ISE Graduate Seminar: Muyiwa Balogun

Scaling AI Infrastructure from Rack to Orbit

Abstract

AI is growing at extraordinary speed. According to Epoch AI's estimates, the compute used to train frontier models has been doubling roughly every five to six months. As that happens, the bottleneck is no longer compute alone. Moving data has become a dominant constraint, and photonics is a critical enabler of scale.

This talk explains how AI-driven scale-up and scale-out are changing data-center architecture, and why power, thermal management, and networking have become system-level constraints. It then examines how emerging architectures, including modular, edge, distributed, subsea, and spacebased computing, could each address a different part of the problem.

The core message is that AI scaling is no longer only a compute problem. It is a coupled systems problem spanning compute, networking, optics, power, cooling, geography, reliability, economics, and operations. The future data center will therefore be a portfolio of architecture, each optimized for different workloads and constraints.

The talk closes with the systems-level opportunities that open up once AI infrastructure is approached as one integrated engineering problem, from the rack to orbit.

Bio

Muyiwa Balogun is currently with Keysight Technologies as an Application Expert in high-speed optical transmission systems, AI-driven data center interconnects, and photonics technologies. With international experience across Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and North America, he has successfully bridged advanced research with industry applications through system design, technical leadership, customer engagement, and innovation.

Balogun's expertise includes optical transmission systems, wireless communications, Ethernet technologies, photonic simulation, and machine learning. He has delivered invited technical talks, authored technical publications, and led training and solution development for enterprise and research organizations.

Balogun holds a PhD in telecommunications from the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa, and a diploma in project management from University College Dublin, Ireland. This combination of deep technical knowledge and structured project management expertise enables him to drive complex technology initiatives, foster crossfunctional collaboration, and deliver impactful solutions for customers and industry partners.