IOWARP AT SC26
NOV 15–20 · CHICAGO
SC26 Get started

IOWARP / ABOUT

The team behind CLIO.

IOWarp is the research and engineering team at the Gnosis Research Center, Illinois Tech, that builds CLIO, the open-source stack connecting AI agents to scientific data and systems. It matters because organizations running scientific computing need AI they can inspect and run on their own terms. CLIO grows from long-running systems research, and IOWarp will launch the full stack at SC26.

Ideas
Systems lineage
Work with
Collaborators
Team
Team and support
01 / Systems lineage

Research that became a product.

The systems behind CLIO developed primitives for placement, runtime, intent, order, and task scheduling over years of work at the Gnosis Research Center. AI agents gave those primitives an urgent new client. LabStor’s runtime evolved directly into CLIO Core, and Hermes’s shared-memory library became its transport primitives; the others contributed ideas.

IOWarp builds on Hermes, an earlier system for buffering data across memory and storage tiers. The project set out to reshape the I/O layer for AI-infused scientific workflows. It framed the unit of exchange as Content, data plus a self-description that any workflow stage can read. As AI agents became real clients of scientific systems, that idea widened into context.

  1. 01HermesPlacement

    Policy-driven buffering across memory and storage tiers. The system IOWarp builds on.

  2. 02LabStorRuntime

    Customized I/O stacks built in user space. Its runtime evolved into the CLIO Core runtime.

  3. 03LABIOSIntent

    A label tells the data system what an operation is for.

  4. 04ChronoLogOrder

    A shared log records activity in time for provenance and replay.

  5. 05DTIOTask

    Data movement and transformation become schedulable work.

  6. 06CLIOContext

    The earlier primitives meet a new client: the scientific agent, from the GPU to the paper.

02 / Collaborators

Who the team works with.

03 / Team and support

Team and support.

Anthony Kougkas created IOWarp and leads it. The IOWarp team works at the Gnosis Research Center at Illinois Tech. The University of Utah team contributes materials science workflows and AI research, and The HDF Group is the community integration partner that co-develops parts of CLIO Core with the Illinois Tech team. Everyone is listed by what they contribute.

Creator and project lead

Anthony KougkasGitHub

Created IOWarp and leads its vision, architecture, and engineering.

Core development

CLIO Core

  • Luke LoganIllinois TechCLIO Core developer: GPU, transport, and tiering

Agents and tools

CLIO Agent and CLIO Kit

  • Jaime CernudaIllinois TechCLIO Agent developer
  • Shazzadul IslamIllinois TechResearcher: agentic scientific workflows
  • Aum SathwaraIllinois TechSoftware developer: MCP servers
  • Soham SonarIllinois TechSoftware developer: MCP servers

Research

Systems and agent research

  • Isa MuradliIllinois TechResearcher: GPU compression and direct GPU I/O
  • Izzet YildirimIllinois TechResearcher: agent I/O behavior and data staging
  • Jie YeIllinois TechResearcher: KV-cache-aware inference scheduling
  • Hua XuIllinois TechResearcher: multimodal agents for simulation monitoring
  • Rajni PawarIllinois TechResearcher: semantic search for HPC data
  • Meng TangIllinois TechResearcher: I/O-aware workflow scheduling, through August 2026
  • Keith BatemanIllinois TechResearcher: doctoral research
  • Neeraj RajeshIllinois TechResearcher: doctoral research
  • Zia Uddin ChowdhuryIllinois TechResearcher: doctoral research

Partners

The HDF Group · Community integration

  • Gerd HeberThe HDF GroupHDF Group development
  • Jordan HendersonThe HDF GroupCommunity liaison: technical coordination and outreach
  • Hyo Kyung (Joe) LeeThe HDF GroupSoftware developer: runtime and assimilation engine engineering, release and CI infrastructure
  • Matthew LarsonThe HDF GroupAgent developer: agentic HDF5, agent skills, and workflow guardrails
  • Larry KnoxThe HDF GroupSoftware developer: testing on national research systems
  • M. Scot BreitenfeldThe HDF GroupCommunity liaison: outreach and community engagement

University of Utah · Materials science

  • Jacob HochhalterUniversity of UtahResearcher: materials science workflows
  • Vivek SrikumarUniversity of UtahResearcher: AI and machine learning
  • Daisy QuachUniversity of UtahResearcher: materials research workflows
  • Oliver BenthamUniversity of UtahResearcher: the InfiniteScienceGym benchmark

Advisors

Others contribute through code, issues, testing, and talks. Every repository’s contributor history is public on GitHub. Summer interns, course projects, and community coding sessions have added to the work since 2025.

Support. The U.S. National Science Foundation supports IOWarp through collaborative awards OAC-2411318 and OAC-2411319.

Computing. This work used the DeltaAI system at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications [award OAC 2320345] through allocation CIS250329 from the Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS) program, which is supported by National Science Foundation grants #2138259, #2138286, #2138307, #2137603, and #2138296.

Collaboration. The DOE Genesis Mission and the American Science Cloud (AmSC) support IOWarp with computing and collaboration.

Next step

Meet the team
in Chicago at SC26.

IOWarp at SC26 Ways to collaborate

IOWarp will launch the full CLIO stack at SC26, November 15–20, 2026, at McCormick Place.