Hello, my name is Alex Fallin.
I am a Computer Science PhD student working as part of the ECL under Dr. Martin Burtscher at Texas State University. I received my B.S. in Computer Science from Texas State in Spring 2020. I am currently working on parallel lossy and lossless compression schemes as part of the LC project.
I just had two papers accepted. One at ASPLOS '25 and the other at IPDPS '25! My previous work includes MSTs on the GPU, bit flip minimization in memory transfers, and finding an efficient parallel algorithm for the rectilinear Steiner tree problem.
For more information about the lab, please look at the ECL website.
Research Interests
My general research area is high-performance computing. In the past I have worked on adapting important algorithms to be run in parallel on the CPU and increasing the energy efficiency of GPU applications. Currently, I am working on lossy data compression.
Projects
2021 - Present | Lossy Compression
My main current work is developing a lossy compression techniques that allows a user compress scientific data at extreme throughputs. In addition to high-speed compression, I am also working on methods to mitigate the artifacts that are introduced in lossy compression.
2021 - Present | LC Project
I also help develop and maintain a comprehensive compression framework used in synthesizing both lossy and lossless compression algorithms. This framework is the LC project, funded by the DoE.
2022 | GPU Parallel MST Computation
Worked on a parallel MST algorithm designed specifically for the GPU. We combined optimizations from the literature, along with some entirely new optimizations to parallelize MST generation on the GPU. This produced the fastest MST algorithm in the literature at time of publication.
2019 - 2021 | Energy Reduction via Bit-Flip Minimization
I worked with Dr. Burtscher on algorithms and techniques for reducing energy consumption on the GPU via reduction in switching activity over the bus.
2019 | Parallel Rectilinear Steiner Minimum Tree Generation
I worked with Dr. Burtscher as an undergraduate researcher and implemented a rectilinear Steiner minimum tree algorithm.
Summer 2018 | REUSSA Texas State
I worked with Dr. Rodion Podorozhny and Charles Rule on a project where we evaluated reinforcement learning and it's ability to produce optimal strategy in the game of Guess Who. This work was done as part of a 10-week REU funded by the NSF.
Publications
Alex Fallin, Noushin Azami, Sheng Di, Franck Cappello, and Martin Burtscher. Fast and Effective Lossy Compression on GPUs and CPUs with Guaranteed Error Bounds. Proceedings of the 39th IEEE International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium. June 2025.
Noushin Azami, Alex Fallin, and Martin Burtscher. Efficient Lossless Compression of Scientific Floating-Point Data on CPUs and GPUs. Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems. March 2025.
Alex Fallin, Andres Gonzalez, Jarim Seo, Randy Cornell, and Martin Burtscher. A High-Performance MST Implementation for GPUs. Proceedings of the 2023 ACM/IEEE International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage, and Analysis. November 2023.
Alex Fallin and Martin Burtscher. Reducing Memory-Bus Energy Consumption of GPUs via Software-Based Bit-Flip Minimization. Proceedings of the Workshop on Memory Centric High-Performance Computing. November 2022.
Alex Fallin, Aarti Kothari, Jiayuan He, Christopher Yanez, Keshav Pingali, Rajit Manohar, and Martin Burtscher. A Simple, Fast, and GPU-friendly Steiner-Tree Heuristic. Proceedings of the 23rd IEEE International Workshop on Parallel and Distributed Scientific and Engineering Computing. May 2022.
Teaching Experience
DIA - Data Structures and Algorithms 2020-21 Academic Year
In spring 2021 I worked as an instructional assistant for the Facebook Engineer in Residence Karen Lu (~50 students). In fall 2020 I worked as an instructional assistant for the Facebook Engineer in Residence Alisha Harold (~150 students). During my time with these classes, I hosted office hours to help students, would occasionally lecture in class over assignments and how to complete them, and graded programming assignments.
Membership
President - Doctoral Student Organization for Computer Science at Texas State
Student Member ACM
Student Member IEEE Computer Society
Accolades
2023 TXST CS Research Excellence Award
2022 TXST CS Research Excellence Award
2022 TXST CS Graduate Academic Excellence Award
2021 TXST CS Graduate Academic Excellence Award
2020 TXST CS Scholarship
Contact
Feel free to contact me about my research or if you have any questions for me!
My email is alexfallin "at" txstate "dot" edu