[AI Seminar Series] Seminar by Prof. Arun Kumar, UCSD, Friday April 25, 11am, Student Success Center (SSC) 329

[Vassilis Tsotras]

Colleagues,
the next AI Seminar will be on Friday April 25, at 11am in Student 
Success Center (SSC) 329.

**Please note the time (11am) and location (SSC329) change**

This seminar is in collaboration with the Department of Computer Science 
and Engineering.

The talk will be given by Prof. Arun Kumar, Department of Computer 
Science and Engineering and the Halicioglu Data Science Institute, UCSD


TITLE:
"Reimagining AI Systems Through the Lens of DB Systems"


ABSTRACT:
The recent boom in ML/AI applications has brought into sharp focus the 
pressing need for tackling the concerns of usability, scalability, and 
manageability across the entire lifecycle of ML/AI applications. The 
ML/AI world has long studied the concerns of accuracy, automation, etc. 
from theoretical and algorithmic vantage points. But to truly 
democratize ML/AI, the vantage point of building and deploying practical 
systems is equally critical.

In this talk, I will make the case for how the ML/AI world can learn 
from another world that exemplifies successful democratization of data 
technology: database systems. I will show how prudently reimagining some 
key principles and techniques from the DB world helps tackle some of the 
above pressing concerns in ML/AI and in turn, poses new open research 
questions at this intersection. As case studies of such bridges, I will 
briefly describe two lines of work from my group: multi-query 
optimization for deep learning systems and benchmarking data preparation 
in AutoML platforms. I will then look ahead to emerging gaps that need 
such bridges in this era of LLMs and agentic AI workflows.



Bio:

Arun Kumar is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer 
Science and Engineering and the Halicioglu Data Science Institute at the 
University of California, San Diego. His primary research interests are 
in data management and systems for ML/AI. His work has been adopted by 
multiple cloud, Web, and DB systems companies, as well as by RapidFire 
AI, an AI software startup he co-founded as CTO. He is a recipient of 
three SIGMOD research paper awards, six distinguished 
reviewer/metareviewer awards from SIGMOD/VLDB, early career awards from 
NSF, IEEE TCDE, and VLDB. His first PhD graduate received the ACM SIGMOD 
Jim Gray Doctoral Dissertation Award.


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Sponsored by the RAISE at UCR Institute, the AI Seminar Series presents 
speakers working on cutting edge Foundational AI or apply AI in their 
research. The goal of these seminars is to inform the UCR community 
about current trends in AI research and promote collaborations between 
faculty in this emerging field.
These seminars are open to interested faculty and graduate students. 
Please forward this email to other colleagues or graduate students in 
your lab that may be interested. After the seminar a discussion will 
follow for questions, open problems, ideas for possible collaborations 
etc.

Sincerely,
Vassilis Tsotras
Professor, CSE Department
co-Director, RAISE at UCR Institute

Amit Roy-Chowdhury
Professor, ECE Department
co-Director, RAISE at UCR Institute
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