iCNS Distinguished Lecture: Scaling Autonomy: Federated Agentic Middleware and Serverless Systems for Scientific Computing

ABSTRACT

Scientific discovery increasingly relies on integrating large-scale experiments, simulations, and AI models across diverse computing environments. However, existing workflows and middleware often struggle with the complexity of scaling across federated resources and lack the autonomy needed to overcome human bottlenecks. In this talk, I will present a vision for autonomous, agent-driven science enabled by federated serverless systems. I will show how agentic middleware can orchestrate stateful, collaborative agents across heterogeneous resources, relying on serverless computing to provide elastic, on-demand execution at extreme scale. Drawing on our prior work with Parsl, funcX, Globus, and Academy, I will present examples that demonstrate how federated agentic systems can deliver high-throughput, resilient, and scalable scientific computing, enabling more autonomous and efficient discovery.

BIOGRAPHY

Kyle Chard is a Research Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Chicago and holds a joint appointment at Argonne National Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, in 2011. Chard co-leads the Globus Labs research group, where his work centers on computer systems research, with a focus on data-intensive computing, large-scale distributed systems, and research data management. His research explores how to design and deploy scalable, reliable, and usable infrastructure to accelerate discovery across scientific domains.

Zoom link:

https://stevens.zoom.us/j/99419297007