News & EventsDepartment Events & Announcements
Events
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Dec4
EVENT DETAILS
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Wednesday / CS Distinguished Lecture
December 4th / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
Michael Franklin, University of ChicagoTalk Title
Enabling Diverse and Interconnected Data Ecosystems with Lakehouses, Open Formats and AIAbstract
Data and AI are driving innovation across industry, science and society. At the same time, data management technology has changed dramatically, due a combination of factors such as cloud-based data lakes, the development of open standards for data formats and catalogs, and the opportunities presented by generative AI and other AI technologies. The result of all of these changes is an increasingly vibrant data ecosystem that has the potential to span traditional information silos and data incompatibilities to enable people and organizations to leverage all of their data in ways that have until now, simply have not been possible. In this talk I'll survey this new landscape and give an overview of some of the (to my mind) most promising directions for research and innovation in this rapidly advancing area.Biography
MICHAEL J. FRANKLIN is the Morton D. Hull Distinguished Service Professor of Computer Science and Founding Faculty Co-Director of the Data Science Institute at the University of Chicago. He is also a Founding Advisor and Visiting Researcher at Databricks, Inc. At Chicago he served as Liew Family Chair of Computer Science, overseeing the department's rapid expansion in scope and stature. Previously he was the Thomas M. Siebel Professor of Computer Science at UC Berkeley where he directed the Algorithms, Machines and People Laboratory (AMPLab), and was part of the original team building Apache Spark, a popular open source data processing framework initiated at the lab. He is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and is a Fellow of the ACM and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He has served on the Board of the Computing Research Association and the NSF CISE Advisory Committee as well as the ACM Fellows Selection Committee. He received the 2022 ACM SIGMOD Systems Award, and is a two-time recipient of the ACM SIGMOD “Test of Time” award. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Sciences from the Univ. of Wisconsin (1993).Research/Interest Areas: Data systems, Data Science, Systems and AI/ML, Data Markets
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Zoom: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/92065267938
Panopto: https://northwestern.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=4eaec4b2-647d-4fba-8b8c-b22701674df8
DEI Minute: Allyship and Identity tinyurl.com/cspac-dei-minuteTIME Wednesday, December 4, 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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Dec11
EVENT DETAILS
lessThursday / CS Seminar
December 11 / 10:00 AM
In Person / Mudd 3514Speaker
Danli Luo, University of WashingtonTitle: Bridging Computation and Matter: Programming Intelligence into Physical Systems
Abstract:
Scientific discovery faces an asymmetry: machine learning models can predict thousands of novel materials in seconds, simulations can systematically explore vast design spaces, yet physical validation requires months of manual experimentation. While software is programmable and rapidly iterable, physical experimentation remains fragmented across specialized, infrastructure-heavy labs and tacit expertise. This gap raises a central question: how can physical experimentation match the programmability of software? My research addresses this by bridging computation and matter through programmable materials, fabrication systems, and laboratory infrastructure that introduce software-like adaptability into materials, biological processes, and experimental workflows. I pursue this vision through three interconnected research thrusts: materials that encode intelligent behaviors without electronics; fabrication platforms that harness biological growth as a controllable manufacturing process; and modular automation systems that transform experiments into self-optimizing workflows. In this talk, I will present systems ranging from self-burying seed carriers to mycelium-based bio-fabrication platforms to modular lab automation frameworks that learn from execution and optimize protocols in real time, illustrating a pathway toward democratizing experimental access, accelerating materials discovery, and bridging the programmability gap between software and physical reality.Bio: Danli Luo is a PhD candidate in Human-Centered Design & Engineering at the University of Washington, with an M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University. Her research reimagines scientific instrumentation by embedding programmability and physical intelligence directly into materials, biological processes, and experimental workflows. Drawing from human-computer interaction, robotics, and bio-inspired design, she develops materially intelligent instruments, adaptive fabrication platforms, and autonomous laboratory systems used by restoration ecologists, materials scientists, synthetic biologists, chefs, and educators. Her work has been published in Nature, Science Advances, RSC Advances, CHI, and UIST, featured on the cover of Nature, exhibited at the London Design Biennale, and licensed by Fortune 500 companies. Danli’s honors include MIT Technology Review 35 Innovators Under 35, Heidelberg Laureate Forum Young Researcher, and Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas Honorable Mention.
TIME Thursday, December 11, 2025 at 10:00 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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Dec13
EVENT DETAILS
lessThe ceremony will take place on Saturday, December 13 in Pick-Staiger Concert Hall, 50 Arts Circle Drive.
TIME Saturday, December 13, 2025 at 4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
LOCATION Pick-Staiger Concert Hall map it
CONTACT Andi Joppie andi.joppie@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science
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Jan5
EVENT DETAILS
lessMonday / CS Seminar
January 5 / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
Ari Holtzman, University of ChicagoTalk Title
Seeing Like a Language ModelAbstract
How does a language model perceive its input? What aspects of reality does it find legible and which elude it? How can we know? Current approaches to studying LLMs—focused on engineering progress—are insufficiently exploratory. I will discuss some projects touching on various aspects of LLMs: Absence Blindness, the localization of memories, and more sensitivity to subtle social signaling. I will discuss what it means for interpretability approaches to be predictive rather than mechanistic, defend prompting as a form of scientific inquiry, and caution against formalizing concepts too early, without doing the required amount of stamp collecting. Along the way I’ll make the case that AI has been given a new mandate—to articulate the ineffable, by describing aspects of communication and computation that we previously had no words for because they were stuck too deep inside human cognition to be easily referenced.Biography
Ari Holtzman is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Data Science at the University of Chicago where he runs Conceptualization Lab. His lab's motto is 'Untangling the ineffable.' because he believes one of the primary purposes of all human endeavor is to create new vocabulary to help articulate the world more clearly. His research focuses on generative models of language, including contributions like Nucleus Sampling and work on understanding what language models are actually doing and how they perceive the world. Ari completed his PhD at the University of Washington, where he won the William Chan Memorial Dissertation Award and was part of the team that won the inaugural Amazon Alexa Prize in 2017.Research Area(s)/Interests: LLMs, Machine Communication, AI Driven Narrative Art
TIME Monday, January 5, 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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Jan12
EVENT DETAILS
lessMonday / CS Seminar
January 12 / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
Rana Hanocka, UChicagoTalk Title
TBAAbstract
TBABiography
TBA---
Zoom: TBA
Panopto: TBATIME Monday, January 12, 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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Jan14
EVENT DETAILS
lessWednesday / CS Seminar
January 14 / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
Heng Ji, UIUCTalk Title
TBAAbstract
TBABiography
TBA---
Zoom: TBA
Panopto: TBATIME Wednesday, January 14, 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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Jan28
EVENT DETAILS
lessTBA
TIME Wednesday, January 28, 2026 at 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Jan29
EVENT DETAILS
lessCS Community! Join us for our monthly free bagels and coffee while mingling with fellow faculty and students.
TIME Thursday, January 29, 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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Feb2
EVENT DETAILS
lessMonday / CS Seminar
February 2 / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
TBATalk Title
TBAAbstract
TBABiography
TBA---
Zoom: TBA
Panopto: TBATIME Monday, February 2, 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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Feb25
EVENT DETAILS
lessWednesday / CS Seminar
February 25 / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
TBATalk Title
TBAAbstract
TBABiography
TBA---
Zoom: TBA
Panopto: TBATIME Wednesday, February 25, 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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Feb26
EVENT DETAILS
lessCS Community! Join us for our monthly free bagels and coffee while mingling with fellow faculty and students.
TIME Thursday, February 26, 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)