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Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for February
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CS Colloquium: Dr. Andrew Lemieux: The WILD LEO Project: Using Technology and Training to Increase the Effectiveness of Anti-Poaching Teams in Uganda
Tue, Feb 11, 2014 @ 11:15 AM - 12:20 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Dr. Andrew Lemieux, WILD LEO Project
Talk Title: The WILD LEO Project: Using Technology and Training to Increase the Effectiveness of Anti-Poaching Teams in Uganda
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: The WILD LEO Project is an attempt to provide anti-poaching teams with the technology and training necessary to undertake advanced intelligence gathering and analysis. The Wildlife Intelligence and Leadership Development (WILD) training protocols were specifically developed for Law Enforcement Officers (LEOs) in Queen Elizabeth Protected Area, Uganda. The WILD LEO team consists of foot patrol rangers, crime analysts, prosecutors and commanders.
Using digital cameras with integrated GPS units, the foot patrol rangers are creating a spatially referenced, photographic database of poaching activity. The crime analysts use these photos to prepare patrol coverage maps and maps of illegal activity to help commanders make informed deployment decisions. The geo-referenced photos are also used by the prosecution team as courtroom evidence to prove poachers were operating inside the protected area.
By design, The WILD LEO Project utilizes low-cost technology and open source software to ensure sustainability in law enforcement operations with limited budgets. This presentation will discuss the project’s implementation, initial findings, potential for expansion, and the utility of WILD LEO for interdisciplinary research.
Biography: Originally trained as a biochemist who studied diabetes, lung injury and space biology at the University of Arizona (BS 2005, MS 2006), Andrew switched disciplines after graduation to pursue his research interests in criminology. He completed his graduate studies at the Rutgers School of Criminal Justice (MA 2008, PhD 2011) where he studied a variety of topics including wildlife crime, visitor crime and time-based risk assessments of violence.
Poaching prevention is Andrew's main area of expertise and comprises the majority of his research agenda. He currently directs the WILD LEO Project in Queen Elizabeth and Murchison Falls National Parks in Uganda. This is an on-going collaboration with the Uganda Wildlife Authority and Uganda Conservation Foundation that uses technology and training to increase ranger efficiency with advanced intelligence gathering and analysis techniques. The goals of the project are to (a) give commanders better information for deployment decision making, (b) increase poacher apprehension and (c) increase poacher conviction rates.
Host: Teamcore Group
Location: Kaprielian Hall (KAP) - 156
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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CS Colloquium: Jonathan Ullman (Harvard U): Privacy and the Complexity of Simple Queries
Tue, Feb 11, 2014 @ 04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Jonathan Ullman, Harvard University
Talk Title: Privacy and the Complexity of Simple Queries
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: The goal of differentially private data analysis is to design algorithms for analyzing datasets while ensuring that sensitive information about individuals is not revealed. In this talk I will present both new lower bounds and new algorithms for differentially private data analysis. On the negative side, I will present some new, nearly-optimal lower bounds on the amount of data required to release differentially private statistics on high-dimensional datasets. These results show that there is a significant "price of differential privacy" in high-dimensional datasets. We prove these lower bounds using a cryptographic primitive called a fingerprinting code that we show is closely connected to differentially private data analysis. On the positive side, I will present efficient algorithms for computing differentially private contingency tables, using techniques from computational learning theory.
Biography: Jon Ullman is a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Research on Computation and Society at Harvard University. He recently completed his Ph.D., also at Harvard, where he was advised by Salil Vadhan and was a Siebel Scholar. He is interested in the foundations of data privacy and its connections to other areas of theoretical computer science such as cryptography, learning theory, and game theory.
Host: David Kempe
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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CS Colloquium: Taesoo Kim (MIT CSAIL): Intrusion Recovery Using Selective Re-execution (Undo Computing)
Tue, Feb 18, 2014 @ 04:00 PM - 05:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Taesoo Kim, MIT CSAIL
Talk Title: Intrusion Recovery Using Selective Re-execution (Undo Computing)
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: Virtually any computer system can be compromised. New software vulnerabilities are discovered and exploited daily, but even if the software is bug-free, administrators may inadvertently make mistakes in configuring permissions, or unaware users may click on buttons in application installers with little understanding of its consequences. Recovering from those inevitable compromises leads to days and weeks of wasted effort by users or system administrators, yet with no conclusive guarantee that all traces of the attack have been cleaned up. This talk will present our work on "undo computing," which aims to restore system integrity by efficiently and precisely detecting and undoing changes made by past intrusions.
