Data Clustering Algorithms on the GPU: Challenges and Benefits
Dr. Kai Kohlhoff is a Simbios Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow in Stanford's Bioengineering Department. He is working with Prof. Vijay Pande and Prof. Russ Altman on physics-based simulation of biological systems. Apart from running Molecular Dynamics simulations on proteins that act as receptors in the cell-membrane, one of his key interests is the development of new algorithms that make use of the massively parallel architecture of GPUs. This interest was first sparked by an undergraduate research project during which he wrote assembly code for running particle simulations on the vector processors of a Playstation 2. In collaboration with the Hsu group at SFSU he is working on creating the open-source Campaign data clustering library.
After receiving first degrees in computer science, bioinformatics, and biology from Jacobs University Bremen in Germany, Dr. Kohlhoff completed a Master's in computational biology at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge, UK. While doing his PhD at the same university he developed a new method to incorporate experimental data from NMR spectroscopy in Molecular Dynamics simulations. His interests include computer graphics, software engineering, analytical geometry, genetics, and the science of aging.