Dr. Nihat Altiparmak from the Department of Computer Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Louisville, will give a talk on Friday, April 12, 2019, in the Storey Innovation Center (Room 2277) from 10:15 am - 11:15 am. Abstract Today’s most critical applications, including genome analysis, climate simulations, drug discovery, space observation, and numerical simulations in computational chemistry and high-energy physics, are all data intensive in nature. Storage performance bottlenecks are major threats limiting the performance and scalability of data intensive applications. A common way to address storage I/O bottlenecks is using parallel storage systems and utilizing concurrent operation of independent storage components; however, achieving a consistently high parallel I/O performance is challenging due to static configurations. Modern parallel storage systems, especially in the cloud, enterprise data centers, and scientific clusters are commonly shared by various applications generating dynamic and coexisting data access patterns. Nonetheless, these systems generally utilize one-layout-fits-all data placement strategy frequently resulting in suboptimal I/O parallelism. Guided by association rule mining, graph coloring, bin packing, and network flow techniques, this talk demonstrates a general framework for self-optimizing parallel storage systems that can adaptively alleviate storage performance bottlenecks and continuously provide a high-degree of I/O parallelism. The framework can be applied to a wide range of parallel storage architectures including storage arrays, key-value stores, parallel/distributed file systems, and internal parallelism of solid-state drives. In addition, this talk briefly covers efficient storage, retrieval, and processing strategies for Big Data, and recent advancements in non-volatile memory technology by identifying upcoming challenges in computer systems research to utilize new solid-state storage devices to their full potential. Bio: Dr. Nihat Altiparmak earned his B.S. degree in Computer Engineering from Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey in May 2007, and his combined M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Texas at San Antonio in May 2013. He joined the Department of Computer Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Louisville as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in August 2013, and his tenure and promotion to Associate Professor is currently pending approval by the Board of Trustees of the University of Louisville. His research interests lie in the area of computer systems, specifically focusing on data storage systems, parallel and distributed systems, cloud computing, high performance computing, and computer networks. He is particularly interested in researching solid-state storage systems based on new generation non-volatile memory technologies, as well as investigating efficient storage, retrieval, and processing strategies for Big Data using high performance, distributed, and cloud architectures. His recent research findings have appeared in top-tier international journals, including IEEE Transactions on Computers, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, ACM Transactions on Storage, and ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks, as well as prestigious conferences with competitive acceptance rates. He received multiple grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) in the PI role, including a prestigious young investigator award (NSF CRII) in 2017 and an NSF MRI award in 2018. He is a senior member of the IEEE and the founding director of the Computer Systems Laboratory at the University of Louisville.