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Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for February
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CS Distinguished Lecture Series
Tue, Feb 06, 2007 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Prof. David SalesinUniversity of WashingtonTitle: Unleashing the Computer's Potential for CommunicationAbstract: In this talk, David Salesin claims that the real market for PCs lies in their vast potential as a communications medium. Already, millions of PowerPoint presentations are made each day, hundreds of thousands of documents are archived on line, and literally billions of web pages are searched. Yet, so far, computers are used largely just to emulate the appearance of existing, physical media, such as slide transparencies or 8-1/2" x 11" sheets of paper. Drawing upon examples that range from computer-generated illustration and virtual cinematography to adaptive document layout and animated presentations, David discusses some of the research challenges he sees in harnessing the power of the computer to create more powerful communications media than exist today. Biography: David Salesin is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington and is also a Principal Scientist in the Advanced Technology Labs at Adobe Systems. Salesin's research interests are in computer graphics and include digital photography and video, automatic design & presentation of information, non-photorealistic rendering, visualization, image-based rendering, digital typography, and color.Hosted by Prof. Karen Liu
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Nancy Levien
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CS Colloquium-David Woodruff
Thu, Feb 15, 2007 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Title: Efficient and Private Distance ApproximationDavid WoodruffMassachusetts Institute of TechnologyAbstract:I will cover two of my results in distance approximation. Consider the setting in which two parties want to approximate the distance between their input vectors.First I will consider l_2, the Euclidean distance. It is known how to approximate l_2 efficiently. However, if we require the protocol to be private, that is, neither party can learn more than what follows from the distance and his/her private input, much less is known. Feigenbaum, Ishai, Malkin, Nissim, Strauss, and Wright [FIMNSW] gave a protocol with O(sqrt{d}) communication for privately approximating the Hamming distance of two d-dimensional vectors. I will give a private protocol with polylog(d) communication for l_2. As a special case, this yields an exponential improvement over [FIMNSW] for the Hamming distance.Next I will consider the l_p distance, for p > 2. This problem is motivated by recent research in streaming algorithms, and has applications in database theory. I will give a 1-round protocol achieving optimal communication for this problem, up to logarithmic factors. It is easy to implement in the streaming model, and consequently resolves the main open question of a 1996 paper of Alon, Matias, and Szegedy.Joint work with Piotr Indyk (STOC 2005, TCC 2006).Biography: David Woodruff is a fifth-year PhD student at MIT. He received his master's in computer science, and B.S. degrees in both computer science and mathematics, all from MIT. He is interested in theoretical computer science, particularly algorithms, complexity theory, and cryptography. Hosted by David Kempe
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Nancy Levien
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CS Colloquium- Julia Chuzhoy
Thu, Feb 22, 2007 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Dr. Julie ChuzhoySchool of MathematicsThe Institute for Advanced StudyTitle: Cuts and Flows in Directed GraphsAbstract:Cuts and flows are among the most basic graph theoretic notions.
Applications that require solving graph cut or flow problems arise in almost every area of computer science. The study of the connection between flows and cuts dates back to the late fifties when Ford and Fulkerson proved that in the single-commodity environment, minimum cut equals maximum flow in any graph. A natural generalization of this result would be establishing the relationship between flows and cuts in the presence of multiple commodities. This relationship is usually expressed via the notion of flow-cut gap:
the maximum ratio, achievable for any graph, between the maximum multi-commodity flow and the corresponding cut value, called minimum multicut.Flow-cut gaps have been extensively studied for more than five decades now, and they are widely used in the design and the analysis of algorithms. One of the major breakthroughs in this area is a complete understanding of the flow-cut gap in undirected graphs, which was proved to be logarithmic. In spite of this success, the flow-cut gaps have remained poorly understood in directed graphs. In particular, it has remained an open question whether the flow-cut gap in directed graphs is also logarithmic. In this talk we will answer this question in the negative by showing that, in sharp contrast to the undirected case, the flow-cut gap in directed graphs is polynomial.Bio:Julia Chuzhoy is a member in the School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study. She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Technion, Israel, and spent two years as a postdoctoral associate at MIT and University of Pennsylvania. Chuzhoy's research area is theoretical computer science, with the main emphasis on design and analysis of algorithms, approximation of NP-hard problems and hardness of approximation proofs.Hosted by David KempeSnacks will be served
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Nancy Levien
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The Free Software Movement and the GNU/Linux Operating System
Mon, Feb 26, 2007 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Dr. Richard StallmanAbstract:Richard Stallman will speak about the goals and philosophy of the Free
Software Movement, and the status and history the GNU operating system, which
in combination with the kernel Linux is now used by tens of millions of users
world-wide.Bio:Richard Stallman launched the development of the GNU operating system (see www.gnu.org) in 1984. GNU is free software: everyone has the freedom to copy it and redistribute it, as well as to make changes either large or small. The GNU/Linux system, basically the GNU operating system with Linux added, is used on tens of millions of
computers today. Stallman has received the ACM Grace Hopper Award, a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's
Pioneer award, and the the Takeda Award for Social/Economic Betterment, as well as several honorary doctorates.
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Nancy Levien
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Narrative Generation and Interactive Storytelling
Tue, Feb 27, 2007 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Dr. Mark RiedlResearch ScientistUSC Institute for Creative TechnologiesAbstract:Storytelling is a pervasive part of the human experience; it is a common element in entertainment including modern computer games, it commonly occurs in human-to-human communication, and it is an element found in education and training. Some psychologists believe the pervasiveness of narrative is due to the possibility that the same cognitive processes used to process and generate narrative descriptions are the same as those used in every-day sense-making activities. In this talk, I will describe research into two applications of artificial intelligence to narrative: narrative generation, and interactive narrative. Narrative generation is the problem of computationally creating a narrative from minimal user input. I will describe research efforts into an AI planning-based algorithm for generating narrative sequences. Stories are complicated constructs; the narrative generator I will present reasons about two important criteria for stories: plot coherence - the notion that events in a narrative form causal chains that are relevant to an outcome - and character intentionality - the notion that characters actions in a narrative appear to be intentional and believably motivated. Interactive narrative is a form of interactive entertainment in which a computer system attempts to tell a story in which an interactive user is able to influence the direction and/or outcome of the narrative. I will present a generative approach to interactive narrative that uses automated narrative generation to dynamically adapt the expected narrative structure to accommodate the user's actions without abandoning the goal of delivering a coherent narrative experience. The generative drama management has been applied to entertainment contexts and training and education contexts.Biography:Mark Riedl is a research scientist at the University of Southern California Institute for Creative Technologies (ICT). Mark received a bachelor's degree and MS in Computer Science from North Carolina State University with a minor in Psychology. In 2004, he receive a Ph.D. in Computer Science from North Carolina State University for his work in artificial intelligence techniques for generating stories with recognizable plot structures and character fidelity. Mark joined the ICT in 2004, applying his work in narrative generation to create interactive narrative experiences for leadership training. In addition to his work on interactive narrative, Mark is also working on projects for intelligent, adaptive opponents in training simulations, automated scenario authoring, and intelligent virtual camera control for Machinima generation. Mark has numerous academic publications on narrative generation, interactive narrative, and other computer game AI related topics. In 2006, he received best paper awards at the 15th Conference on Behavior Representation in Modeling and Simulation and the 3rd International Conference on Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and Entertainment.Host: Rajiv MaheswaranSnacks will be provided.
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Nancy Levien
