Algorithms and Big Data

One of the fast-growing areas of IT today involves processing large volumes of data. Many well-known IT companies (for example Yandex, Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn) process massive amounts of information daily in the course of their regular business operations. The need to process these large volumes of data has fundamentally changed the principles underlying how IT systems are built, affecting: data analysis and storage, task planning, service coordination, effective resource use. The seminar was given a general title for a reason – so it can encompass as wide a range of issues as possible that are relevant to the IT industry today.

The seminar moderators and participants work at Yandex and have many years' experience of building and operating various kinds of distributed systems. At the start of the Fall semester, we will discuss several key current issues in this area. Throughout the semester, students will give presentations on the latest achievements and external speakers will be invited to talk about their work.

Seminar audiences will gain an overview of current problems and issues in the industry, decide on their research subject, and, possibly, be offered work experience at Yandex.

Seminars will cover:

• Distributed, high-load, and high-availability systems (architecture, examples, construction).
• Distributed algorithms, external memory algorithms, memory-error resistant algorithms.
• Scheduling computing power.
• The economics of Big Data (effective storage, processing and transfer of information).

See Seminar webpage for more detailed information.

Seminar moderators: Maxim Babenko and Ivan Puzyrevsky