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Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for February
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Computer Science George A. Bekey Distinguished Lecture: Jeff Dean (Google) - Building More Intelligent Computer Systems with Large-Scale Deep Learning
Thu, Feb 05, 2015 @ 03:30 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jeff Dean, Google
Talk Title: Building More Intelligent Computer Systems with Large-Scale Deep Learning
Series: CS Distinguished Lectures
Abstract: Reception from 3:30-4:00PM.
Three years ago we started a small effort to see if we could build training systems for large-scale deep neural networks and use these to make significant progress on various perceptual tasks. Since then, our software systems and algorithms have been used by dozens of different groups at Google to train state-of-the-art models for speech recognition, image recognition, various visual detection tasks, language modeling, ads click prediction, language translation, and various other tasks. In this talk, I'll highlight some of the distributed systems and algorithms that we use in order to train large models quickly. I'll then discuss ways in which we have applied this work to a variety of problems in Google's products, usually in close collaboration with other teams.
This talk describes joint work with many people at Google.
Biography: Jeff joined Google in 1999 and is currently a Google Senior Fellow in Google's Knowledge Group, where he leads Google's deep learning research team in Mountain View. He has co designed/implemented five generations of Google's crawling, indexing, and query serving systems, and co designed/implemented major pieces of Google's initial advertising and AdSense for Content systems. He is also a co-designer and co-implementor of Google's distributed computing infrastructure, including the MapReduce, BigTable and Spanner systems, protocol buffers, LevelDB, systems infrastructure for statistical machine translation, and a variety of internal and external libraries and developer tools. He is currently working on large-scale distributed systems for machine learning. He is a Fellow of the ACM, a fellow of the AAAS, a member of the U.S. National Academy of Engineering, and a recipient of the Mark Weiser Award and the ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in the Computing Sciences.
Host: Wyatt Lloyd
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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CS Colloquium Lecture: Dr. Cynthia Dwork (Microsoft Research) - Privacy in the Land of Plenty
Tue, Feb 10, 2015 @ 04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Cynthia Dwork, Microsoft Research
Talk Title: Privacy in the Land of Plenty
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: Privacy-preserving data analysis has a large literature that spans several disciplines. "Differential privacy" -- a notion tailored to situations in which data are plentiful -- has provided a theoretically sound and powerful framework, and given rise to an explosion of research. We will review the definition of differential privacy, describe some algorithmic contributions, and conclude with a surprising application.
A link to view the lecture Live is available HERE.
Host: Computer Science Department
More Info: https://bluejeans.com/277032321
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
Event Link: https://bluejeans.com/277032321
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CS Colloquium: Bilge Mutlu (University of Wisconsin-Madison) - Human-Centered Methods and Principles for Designing Robotic Products
Thu, Feb 12, 2015 @ 10:00 AM - 10:50 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Bilge Mutlu, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Talk Title: Human-Centered Methods and Principles for Designing Robotic Products
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: The increasing emergence of robotic technologies that serve as automated tools, assistants, and collaborators promises tremendous benefits in everyday settings from the home to manufacturing facilities. While robotic technologies promise interactions that can be far more complex than those with conventional ones, their successful integration into the human environment requires these interactions to be also natural and intuitive. To achieve complex but intuitive interactions, designers and developers must simultaneously understand and address computational and human challenges. In this talk, I will present my group's work on building human-centered guidelines, methods, and tools to address these challenges in order to facilitate the design of robotic technologies that are more effective, intuitive, acceptable, and even enjoyable. In particular, I will present a series of projects that demonstrate how a marrying of knowledge about people and computational methods can enable effective user interactions with social, assistive, and telepresence robots and the development of novel tools and methods that support complex design tasks across the key stages of the design process. I will additionally present ongoing work that applies these guidelines to the development of real-world applications of robotic technology as well as future directions in enabling the successful integration of these technologies into everyday settings.
Biography: Bilge Mutlu is an assistant professor of computer science, psychology, and industrial engineering at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his Ph.D. degree from Carnegie Mellon University's Human-Computer Interaction Institute in 2009. His background combines training in interaction design, human-computer interaction, and robotics with industry experience in product design and development. Dr. Mutlu is a former Fulbright Scholar and the recipient of the NSF CAREER award as well as several best paper awards and nominations, including HRI 2008, HRI 2009, HRI 2011, UbiComp 2013, IVA 2013, RSS 2013, and HRI 2014. His research has been covered by national and international press including the NewScientist, MIT Technology Review, Discovery News, Science Nation, and Voice of America. He has served in the Steering Committee of the HRI Conference and the Editorial Board of IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, co-chairing the Program Committees for HRI 2015, ROMAN 2015, and ICSR 2011 and the Program Sub-committees on Design for CHI 2013 and CHI 2014.