Biography: Taesoo Kim is a PhD student at MIT, CSAIL. He is interested in building systems that have strong yet intuitive underline principles for why it should be just secure. Those principles include the simple design of a system, analysis of its implementation, and clear separation of trusted components. He has BS at KAIST (2009), and SM at MIT (2011), both in CS.
Host: Ramesh Govindan
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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CS STUDENT Colloquium: Melissa Roemmle
Thu, Feb 20, 2014 @ 03:30 PM - 04:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Melissa Roemmle, USC
Talk Title: CS STUDENT Colloquium: Melissa Roemmle
Series: Student Seminar Series
Abstract: We developed a web game called Triangle Charades in which players create and interpret animations of human behaviors using simple shapes. I will explain how we use this game as a data collection approach for the machine learning task of automatically recognizing human actions in animations.
Host: Jacob Beal
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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CS Colloquium: Vassilis Zikas (UCLA) - Cryptography & Secure Computation: Theory and Applications
Thu, Feb 20, 2014 @ 04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Vassilis Zikas, UCLA
Talk Title: Cryptography & Secure Computation: Theory and Applications
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: As more complex security challenges emerge, cryptography is called to provide provably secure solutions for a wide range of applications. Bridging the gap between theory and applications is perhaps the biggest challenge of contemporary cryptography. In this talk I discuss how combining ideas from game theory and cryptography provides the basis for the design of highly efficient, more resilient, and simpler provably secure protocols. I demonstrate this for the problem of secure computation, which has numerous applications, e.g., privacy preserving data mining and secure cloud computing. I further discuss recent developments on concrete efficiency of secure multi-party computation protocols which indicate that we can realistically expect large scale deployments in the next few years.
Biography: Dr. Vassilis Zikas is a researcher at the Computer Science Department of the University of California, Los Angeles. His research interests include cryptography, information security, and game theory. Prior to his current appointment, he was a postdoctoral researcher at University of Maryland. He received his PhD in Computer Science from ETH Zurich.
Host: Shanghua Teng
Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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CS Colloquium: David Chu (Microsoft Research) - Surmounting two challenges of cloud gaming for mobile devices: network latency and server multi-tenancy
Mon, Feb 24, 2014 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: David Chu, Microsoft Research
Talk Title: Surmounting two challenges of cloud gaming for mobile devices: network latency and server multi-tenancy
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: Gaming on mobile devices is very popular. Cloud gaming such as Sony PlayStation's Now -- where remote servers perform game execution and rendering on behalf of thin clients that simply send input and display output frames -- appears to be well-suited for mobile devices, promising any device the ability to play any game any time. However, cloud gaming must confront network latency and server multi-tenancy. This talk introduces these two challenges, and our two respective solutions, DeLorean and DeeJay.
For latency, wireless network round trip times (RTTs) often exceed thresholds above which gamers find responsiveness acceptable. We present DeLorean, a speculative execution system for mobile cloud gaming that is able to mask latency. DeLorean produces speculative rendered frames of future possible outcomes, delivering them to the client one entire RTT ahead of time; clients perceive little latency. To achieve this, DeLorean combines: 1) future input prediction; 2) state space subsampling and time shifting; 3) misprediction compensation; and 4) bandwidth compression. This work is a collaboration with the University of Michigan.
For multi-tenancy, a single server must carefully schedule the GPU across multiple game instances that each have their own real-time latency and throughput requirements. Moreover, it must gracefully handle overload when more clients join than anticipated. We are in the process of building DeeJay, a system that 1) schedules GPU-bound jobs with latency and throughput constraints, and that 2) minimally degrades visual game quality upon system overload.
To evaluate both DeLorean and DeeJay, we use two high quality, commercially-released games: a twitch-based first person shooter, Doom3, and a role playing game, Fable3.
