RCE 108: Academic Torrents
Channel: Research Computing and Engineering
Date: 2021-01-29

Recorded 10/2016
https://www.rce-cast.com/Podcast/rce-108-academic-torrents.html


 Brock Palen and Jeff Squyres speak with the creators of Academic Torrents a distributed system for sharing enormous datasets - for researchers, by researchers. The result is a scalable, secure, and fault-tolerant repository for data, with blazing fast download speeds.

Joseph Paul Cohen is a postdoctoral fellow at the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms (MILA) in the University of Montreal. He obtained a Ph.D Degree in computer science from the University of Massachusetts Boston in 2016. His research interests include machine learning, computer vision, ad-hoc networking, and cyber security. Joseph received a U.S. National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship in 2013. Joseph is the founder and director of the Institute for Reproducible Research (a U.S. 501©3 non-profit) which produces tools for researchers such as AcademicTorrents.com and ShortScience.org. He is also the creator of BlindTool (a mobile application that uses artificial intelligence to provide a sense of vision to the blind) and Blucat (netcat for Bluetooth). He has worked in industry for small startups, large corporations, government research labs, educational museums, as well as been involved in projects sponsored by NASA and the DOE.

Henry Z. Lo is currently a Senior Data Analyst at McKinsey and Company working on deep learning solutions. He obtained a PhD from the University of Massachusetts Boston Computer Science department. During his studies he received a McNair fellowship, a Sanofi Genzyme fellowship, the Randall G. Malbone award for academic achievement, and an NSF EAPSI award to study in Shanghai, China. Before graduating, Henry partnered with Joseph Paul Cohen to start a non-profit to promote accessibility in science.