Host: Maja Mataric'
Webcast: https://bluejeans.com/742507965Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
WebCast Link: https://bluejeans.com/742507965
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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CS Colloquium: Guy Rothblum (Stanford) - How to Verify Computations without Reexecuting Them
Thu, Feb 19, 2015 @ 10:00 AM - 10:50 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Guy Rothblum, Stanford University
Talk Title: How to Verify Computations without Reexecuting Them
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: Can we prove the correctness of a polynomial-time computation to a verifier who cannot re-execute the computation on its own? Such proof systems can be used in cloud computing scenarios, allowing weak devices (from phones and tablets to wearable or embedded devices) to delegate work and storage to a third party, without compromising the correctness of delegated computations. I will survey a line of work that answers this question, and constructs proof systems for delegating computations using the machinery of interactive proofs and cryptography.
Biography: Guy Rothblum is a researcher at Stanford University. He has wide interests in theoretical computer science, with a focus on cryptography, privacy-preserving data analysis, security and complexity theory. His research aims to promote a foundational understanding of computing under security, privacy, and reliability concerns.
Dr. Rothblum completed his Ph.D. at MIT, where his advisor was Shafi Goldwasser, and his M.Sc. at The Weizmann Institute of Science, where his advisor was Moni Naor. Until recently, he was a researcher at Microsoft Researchâs Silicon Valley Lab (2011-2014).
Host: Computer Science Department
Webcast: https://bluejeans.com/537213719Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
WebCast Link: https://bluejeans.com/537213719
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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CS Colloquium: Karthik Ramasamy (Twitter)
Thu, Feb 19, 2015 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Karthik Ramasamy, Twitter
Talk Title: Real Time Analytics @Twitter
Abstract: Real time analytics seems to be a buzz word these days. Twitter identified the need for real time analytics early on and invested in a massive data pipeline that collects, aggregates, processes large volumes of data in real time. At the heart of the pipeline is Twitter Storm, a real-time stream processing engine widely used in Twitter. Storm is used for real-time data analytics, time series aggregation, and powering real-time features like trending topics. In this talk, we will give an overview of real time analytics, discuss the twitter real time data pipeline and how Storm is used for extracting analytics. We will also discuss the challenges we faced and lessons we have learned while building this infrastructure at Twitter.
Biography: Karthik is the engineering manager and technical lead for Real Time Analytics @Twitter. He has two decades of experience working in parallel databases, big data infrastructure and networking. He cofounded Locomatix, a company that specializes in real timestreaming processing on Hadoop and Cassandra using SQL that was acquired by Twitter. Before Locomatix, he had a brief stint with Greenplum where he worked on parallel query scheduling. Greenplum was eventually acquired by EMC for more than $300M. Prior to Greenplum, Karthik was at Juniper Networks where he designed and delivered platforms, protocols, databases and high availability solutions for network routers that are widely deployed in the Internet. Before joining Juniper at University of Wisconsin, he worked extensively in parallel database systems, query processing, scale out technologies, storage engine and online analytical systems. Several of these research were spun as a company later acquired by Teradata.
He is the author of several publications, patents and one of the best selling book "Network Routing: Algorithms, Protocols and Architectures." He has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UW Madison with a focus on databases.
Host: Shahram Ghandeharizadeh
Location: Ronald Tutor Hall of Engineering (RTH) - 526
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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CS Colloquium: Taylor Berg-Kirkpatrick (UC Berkeley)
Tue, Feb 24, 2015 @ 10:00 AM - 10:50 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Taylor Berg-Kirkpatrick, UC Berkeley
Talk Title: Structured Models for Unlocking Language Data
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: One way to provide deeper insight into data is to reason about the underlying causal process that produced it. I'll present model-based approaches for discovering and managing language data that incorporate rich causal structure in novel ways. First, I'll describe a new approach to automatic text summarization that incorporates syntactic structure into a decision process that learns from human summaries. Second, I'll describe an approach to historical document recognition that uses a statistical model of the historical printing press to reason about images, and, as a result, is able to decipher historical documents in an unsupervised fashion. I'll hint at how similar approaches can be used for a range of other problems and types of data.
