Omar Awile

Computing
High Performance Computing

 

 
 
Omar Awile is a High Performance Engineer in the High Performance Computing team of the Computing Division and Schürmann Group.

In the HPC Team, he works on a number of diverse topics. These range from developing and maintaining Blue Brain’s cellular simulation toolchain based on the NEURON simulation framework and the NMODL DSL, to opportunities to further optimize and scale Blue Brain’s HPC codes. With the Schürmann group, he investigates novel approaches for pushing Blue Brain’s envelope in terms of parallel scalability and computational performance such as through physics-informed neural networks.

Prior to joining the Blue Brain Project, Omar worked at the Intel Exascale Lab in Paris and at CERN’s Openlab, researching multi- and manycore hardware platforms and participating in various international collaborations with academic and industrial partners.

Omar received his Ph.D. at ETH Zurich in 2013 in the field of High-Performance Computing. During his doctoral studies he developed a parallel hybrid particle-mesh numerical library and DSL that bridges the knowledge gap, providing a framework for scientists to use large-scale computing for simulating complex biological systems.

In his free time, Omar goes scuba-diving and enjoys travelling and photography.


Publications

O. Awile, P. Kumbhar, N. Cornu, S. Dura-Bernal, J. G. King, O. Lupton, I. Magkanaris, R. A. McDougal, A. J.H. Newton, F. Pereira, A. Săvulescu, N. T. Carnevale, W. W. Lytton, M. L. Hines, F. Schürmann, Modernizing the NEURON Simulator for Sustainability, Portability, and Performance, Frontiers in Neuroinformatics, 2022

P. Kumbhar, O. Awile, L. Keegan, J. Alonso, J. G. King, M. Hines and F. Schürmann. 2019. An optimizing multi-platform source-to-source compiler framework for the NEURON MODeling Language, Proc. ICCS, International Conference, 2020

O. Awile, M. Mitrović, S. Reboux, I. F. Sbalzarini, A domain-specific programming language for particle simulations on distributed-memory parallel computers, Proc. PARTICLES, International Conference, 2013

F. Büyükkeçeci, O. Awile, I. F. Sbalzarini, A portable OpenCL implementation of generic particle-mesh and mesh-particle interpolation in 2D and 3D, Parallel Computing, 39(2), 2013, 94-111


O. Awile, F. Büyükkeçeci, S. Reboux, I. F. Sbalzarini, Fast neighbor lists for adaptive-resolution particle simulations, Computer Physics Communications, 183(5), 2012, 1073-1081