01
Mar
Computer Science Distinguished Lecture 2024 delivered by Dr Tim Harris (U&G94, Past Fellow)
This year’s talk is delivered by alumnus Dr Tim Harris and is entitled Making things fast, from pentominoes to AI.
Dr Harris works at Microsoft, focused on performance optimization for inference workloads including the Azure OpenAI Service and the use of the ONNX runtime system for large language models. More generally, his research interests span the stack encompassing distributed systems, language runtime systems, and operating systems, and with a particular emphasis on scalability and performance.
He is an Affiliated Lecturer at the University of Cambridge Computer Lab where he currently teaches the distributed systems course and part of multicore semantics and programming.
Prior to Microsoft he was with AWS and worked on large-scale storage performance and data analytics with Amazon S3. Further back, he led the Oracle Labs group in Cambridge, UK working on runtime systems for in-memory graph analytics, and the confluence of work on “big data” and ideas from high-performance computing. Before joining Oracle he had a previous stint with Microsoft (2004–2012), working on transactional memory and on the Barrelfish research operating system. He was on the faculty of the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory (2000–2004) where he led the department’s research on concurrent data structures and contributed to the Xen virtual machine monitor project.
Alumni are invited to join current CompSci students and Fellows at this talk.
Following the talk alumni are invited to a drinks reception and may use their High Table dining rights to enjoy a meal in College.
