Alumni Profiles

Willow Ahrens

  • Program Years: 2017-2021
  • Academic Institution: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
  • Field of Study: Computer Science
  • Academic Advisor: Saman Amarasinghe
  • Practicum(s):
    Sandia National Laboratories, New Mexico (2019)
  • Degree(s):
    B.S. Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, 2016
    M.S. Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2019
    Ph.D. Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2024

Current Status

  • Status: Postdoc at MIT, Incoming Professor at Georgia Tech
  • Research Area: Computer Science
  • Personal URL: http://willowahrens.io

Publications

[1] J. Won, W. Ahrens, J. S. Emer, and S. Amarasinghe, “The Continuous Tensor Abstraction: Where Indices are Real,” Jul. 01, 2024, arXiv: arXiv:2407.01742. doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2407.01742.
[2] R. Patel, W. Ahrens, and S. Amarasinghe, “SySTeC: A Symmetric Sparse Tensor Compiler,” Jun. 13, 2024, arXiv: arXiv:2406.09266. doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2406.09266.
[3] V. Gladshtein, Q. Zhao, W. Ahrens, S. Amarasinghe, and I. Sergey, “Mechanised Hypersafety Proofs about Structured Data,” PLDI, vol. 8, p. 173:647-173:670, Jun. 2024, doi: 10.1145/3656403.
[4] K. Deeds, W. Ahrens, M. Balazinska, and D. Suciu, “Galley: Modern Query Optimization for Sparse Tensor Programs,” Aug. 31, 2024, arXiv: arXiv:2408.14706. doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2408.14706.
[5] W. Ahrens, T. F. Collin, R. Patel, K. Deeds, C. Hong, and S. Amarasinghe, “Finch: Sparse and Structured Array Programming with Control Flow,” Apr. 25, 2024, arXiv: arXiv:2404.16730. Accessed: Apr. 26, 2024. [Online]. Available: http://arxiv.org/abs/2404.16730
[6] A. Abdelfattah et al., “Interface for Sparse Linear Algebra Operations,” Nov. 20, 2024, arXiv: arXiv:2411.13259. doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2411.13259.
[7] W. Ahrens, D. Donenfeld, F. Kjolstad, and S. Amarasinghe, “Looplets: A Language for Structured Coiteration,” in Proceedings of the 21st ACM/IEEE International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization, in CGO. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, Feb. 2023, pp. 41–54. doi: 10.1145/3579990.3580020.
[8] W. Ahrens, F. Kjolstad, and S. Amarasinghe, “Autoscheduling for sparse tensor algebra with an asymptotic cost model,” in Proceedings of the 43rd ACM SIGPLAN International Conference on Programming Language Design and Implementation, in PLDI. New York, NY, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, Jun. 2022, pp. 269–285. doi: 10.1145/3519939.3523442.
[9] W. Ahrens and E. G. Boman, “On Optimal Partitioning For Sparse Matrices In Variable Block Row Format,” May 25, 2021, arXiv: arXiv:2005.12414. doi: 10.48550/arXiv.2005.12414.
[10] W. Ahrens, “Contiguous Graph Partitioning For Optimal Total Or Bottleneck Communication,” Jun. 21, 2021, arXiv: arXiv:2007.16192. Accessed: Sep. 17, 2021. [Online]. Available: http://arxiv.org/abs/2007.16192
[11] S. Mueller, W. Ahrens, S. Chou, F. Kjolstad, and S. Amarasinghe, “Sparse Tensor Transpositions: Brief Announcement,” in Proceedings of the 32nd ACM Symposium on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architectures, in SPAA. Virtual Event, USA: Association for Computing Machinery, Jul. 2020, pp. 559–561. doi: 10.1145/3350755.3400245.
[12] S. Mueller, W. Ahrens, S. Chou, F. Kjolstad, and S. Amarasinghe, “Sparse Tensor Transpositions,” May 21, 2020, arXiv: arXiv:2005.10427. Accessed: Aug. 03, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.10427
[13] W. Ahrens, J. Demmel, and H. D. Nguyen, “Algorithms for Efficient Reproducible Floating Point Summation,” ACM Trans. Math. Softw., vol. 46, no. 3, p. 22:1-22:49, Jul. 2020, doi: 10.1145/3389360.
[14] F. Kjolstad, W. Ahrens, S. Kamil, and S. Amarasinghe, “Tensor Algebra Compilation with Workspaces,” in 2019 IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Code Generation and Optimization (CGO), in CGO. CGO, Feb. 2019, pp. 180–192. doi: 10.1109/CGO.2019.8661185.
[15] W. Ahrens, “A Parallel Fill Estimation Algorithm for Sparse Matrices and Tensors in Blocked Formats,” Masters Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2019. Accessed: Nov. 20, 2019. [Online]. Available: https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/121653
[16] W. Ahrens, H. Xu, and N. Schiefer, “A Fill Estimation Algorithm for Sparse Matrices and Tensors in Blocked Formats,” in 2018 IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS), in IPDPS. IPDPS, May 2018, pp. 546–556. doi: 10.1109/IPDPS.2018.00064.
[17] W. Ahrens, J. Feser, and R. Hui, “LATE Ain’T Earley: A Faster Parallel Earley Parser,” Jul. 15, 2018, arXiv: arXiv:1807.05642. Accessed: Nov. 29, 2019. [Online]. Available: https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.05642
[18] W. Ahrens, J. Demmel, and H. D. Nguyen, “Efficient Reproducible Floating Point Summation and BLAS,” EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley, UCB/EECS-2016-121, Jun. 2016. [Online]. Available: https://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2016/EECS-2016-121.html
[19] R. Tumblin, W. Ahrens, S. Hartse, and R. Robey, “Parallel Compact Hash Algorithms for Computational Meshes,” SIAM J. Sci. Comput., vol. 37, no. 1, pp. C31–C53, Jan. 2015, doi: 10.1137/13093371X.

Awards

Warren Y. Dere Design Award, UC Berkeley, 2016
EECS Honors, UC Berkeley, 2012-2016
CS61C Image Convolution Optimization Contest 1st place, UC Berkeley, 2013
CS61A Scheme Recursive Art Contest 1st Place, UC Berkeley, 2012