Add Upcoming talks

_data/speakers.yml

@@ -102,3 +102,27 @@
   talk_num: 6
   photo: titus.jpg
   bio: "C. Titus Brown is a Professor in the School of Veterinary Medicine at UC Davis, where he works on methods in data intensive research across the biosciences, computer science, and software engineering. He is surprisingly passionate about open science and sociotechnical systems for community development of research infrastructure, and blogs regularly on these topics at ivory.idyll.org/blog/."
+
+- name: Alok Kamatar
+  role: Graduate Student, University of Chicago
+  institution:
+    - name: University of Chicago
+      link: https://www.uchicago.edu/
+      image: uchicago.png
+  country: us
+  link: https://www.computerscience.uchicago.edu/people/alok-kamatar
+  talk_num: 7
+  # photo: kamatar.jpg
+  bio: "Alok Kamatar is a 4th year Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago advised by Ian Foster and Kyle Chard. Broadly, he is interested in building systems to enable faster and more efficient science. He is currently working on building Academy: a framework for integrating \"Agents\" with federated research infrastructure and exploring the associated systems challenges."
+
+- name: Raffaele Montella
+  role: Associate Professor with tenure in Computer Science
+  institution:
+    - name: University of Naples “Parthenope”
+      link: https://international.uniparthenope.it/
+      image: ParthEng.svg
+  country: Italy
+  link: https://www.raffaelemontella.it/
+  talk_num: 8
+  photo: montella.png
+  bio: "Raffaele Montella is an Associate Professor with tenure in Computer Science at the Department of Science and Technologies (DiST), University of Naples “Parthenope’” (UNP), Italy. He got his degree (MSc equivalent) cum laude and an award mention to his study career in (Marine) Environmental Science at the University of Naples “Parthenope” in 1998, defending a thesis about the “Development of a GIS system for marine applications”. He defended his Ph.D. thesis on “Environmental modeling and Grid Computing techniques” earning a Ph.D. in Marine Science and Engineering at the University of Naples “Federico II”. His main research topics and scientific production are focused on: tools for high-performance computing, cloud computing, and GPUs with applications in the field of computational environmental science (multi-dimensional geo-referenced big data, distributed computing for modeling, and scientific workflows and science gateways) leveraging on his previous (and still ongoing) experiences in embedded, mobile, wearable, pervasive computing, and Internet of Things. Since 2021 he has been head of the UNP node CINI Lab/Working Group “HPC: Key Technologies and Tools”. Since 2022 he has been the head of the AWS Academy at the University of Naples “Parthenope”. In February 2023, he gained the Italian National Academic Qualifications as Full Professor in Computer Science (01/B1)."

_layouts/default.html

@@ -43,7 +43,7 @@ <h2 data-aos="fade-up">Elevating community-centered scientific workflow solution
                 </div>
                 <div class="col-lg-5 dark-bg order-lg-1 d-flex flex-column justify-content-start text-left caption">
                     <div class="row" style="border: 3px solid #fff; border-radius: .5em">
-                        {% assign talks = site.talks | sort: 'order' | reverse %}
+                        {% assign talks = site.talks| where: "given", false | sort: 'order'%}
                         {% for talk in talks limit: 1 %}
                         <div class="col-lg-5" style="padding: 0; background-color: rgba(109, 84, 170, 0.5);">
                             <a href="/talks"><img src="/images/talks/banner.png" width="100%" style="border-radius: 0.5em;" /></a>

_talks/2025_10_15.html

@@ -0,0 +1,24 @@
+---
+layout: talk
+title: "Building Scalable Agentic Systems for Science with Academy"
+authors: Alok Kamatar (University of Chicago)
+event_date: October 15, 2025
+times: 11:00-11:30 PST / 14:00-14:30 EST / 20:00-20:30 CEST
+talk_number: 7
+given: false
+<!-- image: /images/talks/kumatar-banner.png -->
+<!-- presentation: -->
+<!-- video:  -->
+---
+
+Agentic systems, in which diverse agents cooperate to tackle challenging 
+problems, are exploding in popularity in the AI community. However, the 
+agentic frameworks used to build these systems have not previously enabled use 
+with research cyberinfrastructure. In this talk, I will introduce Academy, a 
+modular and extensible middleware designed to deploy autonomous agents across 
+the federated research ecosystem, including HPC systems, experimental 
+facilities, and data repositories. I will situate Academy in the landscape of 
+existing agentic frameworks and discuss how the design of Academy addresses 
+the unique needs of scientific agents. Finally, I will present use-cases of 
+agentic workflows and show an example of how we used Academy to build a more 
+intelligent and efficient workflow for materials design.

_talks/2025_11_11.html

@@ -0,0 +1,52 @@
+---
+layout: talk
+title: "One workflow to rule them all: introducing DAGonStar, yet another workflow engine for Python developers, designed for HPC and AI."
+authors: Raffaele Montella  (University of Naples “Parthenope”)
+event_date: November 11, 2025
+times: 11:00-12:00 PST / 14:00-15:00 EST / 20:00-21:00 CEST
+talk_number: 8
+given: false
+<!-- image: /images/talks/montella-banner.png -->
+<!-- presentation: -->
+<!-- video:  -->
+---
+
+Scientific workflows designed to handle massive datasets through distributed 
+high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructures or elastic on-demand 
+computational services have established themselves as a robust and mature 
+paradigm within data science. Within this context, one of the most 
+consolidated production applications is the orchestration of environmental 
+models for simulation and forecasting tasks.
+
+<br /><br />
+
+This presentation illustrates our perspective on workflows as essential 
+building blocks for environmental systems, where numerical modeling is combined 
+with artificial intelligence to strengthen forecasting and predictive 
+capabilities. At the HPSC SmartLab of the University of Naples "Parthenope," 
+we developed DAGonStar, a workflow engine designed to orchestrate environmental 
+models used by the Center for Monitoring and Modeling Marine and Atmosphere 
+(CMMMA) to produce weather and marine predictions.
+
+<br /><br />
+
+Among the laboratory's operational applications is MytilEx, a project funded by 
+the Campania Regional Government, which aims to forecast E. coli contamination 
+in cultivated mussels. The system improves pollutant transport and dispersion 
+simulations (carried out with the WaComM++ model) by integrating an artificial 
+intelligence module (AIQUAM++), trained on microbiological observations. 
+Initial system evaluations reveal prediction accuracies above 90% for E. coli 
+presence, a substantial step forward in applying computational intelligence to 
+environmental and food safety domains.
+
+<br /><br />
+
+The same workflow building blocks that supported MytilEx have also enabled the 
+development of two further projects. The first, MytilX—currently underway and 
+funded by the Istituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale dell'Umbria e delle Marche 
+"Togo Rosati"—has shown through preliminary experiments that the MytilEx 
+success case can be replicated at other sites. The second, SmokeTracer, funded 
+by the Campania Regional Government, is an on-demand HPC workflow aimed at 
+estimating the potential soil contamination footprint caused by wildfires or 
+arson. SmokeTracer has been implemented partly by reusing modules already 
+available in the DAGonStar framework.

index.html

@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ <h2>What's Happening in the Community</h2>
             <div class="col-lg-3">
                 <!-- COMMUNITY TALKS -->
                 <article>
-                    {% assign talks = site.talks | sort: 'order' | reverse %}
+                    {% assign talks = site.talks| where: "given", false | sort: 'order'%}
                     {% for talk in talks limit: 1 %}
                     <div class="post-img">
                         <img src="/images/talks/banner.png" alt="" class="img-fluid">