The Societal Computing and Innovation Lab (SCIL) is based at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at UC San Diego’s School of Computing, Information and Data Sciences. SCIL takes a novel approach to creating breakthrough technological innovations to meet complex societal challenges. At the core of SCIL’s approach to innovation is a commitment to moving from use-inspired problems to scalable solutions. SCIL’s research projects and real-world solutions leverage integrated workflows, next-generation data and AI, cutting-edge science, and advanced digital infrastructure.
SCIL is led by Dr. Ilkay Altintas and builds on the previous work of her Workflows for Data Science Center of Excellence, founded in 2014, and her Scientific Workflows Automation Technologies Lab, founded in 2004. Dr. Altintas is a Founding Faculty Fellow of the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute and the Chief Data Science Officer at SDSC, providing strategic and operational leadership to both. At SDSC, she plans and oversees a broad range of data science research, development and education activities and works as a bridge to cross-sector, campus, national, and global collaborators and partners.
With a specialty in scientific workflows and systems, Dr. Altintas’ work focuses on making computational data science and AI more reusable, programmable, scalable, equitable, and reproducible. She is the principal investigator for the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) National Data Platform and numerous other federally funded research grants. Dr. Altintas serves on the Board of Governors for the IEEE Computer Society and was appointed by California Governor Newsom to the Wildfire Technology Research and Development Review Advisory Board. Among the awards she has received are the 2015 IEEE TCSC Award for Excellence in Scalable Computing for Early Career Researchers and the 2017 ACM SIGHPC Emerging Woman Leader in Technical Computing Award. Dr. Altintas received her PhD from the University of Amsterdam.
Dr. Ilkay Altintas, Photo by Erik Jepsen/UC San Diego
