Kindratenko Named Director of the Center for Artificial Intelligence Innovation at NCSA

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) is pleased to announce the appointment of Illinois ECE Adjunct Associate Professor Volodymyr Kindratenko as Director of the Center for Artificial Intelligence Innovation (CAII). In this new role, he will be responsible for providing the overall leadership, oversight, and management of the center, including developing partnerships and projects at regional and national levels, and overseeing day-to-day operations. Dr. Kindratenko will also be fostering and actively participating in a vigorous research program, with responsibilities for which he is especially adept thanks to his prior experience.

NCSA Engagement Director John Towns said Dr. Kindratenko, a seasoned NCSA researcher with prior NCSA leadership experience, is poised to expand the CAII’s ability to forge new relationships while strengthening existing ones.

“Vlad comes into this role transitioning from another NCSA leadership role and as the former lead for the NCSA Innovative Systems Lab,” Towns said. “He has deep connections with campus with a history of collaboration and teaching. We look forward to expanding and deepening those relationships with a focus on the development of AI methods and applications of them to academic and industry challenges.”

In addition to his role at NCSA, Dr. Kindratenko also maintains a position as a research associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Illinois. He currently serves as a department editor of IEEE Computing in Science and Engineering magazine and an associate editor of the International Journal of Reconfigurable Computing. Dr. Kindratenko’s work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, NASA, Office of Naval Research, Department of Energy, and industry. He has published over 70 papers in peer-reviewed scientific journals and conference proceedings and holds five U.S. patents. He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

Dr. Kindratenko’s research interests include high-performance computing, special-purpose computing architectures, cloud computing and machine learning. His combined interest and experience will contribute to his ability to facilitate collaboration across multiple disciplines and support advancements in AI, leveraging NCSA’s cutting-edge technology and expertise. 

“I am very excited to become the CAII Director, and I am looking forward to growing the Center within NCSA and connecting it with the AI-related activities carried out by the U of I faculty,” Kindratenko said. “Main goals for the Center include finding ways to bring together the U of I AI research community for a chance to collaborate while aligning academic research with industry challenges and opportunities and providing students with ways to learn and work in the AI domain. The Center will also partner with leading researchers and technology developers to bring state-of-the-art AI capabilities to the U of I research community.”

The National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign provides supercomputing and advanced digital resources for the nation's science enterprise. At NCSA, University of Illinois faculty, staff, students and collaborators from around the globe use these resources to address research challenges for the benefit of science and society. NCSA has been advancing many of the world's industry giants for over 35 years by bringing industry, researchers and students together to solve grand challenges at rapid speed and scale.