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Events for April 17, 2025
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NL Seminar-Ushering Agents to an Open Social World
Thu, Apr 17, 2025 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Information Sciences Institute
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Hao Zhu, Stanford University
Talk Title: Ushering Agents to an Open Social World
Series: NL Seminar
Abstract: Meeting hosts only admit on-line guests that they know to the Zoom meeting. Hence, you’re highly encouraged to use your USC account to sign into Zoom. If you’re an outside visitor, please inform us at (nlg-seminar-host(at)isi.edu) to make us aware of your attendance so we can admit you. Specify if you will attend remotely or in person at least one business day prior to the event. Provide your: full name, job title and professional affiliation and arrive at least 10 minutes before the seminar begins. If you do not have access to the 6th Floor for in-person attendance, please check in at the 10th floor main reception desk to register as a visitor and someone will escort you to the conference room location JOIN VIA ZOOM: https://usc.zoom.us/j/98699643447?pwd=59bYaPQunEwvO3kiZM8jel8s2efWnu.1 Meeting ID: 986 9964 3447 Passcode: 804448
Unlike frontier AI models trained on static datasets, humans learn through dynamic interactions with other people and the world. This fundamental difference in learning methodology not only makes language agents less sample-efficient than humans but also introduces significant risks when these agents are deployed to interact with real humans in the real world. Building agents that can efficiently learn through interaction with other agents, humans and the world is a challenging problem. In this presentation, I will outline three foundational approaches we've developed to address this challenge:
(1) Learning through exploration on the internet (NNetNav-live) — We deploy an open-ended agent (without explicit task instructions) to explore the web, gather experience and retroactively label and train on the data.
(2) Learning from human normative decision-making (EgoNormia) — We explore methods for agents to observe and internalize social norms in physical interactions through crowd-sourced annotation with context perturbation.
(3) Learning to build metrics from human feedback (AutoLibra, in prep) — We present a framework for automatically building behavior evaluation metric systems that help both humans understand agent performance, and agents improve the policy based on human feedback.
These complementary approaches offer a path toward creating AI agents that can more effectively learn, adapt, and integrate into our open social world." Hao Zhu is a postdoctoral researcher in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University. He finished his PhD from CMU. He is interested in AI agents, human-agent interaction, robotics and embodied AI, and what AI agents tell us about human social and embodied cognition.
Biography: Hao Zhu is a postdoctoral researcher in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University. He finished his PhD from CMU. He is interested in AI agents, human-agent interaction, robotics and embodied AI, and what AI agents tell us about human social and embodied cognition.
Host: Jonathan May and Katy Felkner
More Info: https://www.isi.edu/research-groups-nlg/nlg-seminars/
Webcast: https://usc.zoom.us/j/98699643447?pwd=59bYaPQunEwvO3kiZM8jel8s2efWnu.1Location: Information Science Institute (ISI) - Conf Rm#689
WebCast Link: https://usc.zoom.us/j/98699643447?pwd=59bYaPQunEwvO3kiZM8jel8s2efWnu.1
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Pete Zamar
Event Link: https://www.isi.edu/research-groups-nlg/nlg-seminars/
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Alfred E.Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering - Seminar series
Thu, Apr 17, 2025 @ 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Alfred E. Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering
Conferences, Lectures, & Seminars
Speaker: Ashutosh Chilkoti,Ph.D., Alan L. Kaganov Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Materials Science and Chemistry, Senior Associate Dean at Pratt School of Engineering and Professor for the Department of Biomedical Engineering Duke University, Durham, USA
Talk Title: Molecular Engineering of Biointerfaces and Intrinsically Disordered Proteins
Abstract: I will describe two disparate projects in this talk that illustrate the diversity of ongoing workin my laboratory. In the first half, I will describe a point-of-care diagnostic—the D4 assay—that we have developed, in which all reagents are printed and stored on a “non-fouling”—protein and cell resistant—polymer brush. The D4 assay has no moving parts, does notrequire a cold-chain, and works from a single drop of blood with minimal user intervention,and measures the concentration of multiple analytes with a sub-picomolar limit of detection.In the second half, I will introduce synthetic intrinsically disordered proteins (SynIDPs) thatare genetically encoded polymers of short peptide repeats that exhibit upper criticalsolution temperature (UCST) or lower critical solution temperature (LCST) phase behavior,like many naturally occurring IDPs. Because of their simplicity, the phase behavior ofSynIDPs can be rationally tuned at the molecular level by control of their sequence,composition, and chain length. I will describe how SynIDPs can be used to develop simplebut powerful tools for biotechnology and for the design of synthetic biomolecularcondensates in live cells to control diverse cellular functions
Biography: I will describe two disparate projects in this talk that illustrate the diversity of ongoing workin my laboratory. In the first half, I will describe a point-of-care diagnostic—the D4 assay—that we have developed, in which all reagents are printed and stored on a “non-fouling”—protein and cell resistant—polymer brush. The D4 assay has no moving parts, does notrequire a cold-chain, and works from a single drop of blood with minimal user intervention,and measures the concentration of multiple analytes with a sub-picomolar limit of detection.In the second half, I will introduce synthetic intrinsically disordered proteins (SynIDPs) thatare genetically encoded polymers of short peptide repeats that exhibit upper criticalsolution temperature (UCST) or lower critical solution temperature (LCST) phase behavior,like many naturally occurring IDPs. Because of their simplicity, the phase behavior ofSynIDPs can be rationally tuned at the molecular level by control of their sequence,composition, and chain length. I will describe how SynIDPs can be used to develop simplebut powerful tools for biotechnology and for the design of synthetic biomolecularcondensates in live cells to control diverse cellular functions.
