Personnel

The Tachyon Resilient Modeling project brings together investigators, researchers, students, and external collaborators across institutions and national laboratories. The project is intended to combine real world datasets from operations of the Dept. of Energy's leadership computing facilities, with advanced modeling techniques to create predictive models that can be used to increase the resiliency and fault tolerance of scientific workflows.

The Tachyon project is lead by Rensellear Polytechnical Institute in collaboration with Fermi national Accelerator Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory. We have collaborators from the University of California Davis as well as University Illinios, Chicago.

Principal Investigators

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Dr. Chris Carothers

Principal Investigator
Computer Science Department / Rensellear Polytechnical

Professor Chris Carothers focuses on modeling of and simulation of massively parallel computing systems. He is an NFS Career award winner and active in the Dept. of Energy Exascale Co-Design Program for exascale storage systems. Homepage · ORCID

CO

Dr. Andrew Norman

Co-Principal Investigator (Domain Scientist)
Computing Division / Fermi National Accelerator Lab

Dr. Andrew Norman is high energy physicist in neutrino and precision muon physics, with a focus on high speed computing for data acquistion and massively parallel computing for data analysis. Homepage · ORCID

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Dr. Kevin Brown

Co-Principal Investigator
Mathematics and Computer Science Division / Argonne National Lab

Dr. Kevin Brown is an Assistant Computer Scientist and the inaugural Walter Massey Fellow at Argonne, focusing on network performance analysis and simulation. His work includes accelerating parallel discrete event simulations with surrogate models and improving the resilience of geographically-distributed research infrastructure through multi-resolution modeling. Homepage · ORCID

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Dr. Zhiling Lan

Co-Principal Investigator
Department of Computer Science / University of Illinois Chicago

Professor Zhiling Lan leads the SPEAR (Systems for Performance, Energy, and Resiliency) research group, with expertise in parallel and distributed systems and high-performance computing. Her work spans intelligent workload management, network simulation, energy efficiency, and AI-guided resource optimization for advanced cyberinfrastructure, and includes a joint appointment with Argonne National Laboratory. Homepage · ORCID

CO

Dr. Kwan-Liu Ma

Co-Principal Investigator
Department of Computer Science / University of California, Davis

Distinguished Professor Kwan-Liu Ma directs the UC Davis Center for Visualization and leads the VIDI Labs, with expertise in scientific visualization, visual analytics, and information visualization technologies. He is an ACM Fellow (2023) and has produced extensive work on climate data visualization and visual analysis tools. Homepage · ORCID

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Dr. Robert B. Ross

Co-Principal Investigator
Mathematics and Computer Science Division / Argonne National Laboratory

Dr. Robert B. Ross is a Senior Computer Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory, with expertise in storage and I/O systems for high-performance computing. Homepage · ORCID

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Dr. Kai Shu

Co-Principal Investigator (2023–2024)
Department of Computer Science / Illinois Institute of Technology

Dr. Kai Shu is an Assistant Professor at Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT). Homepage · ORCID

Researchers & Staff

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Dr. Justin Mueller

Postdoctoral Research Associate
Intensity Frontier Division / Fermi National Accelerator Lab

Dr. Justin Mueller is a high energy physicist in neutrino physics, with a focus on machine-learning techniques for event reconstruction and data analysis. Homepage · ORCID

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Dr. Jeremy Buhler

Visiting Professor at RPI (2023–2024)
Professor of Computer Science and Genetics / Washington University in St. Louis

Visiting professor at RPI, 2023–2024.

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Dr. Tanwi Mallick

Senior Personnel · Computer Specialist
Argonne National Laboratory

Computer Specialist at Argonne National Laboratory.

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Dr. Xin Wang

Postdoctoral Researcher
University of Illinois Chicago

Post-doc at University of Illinois Chicago (UIC).

Students

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Allison Austin

Ph.D. Student
University of California, Davis

Predictive modeling and visual analytics.

Homepage · ORCID
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Cynthia Gonzalez

4th-Year Ph.D. Candidate
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Cynthia focuses on time series analysis and forecasting system data, with an emphasis on identifying and understanding system behavior and improving the reliability and performance of computing systems. ORCID

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Undergraduate Student

Research Assistant
Institution

Dataset curation and visualization.

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Sanjay Chari

Ph.D. Student
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Discrete-event simulation of large-scale distributed systems.

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Elkin Cruz-Camacho

Ph.D. Student
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

Funded by Tachyon, 2023–2025.

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Yu-Chia Huang

Ph.D. Student
University of California, Davis

Predictive modeling and visual analytics.

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Pietro Lodi Rizzini

Ph.D. Student
University of Illinois Chicago

Funded by Tachyon, 2023–2024.

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Shambhawi Sharma

Ph.D. Student
University of Illinois Chicago

Funded by Tachyon, 2024–2025.

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Xiongxiao Xu

Ph.D. Student
Illinois Institute of Technology

Funded by Tachyon, 2023–2024.

Collaborators

NameInstitutionContribution
Chris CarothersRensselaer Polytechnic InstituteDiscrete event simulation
Kevin BrownArgonne National LaboratoryHPC infrastructure
A. NormanFermilabDomain science applications
Zhiling LanUniversity of Illinois, ChicagoParallel and distributed systems
Kwan-Liu MaUniversity of California, DavisVisualization and visual analytics