About me

Hi there! I'm a Research Scientist at FAIR, Meta. I'm excited about building efficient, high performance and sustainable ML systems.

I received my Ph.D. degree from the Department of Computer Science at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Selected Publications [Full List]

Efficient ML Training and Inference

[ICML'24] [paper] [bib]

CHAI: Clustered Head Attention for Efficient LLM Inference

S. Agarwal, B. Acun, B. Homer, M. Elhoushi, Y. Lee, S. Venkataraman, D. Papailiopoulos, C.-J. Wu
International Conference on Machine Learning, 2024.

[MLSys'21] [Outstanding Paper Award] [paper] [bib] [code]

TT-Rec: Tensor Train Compression for Deep Learning Recommendation Models

C. Yin, B. Acun, X. Liu, C. J. Wu
Conference on Machine Learning and Systems,2021.

[HPCA'21] [paper] [bib]

Understanding Training Efficiency of Deep Learning Recommendation Models at Scale

B. Acun, M. Murphy, X. Wang, J. Nie, C. J. Wu, K. Hazelwood
IEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture, 2021.

[Micro'21] [paper] [bib]

Datacenter-Scale Analysis and Optimization of GPU Machine Learning Workloads

L. Wesolowski, B. Acun, V. Andrei, A. Aziz, G. Dankel, C. Gregg, X. Meng, C. Meurillon, D. Sheahan, L. Tian, J. Yang, P. Yu, K. Hazelwood
IEEE Micro, 2021.

Sustainable Datacenters and AI

[NeurIPS'25] [paper] [bib] [code] [talk at UC Berkeley]

CATransformers: Carbon Aware Transformers Through Joint Model-Hardware Optimization

I. Wang, M. Elhoushi, H. E. Sumbul, S. Hsia, D. Jiang, N. Ardalani, D. Mahajan, C.-J. Wu, B. Acun
Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, 2025.

[ASPLOS'23] [IEEE Micro Top Picks'24 Honorable Mention] [paper] [bib] [code] [talk at Stanford]

Carbon Explorer: A Holistic Approach for Designing Carbon Aware Datacenters

B. Acun, B. Lee, F. Kazhamiaka, K. Maeng, M. Chakkaravarthy, U. Gupta, D. Brooks, C. J. Wu
ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems, 2023.

[MLSys'22] [paper] [bib]

Sustainable AI: Environmental Implications, Challenges and Opportunities

C. J. Wu, R. Raghavendra, U. Gupta, B. Acun, et al.
Conference on Machine Learning and Systems, 2022.

Systems & Computer Architecture

[HPCA'19] [paper] [bib]

Power-Aware Heterogeneous Node Assembly

B. Acun, A Buyuktosunoglu, E. K. Lee, Y. Park
IEEE International Symposium on High-Performance Computer Architecture, 2019.

[ICS'16] [paper] [bib]

Variation Among Processors Under Turbo Boost in HPC Systems

B. Acun , P. Miller, L. V. Kalé
International Conference on Supercomputing, 2016.

[Computer'16] [Cover Featured] [paper] [bib]

Power, Reliability, Performance: One System to Rule Them All

B. Acun, A. Langer, H. Menon, O. Sarood, E. Totoni, and L. V. Kalé.
IEEE Computer, Energy Efficient Computing Special Issue, 2016.

[SC'14] [paper] [bib] [code]

Parallel Programming with Migratable Objects: Charm++ in Practice

B. Acun, A. Gupta, N. Jain, A. Langer, H. Menon, E. Mikida, X. Ni, M. Robson, Y. Sun, E. Totoni, L. Wesolowski, L. V. Kalé.
Supercomputing (SC), 2014.

Honors and Awards

2018 ACM SigHPC Dissertation Award Honorable Mention.
2018 Selected as an Heidelberg Laureate
Heidelberg Laureate Forum brings together Turing Laureates with young researchers.
2017 Selected as a Rising Star in EECS, Stanford University
2017 Kenichi Miura Award, UIUC
This award honors a graduate student for excellence in High Performance Computing.
2017 Illinois Innovation Prize Finalist, Technology Entrepreneur Center, UIUC
The prize is awarded on to the most innovative students on campus annually (with $2500 prize for finalists).
2016 AWARE (Accelerating Women And underRepresented Entrepreneurs) Grant Winner, UIUC Research Park
A 2500$ grant to develop a prototype for innovative ideas.
2012-13 Saburo Muroga Endowed Fellowship, UIUC
2012 Salutatorian, second highest GPA among graduating class, Bilkent University
2011 Erasmus Exchange Program Scholarship, Uppsala University, Sweden
2008-12 Bachelor of Science Full Tution-Waiver with Stipend Merit Scholarship, Bilkent University

Patents

Device Identification via Chip Manufacturing Related Fingerprints
B. Acun
US Patent No: 11,205,018, 2019.
Locality Aware Data Loading for Machine Learning
C. C. Yang, G. Cong, B. Acun, A. Morari
US Patent No: 11,093,862, 2019.
Learning-based Thermal Estimation in Multicore Architectures
E. K. Lee, B. Acun, Y. Park, P. W. Coteus
US Patent No: 11,334,398, 2018.
Variation-Aware Intra-Node Power Shifting Among Different Hardware Components
E. K. Lee, B. Acun, Y. Park, A. Morari, A. Buyuktosunoglu
US Patent No: 10,761,583, 2018.
Job Scheduling Based on Node and Application Characteristics
B. Acun, E. K. Lee, Y. Park
US Patent No: 10,725,834, 2017.
Power Efficiency Aware Node Component Assembly
B. Acun, E. K. Lee, Y. Park
US Patent No: 10,831,252, 2017.
Systems and Methods for Computer Input
B. Acun, E. Candan
US Patent App. No: 15/252,163, 2017.

Services and Activities

Organizing Activities

PC Chair for the HPC for Machine Learning track at Supercomputing (SC'24)
PC Member at Conference on Machine Learning and Systems (MLSys'22 & '23 & '24 & '25 & '26)
PC Member at IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS'22 & '23)
PC Member at Workshop on Benchmarking Machine Learning Workloads on Emerging Hardware (MLSys'21)
PC Member at the 37th IEEE International Conference on Computer Design (ICCD'19).
PC Member at the Women in High Performance Computing Workshop (WHPC at SC'18).
Workshop Organizer for “Ethics in Computing Workshop” at Heidelberg Forum (HLF'18).
Co-organizer, Women Empowered in STEM Conference (weSTEM'14).

Peer Review Activities

External Reviewer for IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS'22).
External Reviewer for IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing (TCC'19).
External Reviewer for Latin America High Performance Computing Conference (CARLA) (CARLA'19).

Other Activities

Technical Session Chair, "Data Centers" & "Energy Efficiency and Measurements" Sessions at IGSC'19.
Technical Session Chair, “Interfaces Session”, at 15th Annual Charm++ Workshop and Applications, Charm++'17.
Technical Session Chair, “Applications Session”, at 14th Annual Charm++ Workshop and Applications, Charm++'16.
Charm++ Hands-on Tutorial, at Argonne Training Program on Extreme-Scale Computing, ATPESC'15.
Graduate Student Mentor, Department of Computer Science at UIUC. 2013-2015.