Yuzhen Xie, PhD Research Associate Ontario Research Centre for Computer Algebra (ORCCA) Computer Science Department University of Western Ontario London ON, Canada

Research

My primary interest is high-performance scientific computing. In particular, I want to make contributions to the adaptation and transformation of the fundamental algorithms in Computer Algebra and Combinatorics to the emerging parallel architectures such as multicores and GPUs. Below is a selected list of my recent joint-work.

• Parallel Generation of Transversal Hypergraphs: talk slides and full paper. Transversal hypergraph generation has numerous applications in data mining, artificial intelligence, cryptography, computational biology, mobile communication systems, etc. Our parallel software can solve some well-known large hypergraphs (from the applications of data mining, dual matching and threshold studies) hundreds to thousands times faster than the world best-known sequential programs on a 32-core machine.


• Parallel Univariate Real Root Isolation on Multicores: talk slides and full paper. Our program has made it possible to solve a simplified version of the Hilbert's 16th problem for the cubic case on a 32-core machine.


• Balanced Dense Polynomial Multiplication on Multi-cores: poster (ISSAC2009 Best Poster Award) and full paper. This work results in a library, namely Basic Polynomial Algebra Subprograms (BPAS in short, akin to BLAS for Linear Algebra) for fast dense polynomial arithmetic over finite fields based on FFT techniques on multicores. To our knowledge, it is the first library serving for this purpose.


• High-performance Parallel and Stream Processing of X-ray Microdiffraction Data on Multicores, talk slides, paper 1 and paper 2. It will contribute to the near real-time processing of large data from synchrotron experiments.

My publications are listed here.

Academic Background

• NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow (09/2008-12/2009),
  Supercomputing Technologies (SuperTech) Group,
  Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL),
  Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)


• NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow (01-08/2008),
  Symbolic Computation Group,
  David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science,
  University of Waterloo
  


• Ph.D. in Computer Science (major in Computer Algebra) (2007),
  Computer Science Department, UWO


• M.Sc. in Computer Science (2002), UWO
  MESc in Civil & Environmental Engineering (1999), UWO


• B.E.Sc. in Systems Engineering,
  Civil & Environmental Engineering Department,
  Tsinghua University

My honors are listed here.

Teaching                                                                         Back to Top

• Instructor for CS2210b at UWO: Data Structures and Algorithms (Winter 2011)
• MIT's Graduate Student Teaching Certificate, May, 2010.
• Participated in the Better Teaching @ MIT Workshop, 2009.
• Teaching Assistant for courses (2000-date, UWO):
  UNIX System and C Programing, Operating Systems, Database Management, Discrete Math, Linear Algebra, Calculus
• Instructor for course labs (1998, 1999, 2002, UWO):
  AutoCAD, Dynamics, Programing in Java

Activities                                                                         Back to Top

• Co-organizer for the session of "High-performance Computing: from Models of Computation to Applications" in AMMCS2011, Waterloo ON, July 2011.
• Program Committee Member, Parallel Symbolic Computation Workshop (PASCO2010)
• Contributed talk on "Component-level Parallelization of Triangular Decompositions", Interactive Parallel Computation in Support of Research in Algebra, Geometry and Number Theory, MSRI Workshop, Berkeley, CA, 2007
• Complimentary member of the Canadian Applied and Industrial Mathematics Society (CAIMS)
• Member of the ACM Special Interest Group on Symbolic and Algebraic Manipulation (SIGSAM)
• Member of the Mathematical Knowledge Management Interest Group (MKM-IG)
• Member of the InformIT, and Linux Magazine
• Volunteer for ISSAC2001, ECCAD2004, TC2006, CAIMS/NSERC 2006 Survey, and London University Heights fun fares
• Slogan at Tsinghua University to share: "Work healthily for our home country for fifty years!"
  How? Answer: "8 - 1 > 8".
• Favorite aerobics programs: Step and Cardio Kickbox; Favorite poker games: Shoving up Pigs and Tractor
• My daughter's drawings
• My father's talk in the third International Congress of Traditional Medicine (September 2006, Toronto):
  A Clinical Research Report on the Regeneration of Fibrotic Heart Muscle Cells by Natural Herbal Medicine
• Enjoy the world wonders!

Some Experience to Share                                                                         Back to Top

• Birdview of computer algebra systems
• Models, languages and algorithms in parallel programming
• An index into the C Programming Reference Guide
• How fast is fast? asymptotically, amortized, provably, probabilistically, quasi-linear, super linear, scalable ...
• "Headaches" in high-performance computing for computer algebra
• Build up your own ring for parallel programing in MPICH2
• Inadequate dynamic process management in MPI-2
• Porting 32-bit code in C and in Aldor to 64-bit systems (Authentic AMD and SGI Altix 3700 Bx2)
• Make an A0 poster in LaTex
•   Extra: How to do mathematical proofs

Contact Information                                                                         Back to Top

Yuzhen Xie
Middlesex College, Room 327 University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5B7 Phone: (519) 661 2111 ext 83741 Email: yxie@csd.uwo.ca URL: http://www.orcca.on.ca/~yxie