Computer Science Seminar

Speaker

Dr. Ritu Arora, Associate Professor, Computer Science, Wayne State University

Abstract

The "containerization" of software applications future-proofs them, helps in their long-term preservation, makes them portable across different hardware platforms, ensures reproducible results, and makes them convenient to disseminate. Docker and Singularity are two popular software technologies for containerizing scientific applications and are widely supported on different hardware platforms. However, their adoption involves a steep learning curve, especially when it comes to developing secure and optimized images of the applications of interest. A large number of domain-scientists and scholars are usually not formally trained at containerizing their applications with Docker and Singularity and spend a significant amount of their time in porting their applications to different cloud computing and supercomputing platforms. The process of porting applications having multiple software dependencies and sensitivities to specific software versions can be especially difficult for such users. To address such difficulties, it is important to raise the level of abstraction for software containerization. In this talk we will introduce our tool named Basil, which can help in semi-automatically containerizing the scientific applications, frameworks, and workflows. Basil has a broad applicability across multiple domains of deep societal impact such as artificial intelligence, drug discovery, and earthquake engineering. By enabling the preservation of valuable legacy software and making them usable for several years in future, Basil will help in saving cost and time in software rewriting and software installations and will thus contribute towards advancing the prosperity of the society.

Biography

Ritu Arora is a 2022 Better Scientific Software Fellow and is currently appointed as Associate Professor, Research in the Computer Science department at the Wayne State University. She is also the founder of Venra Tech Inc., a company that provides solutions for advanced computing, data management, visualization, AI, and IT infrastructure development. Prior to joining Wayne State University, Ritu worked at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) as the Assistant Vice President of Research Computing, and before that, she served as a Research Scientist at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at UT Austin. Ritu obtained her Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science from the University of Alabama at Birmingham in 2010. She is passionate about promoting the use of technology for creating societal impact and actively engages in causes aimed at creating inclusive policies and communities.