Our group works in two main areas. First, we build computer systems for large scale machine learning and AI. Training and inference for large AI models on large compute clusters is difficult. It’s just as hard to get a very large model to work on a small compute cluster with limited memory. A programmer must break up a model so it can be distributed to many machines/GPUs or paged in and out. This is difficult for mere mortals. We adopt ideas from relational database system design to build systems that automatically enable training and inference for almost any model on almost any hardware, with little user involvement. This slide deck details our ideas in AI system design:
You can watch a video presentation of the slide deck here:
Second, we are also interested in applications of machine learning and AI, in domains such as computer vision, automatic programming, and healthcare.
Sleem M. Abdelghafar (PhD) 
Chima Adiole (MS Student)
Daniel Bourgeois (PhD Student) 
Zhimin Ding (PhD student)
Ed Hu (PhD student) 
Abhinav Jain (PhD student)
Charles Jiang (PhD student) 
Yuxin Tang (PhD student)
Sarah Yao (MS student) 
Xin Yao (PhD student)
In my spare time, I enjoy running, gardening, and outdoor activities such as hiking, climbing, and whitewater boating. I've walked the John Muir Trail twice (250+ miles total each time, including side trips) as well as Glyndywr's Way in Wales (135+ miles), carrying my then-3-year-old son on my back. I've walked the Kerry Way in Ireland (130+ miles). For that one, I carried my then-5-year-old son about half the way. In 2017, I walked the Walker's Haute Route and the Tour of Monte Rosa, both of which my then-9-year-old son managed to walk the whole way. We've since walked the Pembrokeshire Coast Path (186 miles) and the Eagle's Way (256 miles) in the Austrian Tyrol. I've and hiked and/or climbed 12 out of the 13 14,000 foot peaks in California. In one particular exploit, my wife and I floated a whitewater raft (home-made from scratch using a sewing machine, glue, and plastic) over 100 miles down the Nizina River (and beyond) in Alaska.
Email: cmj4@rice.edu
Mailing address: Chris Jermaine, Department of Computer Science, Rice University, P.O. Box 1892, MS 132, Houston, TX 77251, USA
Delivery address: Chris Jermaine, Department of Computer Science, Rice University, 6100 Main Street, Duncan Hall Room 3122, Houston, TX 77005-1892, USA
Office: 3079 Duncan Hall. A map of the Rice campus can be found here.
Computer science department phone: (713) 348-4834
Computer science department fax: (713) 348-5930