Title: Do Computer Programs Have to Be As Dumb As They Are? By Xipeng Shen The College of William and Mary Abstract: Looking around this world, we see that a fledgling can fly faster and faster, a pupil can calculate quicker and quicker, and a graduate student can write papers better and better. But since the birth of computers, it has been the case that after the release of a software package, the one millionth run of the program is typically not a bit better than its first-time run. Do programs have to be this dumb? In this talk, I will discuss the barriers that cause such dumbness, our efforts in creating a more intelligent paradigm, and some open challenges that you may be able to help address. Bio: Xipeng Shen is the Adina Allen Term Distinguished Associate Professor in the College of William and Mary, an IBM Center for Advanced Studies (CAS) Faculty Fellow, a Visiting Researcher at Microsoft Research and MIT. His research in data locality and massive parallelism won the prestigious Early Career Research Award from the US Department of Energy in 2011 and the Best Paper Award at ACM PPoPP 2010. His research in input-centric program dynamic optimizations won the CAREER Award from the US National Science Foundation in 2010.