Chief Data Science Officer, San Diego Supercomputer Center, California, US.

“Societal Computing: Designing AI-Ready Ecosystems for a More Resilient Future“

Wednesday 18 February 2026

Abstract

Societal Computing reframes computing as an innovation engine for collective resilience and impact —linking cutting edge science, data, models, AI systems, and communities to solve complex challenges at scale. In this talk, I will outline a vision for building AI-ready data ecosystems that empower researchers, educators, policymakers, and the public to work from a shared digital fabric. Drawing on lessons from wildfire science, resilient agriculture, public health, and education, I will describe how structured collaboration, national cyberinfrastructure, and responsible AI create a new kind of societal operating system. Through examples from the National Data Platform and the Wildfire Science and Technology Commons, I will show how convergence research becomes actionable when we bridge data stewardship, computational workflows, multi-modal AI, and community-centered design. The talk will highlight emerging opportunities for building trustworthy, inclusive, and durable socio-technical systems that enable science and society to learn, adapt, and innovate together.

Bio

İlkay Altıntaş is the Chief Data Science Officer at the San Diego Supercomputer Center, University of California San Diego, and a Founding Faculty Fellow of the Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute within the School of Computing, Information, and Data Science. Specializing in scientific workflows and composable systems, she leads collaborative teams to deliver impactful results and sustainable solutions by making computational data science and AI more reusable, programmable, scalable, accessible, and reproducible. She is the Founding Director of the Societal Computing and Innovation Lab, which focuses on novel approaches to creating breakthrough technological innovations that address complex societal challenges. She is also the Founder of the WIFIRE Program for wildland fire innovations and the Principal Investigator of the NSF National Data Platform, the Wildfire Science and Technology Commons, and other diverse grants that advance scalable computing, AI, and data systems across the digital continuum from edge to HPC. Her honors include the 2015 IEEE TCSC Award for Excellence in Scalable Computing for Early Career Researchers and the 2017 ACM SIGHPC Emerging Woman Leader in Technical Computing Award. She serves on the elected Board of Governors for the IEEE Computer Society and was appointed by California Governor Gavin Newsom to the Wildfire Technology Research and Development Review Advisory Board. Ilkay received her Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam.

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