineering article Hands-On Computer Science: The Array of Things Experimental Urban Instrument, reprinted in the February issue of Computing Edge.
Feb 03, 2023 Argonne’s next supercomputer Aurora is featured in Chicago Magazine - The Computer That Will Change Everything.
Jan 15, 2023 Member of team awarded $2.6M grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.
Jan 09, 2023 Recent Northern Illinois University graduate and long-time ddiLab research assistant Hal Brynteson joins UIC as M.S. student and research assistant at EVL.
Jan 09, 2023 Teaching a new course, Introduction to High Performance Computing (CS494), Spring 2023.
Nov 29, 2022 🏆 Part of winning team for the 2022 Gordon Bell Special Prize - Using Language Models to Track Virus Variants.
Oct 06, 2022 🏆 Awarded 2022 Argonne Board of Governors’ Pinnacle of Education Award.
Aug 25, 2022 Awarded new NSF grant to develop courselets for data systems.
Aug 16, 2022 Join University of Illinois Chicago department of Computer Science and the Electronic Visualization Laboratory.
May 24, 2022 Attends NSF funded Sage All-hands Meeting.
Feb 11, 2022 Part of STEAM talk series on WNIJ.