CV and Research

Current research interests and projects

  • (new) As a member of PEPR CAMELIA, whose aim is to provide a complete French AI accelerator, I am working on automation of reasoning about numerical properties (precision/accuracy, data formats, arithmetic units, etc) of AI algorithms during compilation phase. Together with Guillaume Melquiond and Claude-Pierre Jeannerod we are currently looking for interns and PhD candidates.
  • As a member of PEPR IA Holigrail, I am working on hardware-aware inference and training of deep neural networks. With F. de Dinechin and our students we are working on new custom data formats for machine learning and associated arithmetic operators. The goal is to provide efficient quantisation-aware training tools that bridge the hardware gap between simulation and inference deployment. We target convolutional networks deployed on FPGA.
  • For larger-scale LM models, such as BERT, mixed-precision approaches using standard integer or low-precision floating-point formats are more suitable. With my postdoc Cédric and PhD student Xavier, we are looking into numerical aspects of acceleration of language models, both during training and fine-tuning to domain-specific data sets. Furthermore, with Richard Dufour we look into the impact of quantization onto language capabilities of those heavily reduced models.
  • From mathematical optimization point of view, I am interested in modelling hardware circuit design as a combinatorial optimization problem, and then solving it with different exact or heuristic approaches. We are currently working on new constraint programming-based models with Christine Solnon and our student Theo.
  • (new) On signal processing side, I am currently collaborating with Romain Michon and Nicolas Gry, who’s doing his PhD with us, on AI-based audio signal processing algorithms and on their suitability for real-time deployment. We are interested in making a connection between the arsenal of quantization techniques I have for DNNs and an actual deployment of a complex CNN for audio signal processing for real-time inference in constrained devices.

PhD students and postdocs

  • 2026-now Nicolas Gry is working on AI-based audio signal processing for real-time deployment on resource-constrained devices, PhD co-supervision with R. Michon
  • 2025-now Théo Cantaloube is working on constraint programming for digital circuit design, PhD co-supervision with C. Solnon
  • 2025-2025 Cédric Gernigon, postdoc, worked on mixed-precision quantization of language models
  • 2024-now Romain Bouarah is working on custom data formats and arithmetic operators for DNN inference, PhD co-supervision with F. de Dinechin
  • 2024-now Bastien Barbe is working on hardware architectures for efficient DNN inference, PhD co-supervision with F. de Dinechin
  • 2023 – now Xavier Pillet is working on Natural Language Processing acceleration, CIFRE thesis with Valeuriad, co-supervision with N. Greffard and R. Dufour at Nantes university
  • 2021-2022 Wassim Seifeddine, worked on dynamic-precision training of DNN, supervisor 50%, with C. Jermann et S. Filip. Wassim quit the thesis after 12 months due to moving out of Nantes.

Professional experience

Oct 2023 – now Full Faculty Researcher (tenured)/ Chargée de recherche (fonctionnaire), Inria, CITI laboratory, team EMERAUDE, Lyon, France

Sep 2019 – Sep 2023 Associate Professor (tenured), Nantes Université, Computer Science department and LS2N research lab, team OGRE, Nantes, France

Apr – Aug 2019 Research fellow, Intel Corporation – AI Research Group, San Diego, USA

Feb – Apr 2019 Invited Researcher, Max Planck Institute for Software Systems, Kaiserslautern, Germany

Oct 2017 – Feb 2019 Postdoctoral researcher, Inria – ENS Lyon – LIP, Lyon, France

Sep 2014 – Sep 2017 PhD Candidate & Teaching Assistant, Sorbonne Universités – UPMC – LIP6, Paris, France

Sep 2012 – Aug 2013 Software engineer, IT department of Odessa National University, Odessa, Ukraine

Education

2024-2017 PhD in Computer Science at Sorbonne University, University Paris 6 and LIP6 laboratory, Paris, France

2008-2014 Bachelor and Master in Applied Mathematics at Odessa National I. I. Metchnikov University, Ukraine