2025_10_15.html

---
layout: talk
title: "Building Scalable Agentic Systems for Science with Academy"
authors: Alok Kamatar (University of Chicago)
event_date: October 15, 2025
times: 11:00-11:30 PST / 14:00-14:30 EST / 20:00-20:30 CEST
talk_number: 7
speakers: [alok_kamatar]
given: true
image: /images/talks/kamatar-banner.png
presentation: /files/talks/20251015-Alok-academy.pdf
video: https://www.youtube.com/embed/c_MRuiwyqA0?si=FND8r_KynSXg85Od
---

Agentic systems, in which diverse agents cooperate to tackle challenging 
problems, are exploding in popularity in the AI community. However, the 
agentic frameworks used to build these systems have not previously enabled use 
with research cyberinfrastructure. In this talk, I will introduce Academy, a 
modular and extensible middleware designed to deploy autonomous agents across 
the federated research ecosystem, including HPC systems, experimental 
facilities, and data repositories. I will situate Academy in the landscape of 
existing agentic frameworks and discuss how the design of Academy addresses 
the unique needs of scientific agents. Finally, I will present use-cases of 
agentic workflows and show an example of how we used Academy to build a more 
intelligent and efficient workflow for materials design.