2003 Summer Conference

On Friday, August 1, 2003, the IBM Austin Center for Advanced Studies and our Partnering Executives proudly welcomed Summer Interns and IBM Employees to the 3rd Annual Austin CAS Summer Conference. During this day of IBM Confidential presentations, 16 interns presented the results of their summer work.

This conference was the culmination of the Annual CAS Summer Program, an exciting extension to traditional summer internships - enabling year round continuity for ongoing research. Most students who work for IBM under this program are at the graduate-level and are working with professors who are funded by IBM Partnering Executives during the academic year to conduct joint research with IBM. During the summer months, most of these students came to IBM to work onsite.

The conference consisted of 6 sessions, including Ensuring High-Quality ICs, Achieving and Evaluating Performance in IC Packages/Systems, Low Power Computing and Communications, Analysis for Power Optimization, Systems Software and Analysis Tools, and Advances in Circuit Design. Notable presentations included “Using Sampled Event Trace Data to Understand Application Behavior in a NUMA” by Diana Villa, an IBM Ph.D. Fellowship recipient from the University of Texas at El Paso, who is being mentored by Bret Olszewski at AIX Performance. Another one of the many notable presentations was “Congestion Aware Routing and Buffering” by Milos Hrkic, an IBM Ph.D. Fellowship recipient from the University of Illinois, who is being mentored by Chuck Alpert at the Austin Research Lab. After each presentation, a question/answer period gave IBM employees and students a chance to discuss the topic and resulting conclusions.

The Austin CAS 3rd Annual Summer Conference was an exciting cap to a productive summer. The opportunity to work “at-the-job-site” provided a powerful summer experience for all involved. As a result of the continuity provided by this program, many students found themselves better prepared for their summer research. The IBM mentors enjoyed the exciting, new dimension this program brought to their work. With the Conference and the summer over, the CAS students are returning to school to continue their research equipped with valuable, industrial-strength experience. As a testimony to the program’s ongoing success, many CAS students return to IBM summer after summer to participate in this program. We look forward to seeing them next year!