ITU researcher granted twice to develop sustainable software
Associate professor at the IT University of Copenhagen Pinar Tözün has been awarded with two grants for her research in solutions for sustainable growth in data science.
Computer Science DepartmentResearchgrantssoftware
Written 18 January, 2021 11:30 by Jari Kickbusch
There is an obvious shortage of qualified data scientists in many countries due to an increased use of Artificial Intelligence, Deep machine Learning, Big Data etc. However – though not as obvious for everybody – there is also a need for "qualified" tools for the data scientists; sustainable software and hardware solutions, which can reduce the growing need for new hardware without slowing down the development of new systems. Associate professor at the IT University of Copenhagen Pinar Tözün explains:
- Let’s think of a lab of data scientists developing AI solutions. They decide to build a new hardware infrastructure using the newest generation of commodity hardware for AI to reach more accurate AI models faster and to provide more hardware resources for the increasing number of data scientists in the lab. However, they realize that this new, expensive and more energy consuming hardware infrastructure neither improves the results nor satisfies the hardware needs of all the members of the lab. In the end, the investment has been a waste of hardware resources, money and energy, says Pinar Tözün who is approaching the challenge by investigating how to use and share existing modern hardware more effectively in order to achieve a more sustainable growth the field:
- We need to tackle this in order to avoid that the computational needs of the data scientist don't lead to a big increase of new hardware consumption – which in the end would leave considerable carbon footprints without satisfying the needs of the data scientist.
The two grants
In late 2020, the Independent Research Fund Denmark awarded Pinar Tözün with two grants for her research in Resource-Aware Data Science (RAD), which is about making data science tasks, especially deep learning training, more hardware-conscious.
The first grant is under Sapere Aude programme, which aims at providing excellent younger researchers with the opportunity to develop and strengthen their research ideas as well as promoting the mobility internationally and nationally among research environments, and thereby to strengthen networks and careers. The second grant is under the new Inge Lehmann Research Programme which aims at paving the way for more women to reach the top in academia.
Pinar Tözün, who is originally from Turkey, feels honoured to receive the two grants from the Danish Government agency:
- It will enable me to establish a leading independent research group that strengthens the expertise of building resource-aware data science infrastructure in Denmark and at international level. It also facilitates collaboration with the leading international research groups in the field and other data scientists, she says.
Jari Kickbusch, phone 7218 5304, email jark@itu.dk