Georgia Tech Ph.D. candidate Irene Wang was awarded the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Canada Graduate Scholarship.

Wang is pursuing her Ph.D. in computer science, working in Assistant Professor Divya Mahajan’s Infrastructure and Architecture Research Lab in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE).

She was selected for her research on advancing deep learning infrastructure to meet the computational needs to run increasingly complex large language models (LLM). LLMs are a type of computational model designed for natural language processing tasks such as language generation. ChatGPT is a common example of an LLM.

The power of many LLMs have surpassed the computational and memory capabilities of single accelerators. This has made a distributed approach necessary train and execute these models.

Wang’s research proposes a state-of-the-art in-distributed deep learning infrastructure that co-optimizes architecture, network, and device placement strategies.

Each of these aspects play a fundamental role in executing distributed deep learning, involving trade-offs in computational efficiency, communication costs, and memory footprint, according to Wang.

The goal is efficiency, according to Wang.With so many variables and a wide range of outcomes, efficiency is very important to finding the best possible combinations of conditions to run different LLMs.

“Ultimately, my goal is to develop systems that not only make deep learning more resource-efficient but also foster broader access across diverse populations and industries, promoting equitable and sustainable advancements in AI infrastructure design,” she said.

NSERC funds visionaries, explorers and innovators who are searching for the scientific and technical breakthroughs that will benefit Canada, according to the Council’s website.

The Canada Graduate Scholarship offers three years of financial support to a select group of highly accomplished Canadian graduate students.

Wang received her B.S. in computer engineering from the University of British Columbia.