From Scientific Workflows to Cybersecurity: USC ISI Researchers Showcase Innovations at SC26 - USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Researchers from the University of Southern California’s Information Sciences Institute will showcase new research and technologies at SC26, the International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis, taking place November 15–20 in Chicago.
The conference provides an opportunity to present recent research and engage with the computing facilities and scientific communities that use these technologies.
ISI’s contributions span scientific workflow automation, artificial intelligence for high-performance computing, resilient computing infrastructure, and cybersecurity experimentation.
Advancing Scientific Workflow Management
Scientific workflows enable researchers to coordinate complex computations involving multiple programs, large datasets, and distributed computing resources.
As scientific applications grow in complexity, researchers face new challenges in scheduling computations, managing heterogeneous resources, and recovering from failures.
At the 21st Workshop on Workflows in Support of Large-Scale Science (WORKS26), USC ISI researchers and collaborators will present three papers addressing these challenges.
The presentations explore decentralized scheduling of scientific workflows, the use of large language models to coordinate multiple HPC scheduling agents, and challenges in AI-assisted workflow management illustrated through a federated learning application.
One paper, RLSA: Adaptive LLM Gating for Multi-Agent HPC Scheduling Agents, authored by Hongwei Jin, Krishnan Raghavan, Anirban Mandal, and Ewa Deelman, has received a Distinguished Paper recognition.
“Scientific computing is not just about running individual programs faster. Researchers increasingly need to coordinate complex applications across different computing resources, manage data, and recover from failures,”
Deelman, Hamza Safri, a USC ISI postdoctoral researcher, and the DOE-funded SWARM (Scientific Workflow Applications on Resilient Metasystem) project team will also present their recent work on agentic workflow systems.
This work investigates how scientific workflows can operate across heterogeneous computing environments while improving resilience to changing resource conditions and failures.
In a separate presentation, Deelman and Komal Thareja from UNC RENCI will discuss the NSF-funded PegasusAI project, which investigates how AI can assist scientists throughout the workflow lifecycle, from workflow development to execution and troubleshooting.
Deelman will also share updates from NSF CI Compass, the NSF Cyberinfrastructure Center of Excellence, which supports cyberinfrastructure planning and operations for major and midscale scientific research facilities.
NSF CI Compass helps strengthen the cyberinfrastructure supporting the nation’s major scientific research facilities.
Led by Research Professor Deelman, the center provides independent technical advice, connects research facilities with one another and with the broader cyberinfrastructure community, and promotes the sharing of expertise, solutions, and best practices.
By helping facilities leverage existing technologies, avoid duplication of effort, and make informed infrastructure decisions, CI Compass aims to maximize the impact and return on NSF’s cyberinfrastructure investments.
As artificial intelligence creates new opportunities for scientific discovery, CI Compass is also helping research facilities examine how AI can be adopted responsibly and effectively into their operational and science lifecycles.
Supporting Realistic Cybersecurity Experimentation
USC ISI will also showcase new capabilities for cybersecurity and privacy research at SC26 through the SPHERE (Security and Privacy Heterogeneous Environment for Reproducible Experimentation) project, participating in the conference’s Network Research Exhibition (NRE).
Led by Jelena Mirkovic, principal scientist at USC ISI and research associate professor of computer science, SPHERE provides a distributed research infrastructure that enables realistic, reproducible cybersecurity and privacy experimentation using diverse computing, networking, Internet of Things (IoT), and industrial control system technologies.
At SC26, Christopher Tran of USC ISI will showcase SPHERE’s capabilities through demonstrations involving remotely accessible IoT devices, a miniature physical water-treatment testbed with industrial control equipment, and the integration of researcher-owned devices and portable facilities into distributed experiments.
The demonstrations will highlight how geographically distributed resources can be interconnected to support experimentation, real-time data collection, and visualization.
“SPHERE makes realistic cybersecurity experimentation accessible by giving researchers access to specialized equipment and facilities that would otherwise be difficult or costly to use. Our demonstrations at SC26 illustrate how these resources can be used together across distributed sites to conduct experiments and support reproducible research,”
Connecting Research with the HPC Community
Together, these activities reflect USC ISI’s research across scientific computing and cybersecurity, with an emphasis on developing infrastructure that researchers can use to address complex computational challenges.
USC ISI researchers and collaborators will present three papers at WORKS26 on Sunday, November 15, in Room W181b.
SC26 attendees can meet members of the scientific workflow research team at the RENCI exhibition booth (#1655), where the following presentations are scheduled:
- Tuesday, November 17, 11 a.m. to 11:45 a.m. : SWARM: Scientific Workflow Applications on Resilient Metasystem
- Tuesday, November 17, 2 p.m. to 2:45 p.m.: PegasusAI: Applying Artificial Intelligence Advances to the Next Generation of Workflow Management on Modern Cyberinfrastructure
- Wednesday, November 18, 10:30 a.m. to 11:15 a.m.: NSF CI Compass Cyberinfrastructure Center of Excellence: Recent Updates
The SPHERE demonstrations will take place at the SCinet Research Hotel, Booth #3532, November 17 – 19.
Tran will present SPHERE Research Infrastructure for Cybersecurity Experimentation on Wednesday, November 18, from 12:40 p.m. to 1 p.m., at the SCinet Theater, Booth #4029.
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