Event will be available to stream HERE
Biography: Taylor Berg-Kirkpatrick is a PhD candidate in computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. He works with professor Dan Klein on using machine learning to understand structured human data, including language but also sources like music, document images, and other complex artifacts. Taylor completed his undergraduate degree in mathematics and computer science at Berkeley as well, where he won the departmental Dorothea Klumpke Roberts Prize in mathematics. As a graduate student, Taylor has received both the Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship and the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.
Host: Computer Science Department
More Info: https://bluejeans.com/853935926
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
Event Link: https://bluejeans.com/853935926
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CS Colloquium: Andrea Thomaz (GATECH) - Robots Learning from Human Teachers
Wed, Feb 25, 2015 @ 10:00 AM - 10:50 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Andrea Thomaz, Georgia Tech
Talk Title: Robots Learning from Human Teachers
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: In this talk I present recent work from the Socially Intelligent Machines Lab at Georgia Tech.
Our research aims to computationally model mechanisms of human social learning in order to build robots and other machines that are intuitive for people to teach. We take Machine Learning interactions and redesign interfaces and algorithms to support the collection of learning input from naive humans. This talk covers results on building computational models of reciprocal interactions, high-level task goal learning, low-level skill learning, and active learning interactions using humanoid robot platforms.
The lecture will be available for live streaming HERE.
Biography: Andrea L. Thomaz is an Associate Professor of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She directs the Socially Intelligent Machines lab, which is affiliated with the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines (IRIM). She earned a B.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin in 1999, and Sc.M. and Ph.D. degrees from MIT in 2002 and 2006. Dr. Thomaz has published in the areas of Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, and Human-Robot Interaction. She received an ONR Young Investigator Award in 2008, and an NSF CAREER award in 2010. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, on NOVA Science Now, she was named one of MIT Technology Reviewâs TR 35 in 2009, and on Popular Science Magazineâs Brilliant 10 list in 2012.
Host: Computer Science Department
More Info: https://bluejeans.com/677132238
Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
Event Link: https://bluejeans.com/677132238
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CS Colloquium: Lydia E. Kavraki (Rice University) - Reasoning for Complex Physical Systems
Thu, Feb 26, 2015 @ 10:00 AM - 10:50 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Lydia E. Kavraki, Rice University
Talk Title: Reasoning for Complex Physical Systems
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: Robots are rapidly evolving from simple instruments for repetitive tasks to increasingly sophisticated machines capable of performing challenging operations in our daily environment. As they make their way out of custom-made workspaces in factories, algorithms that integrate task and motion planning are needed to enable robots to autonomously execute high-level tasks. This talk will describe a novel framework for the synthesis of motion plans using specifications expressed in temporal logics and sampling-based motion planners. The power and extensibility of the framework has led to algorithmic advances for analyzing the motion and function of proteins, the worker molecules of all cells. The talk will conclude by discussing robotics-inspired methods for computing the flexibility of proteins and large macromolecular complexes with the ultimate goals of deciphering molecular function and aiding the discovery of new therapeutics.
The lecture will be available to stream HERE.
Biography: Lydia E. Kavraki is the Noah Harding Professor of Computer Science and Bioengineering at Rice University. Kavraki received her B.A. in Computer Science from the University of Crete in Greece and her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University. Her research contributions are in physical algorithms and their applications in robotics, as well as in computational structural biology and biomedicine. Kavraki has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed journal and conference publications and a co-author of the popular robotics textbook "Principles of Robot Motion" published by MIT Press. She is heavily involved in the development of The Open Motion Planning Library, which is used in industry and in academic research in robotics and medicine. Kavraki is a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery, a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, a Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies. She was recently recognized with the Women in Science Award from BioHouston.
