News & EventsDepartment Events & Announcements
Events
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Jan18
EVENT DETAILS
lessSuspension of classes for observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day
TIME Monday, January 18, 2021
CONTACT Office of the Registrar nu-registrar@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR University Academic Calendar
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Jan20
EVENT DETAILS
lessLivestream:
https://northwestern.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=dd081a99-5e70-4c48-9536-acb1010b70d0Abstract
A “sketch” is a data structure supporting some pre-specified set of queries and updates to a database while consuming space substantially (often exponentially) less than the information theoretic minimum required to store everything seen, and thus can also be seen as some form of functional compression. The advantages of sketching include less memory consumption, faster algorithms, and reduced bandwidth requirements in distributed computing environments. Work on sketching and streaming started in the late 70s and early 80s with algorithms such as the Morris approximate counter, Flajolet-Martin probabilistic counting (“distinct elements”), the Munro-Paterson rank/ select algorithms, and the Misra-Gries ‘Frequent’ algorithm, paused for a bit until the mid 1990s, and has maintained steam again since the 1996 work of Alon, Matias, and Szegedy. Despite decades of work in the area, some of the most basic questions still remain open or were only resolved recently. In this talk, I survey recent results across a wide variety of sketching topics, some old and some new.Biography
Jelani Nelson is Professor in the Department of EECS at UC Berkeley.
His research interests include sketching and streaming algorithms, dimensionality reduction, compressing sensing, and randomized linear algebra. In the past he has been a recipient of the PECASE award, a Sloan Research Fellowship, and an NSF CAREER award. He is also the Founder and President of a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, “AddisCoder Inc.”, which organizes annual summer camps that have provided algorithms training to over 500 high school students in Ethiopia.
TIME Wednesday, January 20, 2021 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
CONTACT Pamela Villalovoz pmv@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science
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Jan22
EVENT DETAILS
lessLivestream:
https://northwestern.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=23cd8f49-46bc-4fdb-8449-acaf0013ed75Title:
People Analytics: Using Digital Exhaust from the Web to Leverage Network Insights in the Workplace
Abstract:
In order to bring the performance of people analytics up — and in line with the hype — organizations need to do more than analyze data on demographic attributes. We need to focus not only on who people are but also who they know. The potential for social network analysis to identify “high potentials,” who has good ideas, who is influential, what teams will get work done efficiently and effectively is well established based on decades of research. The challenge has been the collection of network data via surveys that are time consuming, elicit low response rates and have a high obsolescence. This talk presents empirical examples ranging from corporate enterprises to simulated long duration space exploration to demonstrate how we can leverage people analytics – and in particular relational analytics - to mine “digital exhaust”— data created by individuals every day in their digital transactions, such as e‐mails, chats, “likes,” “follows,” @mentions, and file collaboration— to address challenges they face with issues such as team conflict, team assembly, diversity and inclusion, succession planning, and post-merger.Biography:
Noshir Contractor is the Jane S. & William J. White Professor of Behavioral Sciences in the McCormick School of Engineering, the School of Communication and the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. He investigates how social and knowledge networks form and perform. He is the President-Elect-Select of the International Communication Association. He is also a Distinguished Scholar of the National Communication Association and a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Association for Computing Machinery. He received the Lifetime Service Award from the Organizational Communication & Information Systems Division of the Academy of Management. He received the Distinguished Alumnus Award from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras where he received a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering. He has a Ph.D. from the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Southern California.TIME Friday, January 22, 2021 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LOCATION Zoom, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Pam Villalovoz pmv@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science
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Jan26
EVENT DETAILS
lessA Calculation of the Social Returns to Innovation
What are the social returns to investments in innovation? The disparate spillovers associated with innovation, including imitation, business stealing, and intertemporal spillovers, have made calculations of the social returns difficult. Northwestern Kellogg School of Management’s Benjamin F. Jones will provide an economy-wide calculation that nets out the many spillover margins. He will assess the role of capital investment, diffusion delays, learning-by-doing, productivity mismeasurement, health outcomes, and international spillovers in assessing the average social returns. Overall, estimates suggest that the social returns are very large. Even under conservative assumptions, innovation efforts produce social benefits that are many multiples of the investment costs.
TIME Tuesday, January 26, 2021 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
CONTACT Northwestern Engineering Events northwestern-engineering-events@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science
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Jan27
EVENT DETAILS
lessLivestream:
https://northwestern.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=a65af02c-1aba-4f47-a1d7-aca901517ca2Title:
Interactive Machine Teaching: Concepts and Lessons
Abstract:
Machine Learning (ML) can infuse systems with behaviors that rival or surpass human capabilities. This promise of creating systems that can empower people and organizations is met with the friction that creating ML models remains a complex task beyond the reach of non-ML experts. In this talk, I will describe Interactive Machine Teaching and its potential to simplify the creation of ML models. One of the key characteristics of IMT is its iterative process in which the human-in-the-loop takes the role of a teacher teaching a machine how to perform a task, and that the teacher does not need expertise about the underlying ML learning algorithm. After this introduction, I will summarize our insights and lessons from our research in this field, and what promising research directions lie ahead.Biography:
Gonzalo Ramos is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research at Redmond, working on lowering the barrier of entry for people to teach to machines to perform useful tasks. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto's Computer Science Department, specializing in HCI, with a focus on direct interactions. He worked as a Senior Design Technologist and UX Scientist at Amazon, and as a Scientist at Microsoft. His website can be found at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/goramos/TIME Wednesday, January 27, 2021 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LOCATION Zoom, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Pam Villalovoz pmv@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science
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Mar13
EVENT DETAILS
lessWinter Classes End
TIME Saturday, March 13, 2021
CONTACT Office of the Registrar nu-registrar@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR University Academic Calendar
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Mar15
EVENT DETAILS
lessWinter Examinations Begin
TIME Monday, March 15, 2021
CONTACT Office of the Registrar nu-registrar@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR University Academic Calendar