{"691448":{"#nid":"691448","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Professor Earns NSF CAREER Award for Data Center Research","body":[{"value":"\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESchool of Computer Science Assistant Professor \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/faculty.cc.gatech.edu\/~amsmti3\/\u0022\u003E\u003Cstrong\u003EAhmed Saeed\u003C\/strong\u003E\u003C\/a\u003E has received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support his research on improving data center efficiency. \u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe award is the NSF\u2019s most prestigious honor for early-career faculty and supports researchers with the potential to serve as academic role models and to lead advances in their department or organization. \u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u0022Receiving the NSF CAREER Award is a tremendous honor and an opportunity to advance my long-term research agenda,\u201d Saeed said. \u201cIt was only made possible by the creativity and dedication of my students and the unwavering support and guidance of my family and mentors.\u201d\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EModern data center servers manage resource allocation and load distribution separately, which can result in conflicting decisions. A key idea behind Saeed\u2019s proposal is to develop an integrated view of these operations to improve efficiency without requiring additional hardware.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cWhen performing operations jointly, you can maximize performance and completely eliminate the chances of conflict,\u201d Saeed said.\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAnother driver of the project is what Saeed calls the \u201csingle queue fallacy.\u201d This occurs when data center load controllers assume that all incoming requests to a server wait in a single queue to be processed.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn reality, servers are much more complex than this and can handle multiple queues at the same time. Modern workloads have heterogeneous load requirements, meaning that different requests end up landing in different queues.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThis single queue fallacy can lead to severe underutilization of these servers,\u201d he said.\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003ERecent research by Saeed shows that a server\u2019s throughput can be doubled by avoiding the single-queue fallacy. \u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe potential benefits of this project are wide-ranging and impactful. Maximizing server efficiency would reduce costs and energy use. With fewer resources needed, the project could contribute to more sustainable computing infrastructure. Lower operational costs would benefit companies, application developers, and users.\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cThe goal of my proposal is to develop mechanisms and policies that can allow data center operators to easily maximize the utilization of all hardware,\u201d he said.\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAs part of the educational component of his proposal, Saeed plans to organize competitions for students to design more efficient load and resource management algorithms using artificial intelligence.\u0026nbsp;\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E\u003Cdiv\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn addition to this award, Saeed was named a \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/news.research.gatech.edu\/2025\/11\/13\/bbiss-welcomes-seven-new-faculty-fellows\u0022 rel=\u0022noreferrer noopener\u0022 target=\u0022_blank\u0022\u003EBrook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems (BBISS) Faculty Fellow\u003C\/a\u003E last fall to support his goal of making data centers more sustainable.\u202f\u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003C\/div\u003E","summary":"","format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003ESchool of Computer Science Assistant Professor Ahmed Saeed has received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support his research on improving data center efficiency. \u0026nbsp;\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe potential benefits of this project are wide-ranging and impactful. Maximizing server efficiency would reduce costs and energy use. With fewer resources needed, the project could contribute to more sustainable computing infrastructure. Lower operational costs would benefit companies, application developers, and users.\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"School of Computer Science Assistant Professor Ahmed Saeed has received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support his research on improving data center efficiency. "}],"uid":"36532","created_gmt":"2026-08-04 20:21:56","changed_gmt":"2026-08-05 05:14:56","author":"Morgan Usry","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","location":"Atlanta, GA","dateline":{"date":"2026-08-04T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2026-08-04T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"680791":{"id":"680791","type":"image","title":"Ahmed-Said-Mohamed_86A1028-copy.jpg","body":null,"created":"1785906796","gmt_created":"2026-08-05 05:13:16","changed":"1785906796","gmt_changed":"2026-08-05 05:13:16","alt":"man standing in front of computer servers","file":{"fid":"265109","name":"Ahmed-Said-Mohamed_86A1028-copy.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/2026\/08\/05\/Ahmed-Said-Mohamed_86A1028-copy.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/2026\/08\/05\/Ahmed-Said-Mohamed_86A1028-copy.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":109815,"path_740":"http:\/\/hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/2026\/08\/05\/Ahmed-Said-Mohamed_86A1028-copy.jpg?itok=s0fvXuul"}}},"media_ids":["680791"],"groups":[{"id":"47223","name":"College of Computing"},{"id":"50875","name":"School of Computer Science"}],"categories":[{"id":"194606","name":"Artificial Intelligence"},{"id":"153","name":"Computer Science\/Information Technology and Security"},{"id":"135","name":"Research"},{"id":"194836","name":"Sustainability"}],"keywords":[{"id":"194190","name":"AI data centers"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"193655","name":"Artificial Intelligence at Georgia Tech"},{"id":"39531","name":"Energy and Sustainable Infrastructure"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EMorgan Usry, Communications Officer, morgan.usry@cc.gatech.edu\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["morgan.usry@cc.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}