Max Hawkins

CSE PhD student at Georgia Tech helping maximize the net-benefit of computing on society

I’m a Computational Science and Engineering PhD student at Georgia Tech advised by Richard Vuduc and Spencer Bryngelson.

My high-level research interest is to enable performant and efficient scientific computing at scale while minimizing the adverse impacts this has on the world (primarily energy and water consumption).

Current research projects include:

  • In-line lossy compression to minimize communication volumes in scientific HPC applications
  • Runtime and energy impacts of dense hardware accelerators for potentially sparse data
  • Opportunities and challenges of integrating datacenters into urban environments
  • Accurately quantifying and conveying a user's HPC energy/water/carbon footprint

If you have a comment, question, or otherwise want to contact me, please email mhawkins60@gatech.edu. I’m also open to mentoring/collaborating with both undergraduate and graduate students in any of the above areas.

Personally, I enjoy working with my hands and touching grass when I’m not studying or coding. The implementations of that idea are seen in my interests in woodworking, gardening, and more recently, art. I also love to travel and try to keep myself open to unexpected, novel experiences.

Last Updated: March 18th, 2025