News & EventsDepartment Events & Announcements
Events
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Apr8
EVENT DETAILS
lessWednesday / CS Seminar
April 8 / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
Austin Mordahl, UICTalk Title
Challenges of Modern Static Analysis: Configuration, Flakiness and TestingAbstract
"Static analysis tools are essential for catching bugs early in software development, yet decades of research have failed to overcome fundamental barriers to their adoption: complicated configuration, high false positive rates, and failure to detect real bugs. Despite the proliferation of sophisticated tools for determining program properties and advances in underlying techniques, these challenges continue to hinder widespread adoption and effective use in practice. In this talk, we will explore solutions to three persistent problems that plague modern static analysis: configuration complexity, flakiness, and testing. First, we'll examine approaches to reducing the steep learning curves around tool configuration, making it easier for developers to deploy static analyzers in their projects. Second, we'll investigate techniques for addressing flakiness: when analysis tools produce different results on identical code, undermining developer trust in their results. Finally, we'll discuss methods for testing static analysis tools themselves: validating that tools correctly determine the program properties they claim to compute.
Throughout the talk, we'll also examine how large language models are reshaping approaches to each of these challenges and consider their potential to fundamentally transform static analysis workflows. Attendees will gain practical insights into emerging solutions to long-standing problems and new research directions in making static analysis tools more reliable and accessible."Biography
Austin Mordahl has been an Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois Chicago since November 2024. Prior to this, he was a Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Dallas. Dr. Mordahl’s research concerns automatic bug detection and static analysis, and he is especially interested in understanding and improving the performance of real-world static analysis tools. As a Ph.D. student, he was a recipient of the prestigious NSF Graduate Research Fellowship as well as the winner of the 2019 ACM Student Research Competition at ICSE.Research Interests: Program analysis, software testing, software engineering
TIME Wednesday, April 8, 2026 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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Apr9
EVENT DETAILS
lessThursday / Student Seminar
April 9 / 12:00 PM
Mudd 3514Speaker: TBA
Title: TBA
Abstract: TBA
Bio: TBA
TIME Thursday, April 9, 2026 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Apr10
EVENT DETAILS
lessHappy Graduate Student Appreciation Week! Free smoothies, spa items, cozy vibes, and time to unwind for our Computer Science PhD and MS students.
TIME Friday, April 10, 2026 at 11:00 AM - 1:00 PM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Bella Barrios marbella.barrios@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Apr13
EVENT DETAILS
lessMonday / CS Seminar
April 13 / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
Arindam Banerjee, University of Illinois Urbana-ChampaignTalk Title
Reinforcement Learning and Control with Generative World ModelsAbstract
"Recent years have witnessed remarkable advances in generative modeling — from diffusion models and flow matching to autoregressive transformers and action-conditioned video models — that are rapidly closing the gap between learned simulators and the complexity of real-world dynamics. These developments open a principled path toward a new generation of reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms that harness the representational power of generative world models, naturally bridging model-based planning and model-free policy optimization within a unified framework.
In this talk, we introduce an inference-time policy optimization framework inspired by model predictive control (MPC), built around a pretrained policy and a learned world model (WM) of state transitions and rewards. While existing approaches use learned dynamics to generate imagined trajectories — either during training or at inference — they stop short of using those trajectory rollouts to optimize policy parameters on the fly. Our approach addresses this gap through a Differentiable World Model (DWM) pipeline that enables end-to-end gradient computation through WM trajectory rollouts, yielding inference-time policy optimization (ITPO) grounded in MPC. Across continuous-control benchmarks, ITPO with DWM consistently outperforms strong offline RL baselines. Beyond the core RL framework, we also discuss principled approaches to fine-tuning generative models under distribution shift, which enable the online deployment of such world-model-based policies."
