This week the AI Seminar welcomes Brenda Barron and Eric Fiala of the IBM
Systems Division. The seminar will be Friday, June 1st from noon – 1 p.m.
in CSC 3-33. Pizza @ 11:45 a.m.

*Title:* An exploration of the technologies that the IBM Systems Division
is focusing on to advance the field of AI

*Abstract:* IBM has been investing heavily in the field of AI but much of
the marketing effort shifts focus to Watson capabilities and the service
offerings available in the IBM Cloud. The IBM Systems Division has also
been making key investments and is partnering closely with IBM Research and
third parties like NVIDIA to develop a complete ecosystem with AI in mind.
Come out and gain a better understanding of how these investments have
shaped a server platform built for AI to enhance the performance of the
popular DL frameworks. Learn about several software extensions designed to
improve the scaleability and throughput of ML and DL workloads and perhaps
identify a tool or shortcut to aid you in your current projects.

*Brenda Barron* is a Systems Architect within the national HPC and AI team
at IBM. She works directly with clients and business partners to help
define the infrastructure requirements of a given project and map that to
an optimal infrastructure solution. A UofA graduate, she has worked locally
in the Communications and IT fields for 35 years, the last 20 with IBM.

*Eric Fiala* is a hands-on technical solutions architect with IBM Spectrum
Computing, representing global markets, based in Calgary, Alberta.
He is a seasoned system administrator specialized in distributed computing,
big data, machine learning, and deep learning at massive scale.
Eric graduated from University of Ottawa with a degree in Economics.