Advanced Database and Intelligence Lab
Advisors
Ilkay Altıntaş
İlkay Altıntaş, PhD, is the Chief Data Science Officer (CDSO) of the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) as well as a Founding Faculty Fellow of the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute, both part of the School of Computing, Information and Data Sciences (SCIDS) at UC San Diego. She is also the Director of Cyberinfrastructure and Convergence Research Division (CICORE), as a part of the executive team providing strategic and operational leadership to SDSC. As SDSC’s inaugural CDSO, she plans and oversees a broad range of data science research, development and education activities at SDSC and works as a bridge to SDSC’s cross-sector campus, national and global collaborators and partners.
In addition to her administrative duties at SDSC, Dr. Altintas is a tenured Research Scientist and has significant research and education activities in this role. She is the Founding Director of the Workflows for Data Science (WorDS) Center of Excellence and the Founding Director of the WIFIRE Lab. The WoRDS Center specializes in the development of methods, cyberinfrastructure, and workflows for computational data science and its translation to practical applications. The WIFIRE Lab focuses on methods for all-hazards knowledge from data collection to modeling efforts, and has achieved significant success in helping to manage wildfires. Altıntaş also holds a joint appointment at Los Alamos National Lab. She served as a Member of the Founding Boards of two community-oriented non-profits — “Data Science Alliance” and “Climate and Wildfire Institute”. 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. Altıntaş holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Ilkay serves on the elected 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.
Ashley Atkins
Ashley Atkins is deputy director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center, which is part of the School of Computing, Information and Data Sciences at UC San Diego. She provides support for and offers guidance on developing the strategic direction of the center and manages day-to-day operations needed to achieve the center’s mission. This includes aligning SDSC’s directives with the university’s strategic goals and national research trends.
Prior to her position at SDSC, Atkins was the executive director for the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded West Big Data Innovation Hub at UC Berkeley. The collaborative effort, co-led with SDSC and the University of Washington, supports projects and partnerships across academia, industry, nonprofits and government agencies. As one of four regional big data hubs funded by the NSF, the West Hub offers a platform for an array of collaborations to take place in response to western U.S. needs related to big data innovations and ecosystems. As part of this work, Atkins led the West Hub’s sustainability planning to position core initiatives for success and long-term impact beyond the current funding period.