Biography
Arindam Banerjee is a Founder Professor at the Siebel School of Computing and Data Science, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. He currently serves as the President of the Society for Artificial Intelligence and Statistics which runs the annual international AISTATS conference. He is an ACM Fellow. His research interests are in machine learning and artificial intelligence. His current research focuses on computational and statistical aspects of deep learning, spatial and temporal data analysis, generative models, and sequential decision making. His work also focuses on applications of machine learning in complex real-world and scientific domains including problems in weather and climate, ecology, and agriculture. He has won several awards over the years, including the NSF CAREER award, the IBM Faculty Award, and seven best paper awards at top-tier venues.Research Area/Interest:
Machine Learning, Artificial IntelligenceTIME Monday, April 13, 2026 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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Apr15
EVENT DETAILS
lessWednesday / CS Seminar
April 154 / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
Jakub Szefer, Northwestern UniversityTalk Title
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Zoom: TBA
Panopto: TBATIME Wednesday, April 15, 2026 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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Apr15
EVENT DETAILSmore info
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The Center for Synthetic Biology, in collaboration with the Block Museum of Art at Northwestern, is pleased to welcome Dario Robleto, award-winning multi-media artist, for a screening of his film Ancient Beacons Long for Notice. This third part of Robleto’s trilogy explores the legacy of the “Golden Record”—a gold disc representing Earth's diverse life and cultures, sent beyond our solar system on NASA’s Voyager space probes. The film asks a core question:“ is our moral obligation to fully account for our actions—the good and the bad—in perpetuity, off-planet, and to beings we have yet to confirm exist?” A community conversation after the screening will explore this question in the context of synthetic biology’s history, encouraging us to consider its ethical implications as we forecast the future.
Dario Robleto’s work has been widely exhibited and is held in prominent collections, including the Whitney Museum of American Art and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C. A portfolio of the artists prints titled The First Time, The Heart (A Portrait of Life 1854–1913) was acquired by the Block in 2018 with support of Northwestern Engineering. His work has also been featured in numerous media outlets, including Krista Tippett’s On Being and The New York Times. Robleto has held numerous artist-in-residence positions at prestigious institutions, including the Smithsonian Museum of American History and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard. In 2025, he received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from Middlebury College.
From 2018 to 2023, Robleto Served as Artist-at-Large at Northwestern University’s McCormick School of Engineering and the Block Museum of Art, where he developed and screened the first two parts of his trilogy about the history of the heart and the Golden Record. The residency culminated in the exhibition The Heart’s Knowledge: Science and Empathy in the Art of Dario Robleto, as well as a publication of the same name. During his time at Northwestern, Robleto built strong ties with the Center for Synthetic Biology and explored the intersection of art, technology, and ethics in society.
This event leads up to the Center for Synthetic Biology’s 10-year Anniversary, where Robleto is leading the development of a time capsule representing the future of synthetic biology at Northwestern and in the world.
Event Details - Northwestern University, Evanston Campus
📅 Wednesday, April 15, 2026
🕒 3:00–5:00 PM | Film Screening & Discussion
📍 The Block Museum of ArtTIME Wednesday, April 15, 2026 at 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
LOCATION Block Museum of Art, Mary and Leigh map it
CONTACT Block Museum of Art block-museum@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Block Museum of Art
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Apr16
EVENT DETAILS
lessThursday / Student Seminar
April 16 / 12:00 PM
Mudd 3514Speaker: TBA
Title: TBA
Abstract: TBA
Bio: TBA
TIME Thursday, April 16, 2026 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Apr20
EVENT DETAILS
lessMonday / Student Seminar
April 20 / 12:00 PM
Mudd 3514Speaker: TBA
Title: TBA
Abstract: TBA
Bio: TBA
TIME Monday, April 20, 2026 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Apr22
EVENT DETAILS
lessWednesday / CS Seminar
April 22 / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
Lev Reyzin, University of Illinois ChicagoTalk Title
On the Hardness of Learning Regular ExpressionsAbstract
"Despite the theoretical significance and wide practical use of regular expressions, the computational complexity of learning them has been largely unexplored. We study the computational hardness of improperly learning regular expressions in the PAC model and with membership queries. We show that PAC learning is hard even under the uniform distribution on the hypercube, and also prove hardness of distribution-free learning with membership queries. Furthermore, if regular expressions are extended with complement or intersection, we establish hardness of learning with membership queries even under the uniform distribution. We emphasize that these results do not follow from existing hardness results for learning DFAs or NFAs, since the descriptive complexity of regular languages can differ exponentially between DFAs, NFAs, and regular expressions.
