In this talk I'll give an update on the US Exascale Computing Initiative (ECI). The ECI is a national plan to develop and field multiple Exascale computing systems starting in 2021. In addition to developing systems the ECI is supporting the development of a broad collection of Exascale applications and software environments to support the mission of the Department of Energy (DOE) and the broad needs of the US research community. Exascale systems are being designed to support a broad range of applications including simulations such as climate, cosmology and materials science, data intensive pipelines that process streaming data from detectors in photon sciences, astronomy and high-energy physics, and machine learning and workflows in cancer, fundamental physics, and molecular science. Artificial Intelligence (AI) based applications are emerging as important new drivers of advanced computing capabilities across many scientific disciplines. I'll discuss key "AI in Science" opportunities that will be enabled by Exascale systems and walk through some of the architectural, software and methods challenges. Finally, I will present an overview of the joint program of the DOE and the National Cancer Institute to apply Exascale computing to three cancer research challenge problems (i.e. drug response prediction, RAS biology and understanding patient trajectories). In this part of the talk I'll focus on my group's recent work on using deep learning to predict drug response in tumors and our push towards active learning to drive experimental strategies.

Bio: Rick Stevens is Argonne’s Associate Laboratory Director for Computing, Environment and Life Sciences. Stevens has been at Argonne since 1982, and has served as director of the Mathematics and Computer Science Division and also as Acting Associate Laboratory Director for Physical, Biological and Computing Sciences. He is currently leader of Argonne’s Exascale Computing Initiative, and a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Chicago Physical Sciences Collegiate Division. From 2000-2004, Stevens served as Director of the National Science Foundation’s TeraGrid Project and from 1997-2001 as Chief Architect for the National Computational Science Alliance. Stevens is interested in the development of innovative tools and techniques that enable computational scientists to solve important large-scale problems effectively on advanced scientific computers. Specifically, his research focuses on three principal areas: advanced collaboration and visualization environments, high-performance computer architectures (including Grids) and computational problems in the life sciences. In addition to his research work, Stevens teaches courses on computer architecture, collaboration technology, virtual reality, parallel computing and computational science.