Expert Guest: Dr. Pratul Agarwal, Professor of Physiological Sciences, Associate Vice President for Research, and Director of OSU’s High-Performance Computing Center

"Supercomputers, Computational Biology, and the New Age of AI: Where Do We Go from Here?"

Computers are better than humans at doing certain tasks, such as repetitive math calculations and making models. More than 20 years, Dr. Pratul Agarwal decided to use computers to solve mysteries
behind the most fundamental processes of life, including how proteins and enzymes work. Starting with building computer models of proteins, he realized that for these models to be accurate, he
needed powerful computers. So, he started using Supercomputers, which perform calculations thousands to millions of times faster than the average desktop computer. But he got stuck. The
complexity of biology demanded more computing. So, he decided to take a look under the hood and see what could be done to make calculations even faster. Fast forward 15 years, he became part of
the community which designs and operates the latest generation of Supercomputers for the scientific community. Currently, he is deploying the biggest Supercomputer in Oklahoma. In the last 3 years,
Dr. Agarwal has noticed that the same technology that improved his scientific calculations was supercharging the next revolution – artificial intelligence (AI) based on large language models. “I have
seen this movie before, and this time the scale is completely different”, he says. This conversation with Dr. Agarwal will describe how AI will change education, scientific research and more, including
jobs in the future and many things in our daily lives.