Kaoutar El Maghraoui

Kaoutar El Maghraoui CV

Dr. Kaoutar El Maghraoui is a principal research scientist at the IBM Research AI organization where she is focusing on innovations at the intersection of systems and artificial intelligence. She is an adjunct professor of computer science at Columbia University, New York. She leads the End-Use experimental AI testbed of the IBM Research AI Hardware Center, a global research hub focusing on enabling next-generation chips and systems for AI workloads. ). She is responsible for the open-source development and cloud end-user experience for IBM’s emerging Digital and Analog AI accelerators. She is currently focusing on the operationalization aspects of AI systems in hybrid cloud environments. Kaoutar has extensive experience and deep expertise in HPC, systems software, Cloud computing, and machine learning.

Kaoutar co-led IBM’s Global Technology Outlook in 2017. She worked on creating IBM’s vision for the future of IT across global labs and business units, focusing on IBM’s AI leadership. Before that, she was a member of the scalable systems groups, where she researched several aspects of the AIX operating system, such as performance, multi-thread and multi-core scheduling, Flash SSD storage, OS crash diagnosis and recovery, interactions with systems architecture, and applying analytics techniques for OS problem diagnosis. She led a research project to use IBM Watson’s cognitive technology to systems problem diagnosis and resolution for the POWER platform. Her primary research interests are cloud computing, operating systems, high-performance computing, distributed systems, and analytics.

Kaoutar obtained a PhD degree in Computer Science in 2007 from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), Troy, New York, and a Masters degree in Computer Networks in 2001 from Al Akhawayn University, Morocco. She was a lecturer of Computer Science in the School of Science and Engineering at Al Akhawayn University in 2001 and 2002. She was recognized with several awards, including the Robert McNaughton Award for best thesis in computer science, Best of IBM award in 2021, IBM’s Eminence and Excellence award for leadership in increasing Women’s presence in science and technology, several IBM outstanding technical accomplishments, 2021 IEEE TCSVC Women in Service Computing award, and 2022 IBM Technical Corporate award.

She is an ACM Distinguished Member, Senior IEEE Member, and member of the Society of Women Engineers, TinyML foundation, and AnitaB.org. Kaoutar has co-authored several conferences and journal publications in systems research, distributed systems and high-performance computing. She has served in many technical conferences as co-chair, member of the program committee, and reviewer.

Dr. Kaoutar El-Maghraoui is the global vice-chair of the Arab Women in Computing (ArabWIC) Anita Borg Institute Systers’ community. She is very passionate about mentoring, promoting, and increasing the participation of women in STEM and computing fields. She has been an active member of the leadership team of the Grace Hopper Conference (GHC), the world’s largest conference of women in computing. Under her leadership, she helped put together the most International poster/career track committees the conference has ever had. She served as the program Co-Chair of GHC in 2015 and the general Co-Chair of GHC in 2016.

Highlights:

• Honored to be recognized as IBM Honoree for 2021/Best of IBM, a prestigious award and one of the highest recognition given by IBM to its top performers.
       
• I received the 2021 IEEE TCSVC Women in Service Computing Award. My acceptance speech.

• Checkout our Analog AI Hardware Kit open-source project
  • Check our work from IBM Research around Analog AI. Very exciting technology that uses in memory computing, leveraging a long-forgotten technique to make AI faster and more energy efficient (Analog technology).
  • Better yet, our composer cloud application is  a front end, no-code experience in the cloud that allows you to run simulations in the IBM cloud for free
  • There is also an open-source project associated with this. Please check it out at https://github.com/IBM/aihwkit
• I presented, with my colleague Malte J Rasch, our work around Analog AI Hardware kit at ICML 2021
  • ICML 2021 Expo talk, 'IBM Analog AI Hardware Acceleratio Kit', Kaoutar El Maghraoui & Malte J Rasch, July 18th, 2021
• I am serving as the general co-chair of the 7th international conference or Arab Women in Computing, Sharjah, UAE.
• Check out my talk about  'Performance Analysis of Deep Learning Workloads on a Composable System',  a paper that was accepted at SaDL 2021 IPDPS Workshop, May 21, 2021. Talk Recording.
• Check out my invited talk at IEEE FastPath workshop about hw-aware Auto AI. Talk video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGQg061Wmoo&t=992s