Inside Our ProgramProgram Events
Events
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May8
EVENT DETAILS
lessWednesday / CS Distinguished Lecture
May 8th / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
Monica Lam, Stanford UniversityTalk Title
Trustworthy Conversational Chatbots for Your Data with Generative AIAbstract
The rapid growth of Large Language Models (LLMs), such as ChatGPT, has both inspired and alarmed knowledge workers. LLM-based chatbots generating false information and hallucinating have garnered widespread attention, raising questions about the reliability of LLMs as chatbots and virtual assistants.The Stanford Open Virtual Assistant Lab has created an open-source Knowledge Engine, powered by an LLM, that can provide a reliable conversational chatbot to any structured or unstructured data. It can also assist writers by drafting full-length Wikipedia-like articles from scratch with breadth and depth. Public demos created with our Knowledge Engine include: WikiChat grounded in Wikipedia, Yelpbot grounded in Yelp, the STORM writing assistant grounded in the Internet, and Noora, a coach for people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (https://oval.cs.stanford.edu).
Biography
Dr. Monica Lam is the Kleiner Perkins, Mayfield, Sequoia Capital Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford, in the Departments of Computer Science and, by courtesy, Electrical Engineering. She is the Faculty Director of the Stanford Open Virtual Assistant Laboratory and a faculty member of the Natural Language Processing Group at Stanford. She received a B.Sc. from University of British Columbia and a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University.Prof. Lam is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and an ACM Fellow. She has received numerous best paper awards, and has published over 150 papers in areas including natural language processing, machine learning, compilers, computer architecture, operating systems, high-performance computing, and HCI. She co-authored the “Dragon Book”, the definitive text on compiler technology. She was on the founding team of Tensilica, the first startup in configurable processor cores. Prof. Lam's research on privacy-preserving virtual assistants earned Popular Science's Best of What's New Award in Security in 2019.
Research Area/Interests
Natural language processing; programming languagesZoom
TBATIME Wednesday, May 8, 2024 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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May8
EVENT DETAILS
lessUniversality is a fascinating high-dimensional phenomenon. It points to the existence of universal laws that govern the macroscopic behavior of wide classes of large and complex systems, despite their differences in microscopic details. The notion of universality originated in statistical mechanics, especially in the study of phase transitions. Similar phenomena have been observed in probability theory, dynamical systems, random matrix theory, signal processing, and machine learning. In this talk, I will present some recent progress in rigorously understanding and exploiting the universality phenomenon in the context of statistical estimation and learning on high-dimensional data. Examples include spectral methods for high-dimensional projection pursuit, statistical learning based on kernel and random feature models, approximate message passing algorithms, structured random dimension reduction maps for efficient sketching, and regularized linear regression on highly structured, strongly correlated, and even (nearly) deterministic design matrices. Together, they demonstrate the robustness and wide applicability of the universality phenomenon.
TIME Wednesday, May 8, 2024 at 2:00 PM - 3:00 PM
LOCATION L440, Technological Institute map it
CONTACT Catherine Healey catherine.healey@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE)
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May9
EVENT DETAILSmore info
lessWant to join the decision-makers? Register for Northwestern University's Master of Science in Information Technology (MSIT) Program Information Session and learn how you can enhance your knowledge of IT and gain the business management skills you need to direct effective IT strategy.
TIME Thursday, May 9, 2024 at 6:00 PM - 7:00 PM
CONTACT Svetlana Korzeniowski msit@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR MS in Information Technology (MSIT) Program
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May10
EVENT DETAILS
lessFriday / CS Distinguished Lecture
May 10th / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
Shafi Goldwasser; Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing, University of California BerkeleyTalk Title
Trust, Backdoor Vulnerabilities and Possible MitigationsAbstract
Cryptographic tools and models enable to trust the use of technology platforms controlled by worst case computationally bounded adversaries. In this talk I will use cryptographic modeling and tools to view trust dilemmas in various phases of the machine learning pipelines. We will touch on privacy in the training stage, verification of properties of
machine learning models, and the possibility of achieving robustness in presence of backdoors.Biography
Shafi Goldwasser is Director of the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing, and Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California Berkeley. Goldwasser is also the RSA Professor (post tenure) of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT and Professor Emeritus of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. Goldwasser holds a B.S. Applied Mathematics from Carnegie Mellon University (1979), and M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California Berkeley (1984).
Goldwasser's contributions include the introduction of probabilistic encryption, interactive zero knowledge protocols, elliptic curve primality testings, hardness of approximation proofs for combinatorial problems, combinatorial property testing, and pseudo deterministic algorithms.
Goldwasser was the recipient of the ACM Turing Award in 2012, the Gödel Prize in 1993 and in 2001, the ACM Grace Murray Hopper Award in 1996, the RSA Award in Mathematics in 1998, the ACM Athena Award for Women in Computer Science in 2008, the Benjamin Franklin Medal in 2010, the IEEE Emanuel R. Piore Award in 2011, the Simons Foundation Investigator Award in 2012, and the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in 2018. Goldwasser is a member of the NAS, NAE, AAAS, the Russian Academy of Science, the Israeli Academy of Science, the London Royal Mathematical Society and a Foreign Member of the Royal Society. Goldwasser holds honorary degrees from Ben Gurion University, Bar Ilan University, Carnegie Mellon University, Haifa University, University of Oxford, and the University of Waterloo, and has received the UC Berkeley Distinguished Alumnus Award and the Barnard College Medal of Distinction.
Research Area/Interests
Cryptography, Complexity, Probabilistic AlgorithmsZoom: TBA
TIME Friday, May 10, 2024 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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May30
EVENT DETAILS
lessTBA
TIME Thursday, May 30, 2024 at 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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May30
EVENT DETAILS
lessTBA
TIME Thursday, May 30, 2024 at 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
LOCATION TBA, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