Host: Computer Science Department
Webcast: https://bluejeans.com/889544076Location: Olin Hall of Engineering (OHE) - 132
WebCast Link: https://bluejeans.com/889544076
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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Energy Informatics Distinguished Seminar
Thu, Feb 26, 2015 @ 10:30 AM - 11:30 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science, Ming Hsieh Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Yale Patt, University of Texas at Austin
Talk Title: Parallelism: A serious goal or a silly mantra (...and what about the End of the Von Neumann Architecture)
Series: Distinguished Lecture Series in Energy Informatics
Abstract: The microprocessor of 2025 will have two things going for it: more than 50 billion transistors on each chip and an opportunity to properly harness the transformation hierarchy. We hear a lot about the parallelism that one will get from those 50 billion transistors. In fact, almost everyone in the computer industry these days seems to be promoting parallelism, whether or not they have any clue whatsoever as to what they are talking about. And, many also are announcing the demise of the Von Neumann Architecture, whether or not they have any idea what the Von Neumann architecture is. Both pronouncements are due in large part to the highly visible and well advertised continuing (temporarily) benefits of Moore's Law, manifest by more and more cores on a chip, as well as more and more accelerators on the chip. More transistors means more cores, which translates into more opportunity for parallelism. More transistors also means more opportunity to build the wildest of accelerators, touted as non-Von Neumann architecture. By 2025, we will clearly have more than 1000 cores on a chip -- whether we can effectively utilize them or not does not seem to curb the enthusiasm. And by 2025, we will also have lots of powerful accelerators. But without Von Neumann, they won't be of much use. What I would like to do today is examine parallelism, note that it did not start with the multicore chip, observe some of the silliness it has recently generated, identify its fundamental pervasive element, and discuss some of the problems that have surfaced due to its major enabler, Moore's Law. I would also like to try to show how the transformation hierarchy, without any observable fanfare, can turn the bad news of Moore's Law into good news, both for all those cores and for all those non-Von Neumann accelerators, and play an important role in the microprocessor of 2025.
Biography: Yale N. Patt is Professor of ECE and the Ernest Cockrell, Jr. Centennial Chair in Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. He continues to thrive on teaching both the large (400+ students) freshman introductory course in computing and advanced graduate courses in microarchitecture, directing the research of eight PhD students, and consulting in the microprocessor industry. Some of his research ideas (e.g., HPS, the two-level branch predictor, ACMP) have ended up in the cutting-edge chips of Intel, AMD, etc. and some of his teaching ideas have resulted in his motivated bottom-up approach for introducing computing to serious students. The textbook for his unconventional approach, "Introduction to Computing Systems: from bits and gates to C and beyond," co-authored with Prof. Sanjay Jeram Patel of Illinois (McGraw-Hill, 2nd ed. 2004), has been adopted by more than 100 universities world-wide. He has received the highest honors in his field for both his reasearch (the 1996 IEEE/ACM Eckert-Mauchly Award) and teaching (the 2000 ACM Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award). He was the inaugural recipient of the recently established IEEE Computer Society Bob Rau Award in 2011, and was named the 2013 recipient of the IEEE Harry Goode Award. He is a Fellow of both IEEE and ACM, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. More detail can be found on his web page www.ece.utexas.edu/~patt.
Host: Prof. Viktor Prasanna and the Ming Hsieh Institute
Webcast: https://bluejeans.com/275381990Location: Hughes Aircraft Electrical Engineering Center (EEB) - 132
WebCast Link: https://bluejeans.com/275381990
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Annie Yu
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CS Colloquium: Sam Malek (George Mason University) - Automated Analysis and Testing of Mobile Software
Thu, Feb 26, 2015 @ 04:00 PM - 05:15 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Sam Malek , George Mason University
Talk Title: Automated Analysis and Testing of Mobile Software
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: App markets have fundamentally changed the way software is delivered to consumers, especially in the mobile domain. By providing a medium for reaching a large consumer base at a nominal cost, app markets have made it possible for small entrepreneurs to compete against prominent software companies. At the same time, since many of the entrepreneurs do not have the resources to employ proper software engineering practices, many apps provisioned on the markets are riddled with defects that not only inconvenience the users, but also easily exploited by attackers for nefarious purposes. In this talk, I first outline the architectural root cause of some of the security vulnerabilities found in Android. Afterwards, I describe a combination of static and dynamic program analysis techniques aimed at detecting such issues. Experimental evaluation of the tools realizing these techniques using real-world apps has been promising, resulting in their adoption for use by government and industrial collaborators. Finally, I conclude the talk with an outline of future research directions.
Biography: Sam Malek is an Associate Professor in the Computer Science Department at George Mason University. His general research interests are in the field of software engineering, and to date his focus has spanned the areas of software architecture, autonomic computing, software security, and software analysis and testing. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. degrees from the Computer Science Department at the University of Southern California and his B.S. degree in Information and Computer Science from the University of California Irvine. He is a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER award, GMU Emerging Researcher/Scholar/Creator award, and GMU Computer Science Department Outstanding Faculty Research Award. Malek is also a member of the DARPAâs Computer Science Study Group. He is currently serving on the editorial board of the IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering and the Springer Journal of Computing.
Host: Neno Medvidovic
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
