Mohammad Alian

Mohammad Alian is an Assistant Professor at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University. He earned his Ph.D. (2020) and MS (2015) from UIUC and UW-Madison, respectively. His research focuses on redefining data-delivery hierarchies in data centers through computer architecture and systems research.

• Current Projects: Near-Memory Acceleration, Accelerator Fusion, Micro-Service Co-Design, Compound AI Systems, Memory Specialization, Gem5 Simulation Tools.
• Recent Awards: MICRO Hall of Fame (2025), NSF CAREER (2022), Miller Faculty Scholar (2023), Open Innovation Contest placements.

His research spans Computer Architecture, Memory Systems, and Networked Computation, emphasizing algorithm-hardware co-design for distributed and heterogeneous computing. Recent work includes accelerating large-context LLMs (LongSight), optimizing gem5 simulation (Userspace Networking), and designing cross-accelerator chains (Data Motion Acceleration).

ARG (Alian Research Group) collaborates with industry leaders like NVIDIA, Samsung, and SRC/DARPA JUMP 2.0 ACE Center. He serves on PC/Organizing Committees for top conferences (MICRO, ISCA, HPCA) and teaches Data Center Architecture (ECE 6960) and Digital Logic (ECE 2300).

Scientific Awards
• Inducted into MICRO Hall of Fame (2025)
• NSF CAREER Award (2022)
• IEEE Micro Top Picks Honorable Mention (2017)
• Best Paper Nominee - HPCA 2017, MICRO 2018
• Open Innovation Contest: 2nd Place (2022), Finalist (2021)

As Principal Investigator, he leads NSF-funded projects (CCRI, AI-Assisted Scaffolding) and co-leads the $31.5M SRC/DARPA JUMP 2.0 ACE Center. His lab develops open-source tools like dist-gem5 and DPDK on gem5, with industry support from NVIDIA (equipment donation) and Samsung.