SUNMONTUEWEDTHUFRISAT
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Events for October
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CS Colloq. Prof. Van Vu
Tue, Oct 06, 2009 @ 11:00 AM - 12:20 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Talk title: The condition number of a random matrix Speaker:Prof. Van Vu from Rutgers University Host: Prof. Shang-Hua Teng Abstract: The condition number plays a crucial role in all computational problems involving a large matrix. The problem of determining the condition number of a random matrix (with independent entries) was first raised by von Neumann and Goldstine in the 1940s, in a series of papers which later has become the starting point of numerical analysis. von Neumann-Golstine problem was solved for the case when the entries of the matrix have gaussian distribution by Edelman in 1980s. Edelman computed the limiting distribution of the condition number, using special feature of gaussian matrices. This computation does not extend to any other model of random matrices (such as Bernoulli). On the other hand, it has been conjectured, for quite sometime, that the same distribution should hold in these cases as well. Recently, Tao and Vu proved this conjecture, and thus solved von Neumann-Goldstine problem in the general case. As a corollary, we proved a conjeture of Spielman and Teng about the distribution of the least singular value. I will present a sketch of the proof, which starts with random sampling techniques. Bio: TBA
Location: Seeley G. Mudd Building (SGM) - 601
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Front Desk
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CS Colloq: Dr. Alex Slivkins
Fri, Oct 16, 2009 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Title:
"Learning in a Pay-per-Click Auction:
Characterizing Truthful Multi-Armed Bandit Mechanisms"Speaker: Dr. Alex Slivkins (Microsoft Research SVC)Host: Prof. David KempeABSTRACT: We consider a multi-round auction setting motivated by pay-per-click auctions for Internet advertising. In each round the auctioneer selects an advertiser and shows her ad, which is then either clicked or not. An advertiser derives value from clicks; the value of a click is her private information. Initially, neither the auctioneer nor the advertisers have any information about the likelihood of clicks on the advertisements. The auctioneer's goal is to design a (dominant strategies) truthful mechanism that
(approximately) maximizes the social welfare.If the advertisers bid their true private values, our problem is equivalent to the "multi-armed bandit problem", and thus can be viewed as a strategic version of the latter. In particular, for both problems the quality of an algorithm can be characterized by "regret", the difference in social welfare between the algorithm and the benchmark which always selects the same "best" advertisement. We investigate how the design of multi-armed bandit algorithms is affected by the restriction that the resulting mechanism must be truthful. We find that truthful mechanisms have certain strong structural properties -- essentially, they must separate exploration from exploitation -- *and* they incur much higher regret than the optimal multi-armed bandit algorithms. Moreover, we provide a truthful mechanism which
(essentially) matches our lower bound on regret.Joint work with Moshe Babaioff (Microsoft Research SVC) and Yogi Sharma (Cornell), published in ACM EC, 2009.BIO:
Dr. Alex Slivkins is a researcher at Microsoft Research, Silicon Valley Center. He received his PhD from Cornell University's CS department, advised by Jon Kleinberg, and then was a Postdoc at Brown University, working with Eli Upfal.
His research area is the design and analysis of algorithms. Specific topics of interest include large networks, metric embeddings, online learning, and mechanism design.
Location: Charles Lee Powell Hall (PHE) - 333
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Front Desk
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CS: Colloq: Dr. Michal Pechoucek
Wed, Oct 21, 2009 @ 02:00 PM - 03:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker:
Dr. Michal Pechoucek, Czech Technical UniversityTitle:
AGENTFLY: Multi-agent UAV collision avoidanceAbstract:
Free-flight concept is a modern approach to flexible collision free air traffic control investigated mainly in the context of unmanned aerial assets. Agent Technology Center (ATG) at the Czech Technical University designed and developed AGENTFLY, a multi-agent simulation environment used for a variety of coordinated UAA scenarios. Several collision avoidance methods (e.g. based on visual flight rules, based on peer-to-peer negotiation, based on multi-party interaction or prediction) and a specific
A* based planning algorithm were successfully tested and demonstrated in AGENTFLY system. During my talk I will share with the audience experience collected during the AGENTFLY system development, will present several demos and will comment on industrial take up of the system.Bio:
Dr. Michal Pechoucek is a head of Agent Technology Center and Deputy head of the Department of Cybernetics, Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU).