Host: Eunji Chung
Location: Michelson Center for Convergent Bioscience (MCB) - Room 101
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Carla Stanard
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
PhD Thesis Proposal - Mi-Ying Miryam Huang
Thu, Apr 17, 2025 @ 12:00 PM - 01:30 PM
Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science
University Calendar
Presentation Title: Towards Publicly Verifiable Cryptography: Obfuscation, Fully Homomorphic Encryption, and Proof Carrying State.
Date and Time: April 17th 12:00pm to 1:30pm
Location: Ginsburg 503C
Committee members: David Kempe, Greta Panova (math department), Vatsal Sharan, Shanghua Teng, Jiapeng Zhang
Abstract: We explore public verifiability in cryptography. This proposal highlights two main results and one ongoing research direction:
Through a quantum lens, we introduce Quantum Obfuscation for approximate Unitary Quantum Functionality. By using advanced quantum techniques, our construction supports approximate unitary quantum functionalities with quantum inputs and outputs, significantly extending beyond existing limitations by Bartusek et al (STOC 2023, STOC 2024). Utilizing Quantum Teleportation combined with Projective Linear Measurement (PLM) quantum programs, we overcome critical obstacles from previous works and open potential applications in quantum copy-protection, quantum functional encryption, and secure quantum software distribution.
From a classical cryptographic perspective, we develop a Publicly Verifiable Fully Homomorphic Encryption (pvFHE) scheme, building upon the FHEW framework by Ducas and Micciancio (Eurocrypt 15). Integrating the GINX homomorphic accumulator, our scheme improves efficiency during bootstrapping and verification. Moreover, we introduce a generalized Rank-1 Constraint System (Ring R1CS) and construct a succinct non-interactive argument (SNARG). This approach provides efficient verifiability and strong security guarantees, including enhanced client data privacy, adhering to the recently introduced privacy framework by Cini et al. (Crypto 24).
Finally, our ongoing project, Proof-Carrying Quantum States, further extends these concepts to achieve verifiable quantum computations, bridging classical and quantum cryptographic techniques to ensure computation integrity and privacy. Together, these contributions advance both theoretical foundations and practical applications of publicly verifiable cryptographic protocols.Location: Ginsburg Hall (GCS) - 503C
Audiences: Everyone Is Invited
Contact: Mi-Ying Miryam Huang
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor. -
Graduate Mentorship : 2025 Fall Mentor Training
Thu, Apr 17, 2025 @ 02:00 PM - 03:30 PM
USC Viterbi School of Engineering
Student Activity
This is for MS and Ph.D. students in Viterbi.
A mandatory training event for Viterbi grad students who apply to become future mentors and for current first-time mentors.
Training includes information about the program, mentor expectations, certificates, mentor panel and followed by a social reception.Location: Sign into EngageSC to View Location
Audiences:
Contact: Yadi Wang
Event Link: https://engage.usc.edu/viterbi/rsvp?id=404029
This event is open to all eligible individuals. USC Viterbi operates all of its activities consistent with the University's Notice of Non-Discrimination. Eligibility is not determined based on race, sex, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other prohibited factor.