This work is joint with Idan Attias, Nati Srebro, and Gal Vardi"
Biography
Lev Reyzin is a Professor of Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science at the University of Illinois Chicago and Co-Director of the IDEAL Institute. He works on the theory of machine learning, data science, and artificial intelligence. Prior to UIC, Reyzin was a Simons Postdoctoral Fellow at Georgia Tech and an NSF Computing Innovation Fellow at Yahoo! Research. Reyzin received his Ph.D. on an NSF doctoral fellowship from Yale under Dana Angluin and his bachelor’s degree from Princeton. He is currently the Chair of the Steering Committee for the ALT conference and the Editor-in-Chief of Mathematics of Data, Learning, and Intelligence. He has also served as a General Chair for FOCS 2024, the Program Chair for ISAIM 2020, and a Program Chair for ALT 2017. His work has earned awards at ICML, COLT, and AISTATS and has received extensive funding.Research Areas/Interests: theory of machine learning, data science, and artificial intelligence
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Zoom Link
Panopto LinkTIME Wednesday, April 22, 2026 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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Apr27
EVENT DETAILS
lessMonday / CS Seminar
April 27 / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
Tushar ChandraTalk Title
TBAAbstract
TBABiography
TBA---
Zoom: TBA
Panopto: TBATIME Monday, April 27, 2026 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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Apr29
EVENT DETAILS
lessWednesday / CS Seminar
April 29 / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
Bill Fefferman, University of ChicagoTalk Title
Have we seen a demonstration of experimental quantum advantage?Abstract
"A major goal for the field of quantum computation is “quantum advantage" -- the first experimental demonstration of a quantum computation that is beyond the capabilities of any classical computer. While we have now seen many quantum advantage claims made by experimental groups around the world, many of these claims have been disproven.In this talk we'll discuss the status quo regarding the latest experimental quantum advantage claims and the evidence for their classical hardness. We’ll then discuss the classical verification problem, and propose a new quantum advantage proposal that uses ideas from quantum error correction to enable a large gap between classical verification and simulation."
Biography
"Bill Fefferman is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Chicago. His research explores the power of quantum computers in both the near-term and the indefinite future. He is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award (2020), a Young Investigator Award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (2018), and a Google Scholar Award (2022). Before coming to Chicago he held research positions at the University of Maryland/NIST and at the University of California at Berkeley. He received his Ph.D. in computer science in the Department of Computer and Mathematical Sciences and the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter at Caltech."Research Area/Interest: Quantum computing, theory
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Zoom: TBA
Panopto: TBATIME Wednesday, April 29, 2026 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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Apr30
EVENT DETAILS
lessJoin us for free bagels and coffee followed by an informal discussion hosted by CSPAC and CSSI.
TIME Thursday, April 30, 2026 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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Apr30
EVENT DETAILS
lessThursday / Student Seminar
April 30 / 12:00 PM
Mudd 3514Speaker: TBA
Title: TBA
Abstract: TBA
Bio: TBA
TIME Thursday, April 30, 2026 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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May4
EVENT DETAILS
lessMonday / CS Seminar
May 4 / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
Moon DuchinTalk Title
TBAAbstract
TBABiography
TBA---
Zoom: TBA
Panopto: TBATIME Monday, May 4, 2026 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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May27
EVENT DETAILS
lessCome celebrate with us at the annual end of year department awards on Wednesday May 27th. Details to come.
TIME Wednesday, May 27, 2026 at 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
CONTACT Wynante Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)