He is an Associate professor in Artificial Intelligence at CTU. He graduated the University of Edinburgh and completed his Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence and Biocybernetics at CTU. Michal Pechoucek has acted as a principal investigator on more than 20 research projects funded by AFRL/EOARD, ONR, ARL, CERDEC and FAA. Besides, Michal Pechoucek has collaborated with international industries such as Rockwell Automation, BAE Systems, Cadence Design Systems, TSystems, Denzo and NASA. Michal Pechoucek is a visiting/honorary member of Artificial Intelligence Application Institute, University of Edinburgh, is member of the Advisory board of Center of Advanced Information Technologies at State University of New York, University of Bingahmton where he was a visiting professor, visiting postdoctoral researcher at the University of Calgary and he was a member of the AgentLinkIII European Coordinating Action management committee. Michal Pechoucek is an author or co-author of SCI cited publications in proceedings of international conferences and journal papers, PC member and a co-chair of relevant conferences and workshops. Michal Pechoucek was a chair and is a member of EUMAS advisory board and member of CEEMAS steering committee.
Location: Von Kleinsmid Center For International & Public Affairs (VKC) - 154
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Front Desk
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CS DLS: Dr. Tony Derose
Thu, Oct 22, 2009 @ 04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Time: 4 PM - 5:30 PMLocation: SSL 150Talk title: Math in the MoviesSpeaker: Dr. Tony DeRose (Pixar Animation Studios)Host: Prof. Jernej BarbicAbstract:Film making is undergoing a digital revolution brought on by advances in areas such as computer technology, computational physics, geometry, and approximation theory. Using numerous examples drawn from Pixar's feature films, this talk will provide a behind the scenes look at the role that math plays in the revolution.Bio:
Tony DeRose is currently a Senior Scientist and lead of the Research
Group at Pixar Animation Studios. He received a BS in Physics in from
the University of California, Davis, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science
from the University of California, Berkeley. From 1986 to 1995 Dr.
DeRose was a Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the
University of Washington. In 1998, he was a major contributor to the
Oscar (c) winning short film "Geri's game", in 1999 he received the
ACM SIGGRAPH Computer Graphics Achievement Award, and in
2006 he received a Scientific and Technical Academy Award (c) for his
work on surface representations.
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Front Desk
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The Importance of Research in Protecting the Homeland
Mon, Oct 26, 2009 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Mr. Arif Alikhan (Assistant Secretary for Policy Development for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security)Host: Prof. Milind Tambe
Location: Grace Ford Salvatori Hall Of Letters, Arts & Sciences (GFS) - 106
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Front Desk
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CS Colloq: Dr. David Lomet
Tue, Oct 27, 2009 @ 04:00 PM - 05:50 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Title: Deuteronomy - Rethinking Database Kernel ArchitecturesHost: Prof. Shahram GhandeharizadehAbstract: Traditionally, a DBMS kernel has recovery, concurrency control and access method
code tightly bound together. In the Deuteronomy project we factor the kernel into a transactional component (TC) that knows about transactions and their "logical" concurrency control and undo/redo recovery, and a data component (DC) that knows about the access methods and supports a record-oriented interface with atomic operations.
The interaction of the resulting components is governed by a contract or covenant. This talk will describe the Deuteronomy kernel architecture as well as how logical locking works when a DBMS kernel is split in this manner.Bio:
David Lomet has been a principal researcher managing the Microsoft Research Database Group at Microsoft Research since 1995. Earlier, he spent seven and a half years at Digital Equipment Corporation. He has been at IBM Research in Yorktown and a Professor at Wang Institute. Dr. Lomet spent a sabbatical at University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne working with Brian Randell. He has a Computer Science Ph.D from the University of Pennsylvania.Dr. Lomet has done research and product development in architecture, programming languages, and distributed systems. His primary interest is database systems, focusing on access methods, concurrency control, and recovery. He is one of the inventors of the transaction concept and is an author of over 90 papers and 40 patents. Two papers won SIGMOD "best paper" awards. Dr. Lomet has served on program committees, including SIGMOD, PODS, VLDB, and ICDE. He was ICDE'2000 PC co-chair and VLDB 2006 PC core chair. He is a member of the ICDE Steering Committee and VLDB Board. He is editor-in-chief of the Data Engineering Bulletin since 1992 and past editor of ACM TODS and the VLDB Journal. Dr. Lomet is IEEE Golden Core Member and received IEEE Outstanding Contribution and Meritorious Service Awards. Dr. Lomet is both ACM Fellow and IEEE Fellow.
Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Front Desk
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CS DLS: Prof. Fan Chung Graham
Thu, Oct 29, 2009 @ 04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Time: 4 PM - 5:30 PMLocation: SSL 150Talk title: Graph theory in the information ageSpeaker: Prof. Fan Chung Graham (UCSD)Host: Prof. David KempeAbstract:
Nowadays we are surrounded by numerous large information networks, such as the WWW graph, the telephone graph and various social networks. Many new questions arise. How are these graphs formed? What are basic structures of such large networks? How do they evolve? What are the underlying principles that dicatate their behavior? How are subgraphs related to the large host graph? What are the main graph invariants that capture the myriad properties of such large sparse graphs and subgraphs.
In this talk, we discuss some recent developments in the study of large sparse graphs and speculate about future directions in graph theory.Bio:
Fan Chung Graham received a B.S. degree in mathematics from National Taiwan University in 1970 and a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1974, after which she joined the technical staff of AT&T Bell Laboratories. From 1983 to 1991, she headed the Mathematics, Information Sciences and Operations Research Division at Bellcore. In 1991 she became a Bellcore Fellow. In 1993, she was the Class of 1965 Professor of Mathematics at the the University of Pennsylvania. Since 1998, she has been a Professor of Mathematics and Professor of Computer Science and Enginering at the University of California, San Diego. She is also the Akamai Professor in Internet Mathematics.
Her research interests are primarily in graph theory, combinatorics, and algorithmic design, in particular in spectral graph theory, extremal graphs, graph labeling, graph decompositions, random graphs, graph algorithms, parallel structures and various applications of graph theory in Internet computing, communication networks, software reliability, chemistry, engineering, and various areas of mathematics. She was awarded the Allendoerfer Award by Mathematical Association of America in 1990. Since 1998, she has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.Location: Seaver Science Library (SSL) - 150
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Front Desk
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CS Colloq: Dr. Alan Levin
Fri, Oct 30, 2009 @ 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Talk Title : Organization and OrderSpeaker: Dr. Alan LevinHost: Prof. Barry BoehmAbstract:Organization is a startling and spontaneous macroscopic characteristic. We observe it in nature, and we participate in it socially, economically, culturally, and linguistically. Unfortunately, there appears to be no sound theoretical foundation for organization in nature and organization is often confused with order. By examining modeling assumptions and using system engineering methods, we can clarify the difference between functional and structural models and appreciate how to use them jointly to solve otherwise intractable problems. In doing so we also gain insight into the proper use of the terms organization, order, and emergence.Bio:Alan Levin is currently conducting original research into organization in natural systems. This interdisciplinary program extends traditional physical chemical methods with functional modeling techniques from system engineering. In 2008 Dr. Levin retired after a distinguished career working for TRW and Northrop Grumman Corporation. He joined TRW in 1979, and served in increasingly responsible positions as member of the technical staff, project manager, director of engineering, chief scientist, director of business development, and director of strategy and technology planning for a division with over $1B annual sales. He routinely worked with government, defense industry, commercial, and academic professionals projecting advanced technology needs for future critical missions. Before joining TRW, Dr.
Levin taught physical chemistry at Carleton College and conducted original research in nucleic acid chemistry. He graduated with a B.Sc. in Chemistry from UCLA and a Ph.D. in Biophysical Chemistry from UC Berkeley.
Location: Charles Lee Powell Hall (PHE) - 333
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: CS Front Desk