Biography: David Chu is a researcher at Microsoft Research in Redmond where he works on mobile systems with an emphasis on mobile gaming. He is also interested in sensing and context for the mobile OS. His work has appeared in The Verge, Engadget and Wired. David received his Ph.D. and M.S. from the University of California, Berkeley, and his B.S. from the University of Virginia.
Host: Ramesh Govindan
Location: SAL 222
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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Alexander V. Terekhov: Constructing space: how a naive agent can learn spatial relationships by observing sensorimotor contingencies
Mon, Feb 24, 2014 @ 01:00 PM - 02:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Alexander V. Terekhov, Laboratory of Psychology of Perception, Paris Descartes University (Paris 5).
Talk Title: Constructing space: how a naive agent can learn spatial relationships by observing sensorimotor contingencies
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: The brain sitting inside its bony cavity sends and receives myriads of sensory inputs and outputs. A problem that must be solved either in ontogeny or phylogeny is how to extract the particular characteristics within this "blooming buzzing confusion" that signal the existence and nature of physical space, with structured objects immersed in it, among them the agent's body. The idea that spatial knowledge must be extracted from the sensorimotor flow in order to underlie perception has been considered by a number of thinkers, including Helmholtz, Poincare, Nicod, Gibson, etc. However, little work has considered how this could actually be done by organisms without a priori knowledge of the nature of their sensors and effectors. Here we show how an agent with arbitrary sensors will naturally discover spatial knowledge from the undifferentiated sensorimotor flow. The method first involves tabulating sensorimotor contingencies, that is, the laws linking sensory and motor variables. Second, further laws are created linking these sensorimotor contingencies together. The method works without any prior knowledge about the structure of the agent's sensors, body, or of the world. We show that the extracted laws endow the agent with basic spatial knowledge, manifesting itself through perceptual shape constancy and the ability to do path integration. We further show that the ability of the agent to learn all spatial dimensions depends on the ability to move in all these dimensions, rather than on possessing a sensor that has that dimensionality. This latter result suggests, for example, that three dimensional space can be learned in spite of the fact that the retinas are two-dimensional. We conclude by showing how the acquired spatial knowledge paves the way to building the notion of object.
Host: Michael Arbib
Location: HNB 100
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
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CS Colloquium: Tamara Denning (U of Washington)
Tue, Feb 25, 2014 @ 04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Tamara Denning, U of Washington
Talk Title: Human-Centered Computer Security: Beyond the Desktop
Series: CS Colloquium
Abstract: Modern technologies are increasingly capable, interconnected, and used in diverse aspects of our lives. Securing these devices is critical: attackers can leverage their properties to perform attacks with novel or amplified harms. It is critical to approach securing these devices from a human perspective in addition to a technical perspective in order to maximize the effectiveness and minimize the repercussions of deployed security systems. I outline a human-centered approach to designing security for these new classes of technologies and ground each step with an example study. First, I use my study on household robots to demonstrate how the properties and usage scenarios of a technology translate into particular threats to users and bystanders. Second, I present how researchers can investigate the characteristics of an application domain in order to inform the design of better security systems, using my work with implantable medical devices as an example. Third, I use my in-situ study investigating the impacts of augmented reality devices on bystander privacy to illustrate how researchers can obtain data on the risks associated with a technology. I conclude my talk with a call for the development of more toolkits to bootstrap the security process, and present one such toolkit: the Security Cards, a physical deck of brainstorming cards that I developed to help computer science students, technologists, and researchers explore the threats that might be posed by a technology system.
Biography: Tamara Denning is a senior PhD student at the University of Washington working with Tadayoshi Kohno in the Security and Privacy Research Lab. She received her B.S. in Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego in 2007. Tamara's interests are in the human aspects of computer security and privacy, with a focus on emerging technologies. Past areas of work include security for implantable medical devices, the security of consumer technologies in the home, security and privacy issues surrounding augmented reality, and security toolkits for awareness and education. Tamara's work is published in both HCI and computer security venues, and has been covered by new outlets such as CNN, MSNBC, NY Times, and Wired.
Host: Ramesh Govindan
Location: SAL 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Assistant to CS chair
