News & EventsDepartment Events & Announcements
Events
-
May1
EVENT DETAILS
less
Please join us in Mudd 3514 at 9 AM for a research presentation brought to you by Dolby Laboratories.
TIME Thursday, May 1, 2025 at 9:00 AM - 10:15 AM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Dru Redmond drucilla.redmond@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
-
May13
EVENT DETAILS
lessWednesday / CS Seminar
May 13 / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker: Zhiru Zhang, Cornell University
Title: Hypothesizing Autonomous Accelerator Design
Abstract: We are living through a fundamental shift in computing, where performance and efficiency gains increasingly come from specialized accelerators tailored to "hot" domains like AI. Yet as accelerator-centric computing proliferates, it continues to build atop a longstanding disconnect between the way we design these systems and the way we program them. This divide slows hardware innovation, complicates the software stack, and makes accelerators far harder to evolve than the rapidly changing applications they are meant to serve. While increasingly capable AI agents can help alleviate some of these challenges, many key pieces are still missing to truly close this loop. In this talk, I will share lessons learned from our recent work on (1) workload mapping for emerging accelerator architectures, (2) abstractions that help unify accelerator design and programming, and (3) agentic approaches to compiler construction. I will discuss how these directions may collectively move us closer to a future of more autonomous accelerator design.
Bio: Zhiru Zhang is a Professor in the School of ECE at Cornell University. His current research investigates new algorithms, design methodologies, and automation tools for heterogeneous computing. Dr. Zhang is an IEEE Fellow and has been honored with the Intel Outstanding Researcher Award, AWS AI Amazon Research Award, Facebook Research Award, Google Faculty Research Award, DAC Under-40 Innovators Award, DARPA Young Faculty Award, IEEE CEDA Ernest S. Kuh Early Career Award, and NSF CAREER Award. He has also received 10+ best paper awards from premier conferences and journals in computer systems and EDA. Prior to joining Cornell, he co-founded AutoESL, a high-level synthesis start-up later acquired by Xilinx (now part of AMD). AutoESL's HLS tool evolved into Vivado HLS (now Vitis HLS), which is widely used for designing FPGA-based hardware accelerators.
TIME Wednesday, May 13, 2026 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
-
May14
EVENT DETAILS
lessThursday / CS Distinguished Lecture
May 14 / 4:00 PM
Hybrid / Ford ITW 1350Light refreshments will be served prior to the seminar. Please RSVP to secure your plate.
Speaker
Prabhakar Raghavan, GoogleTalk Title:
Can AI assist in Mathematics and Computer Science research?Abstract:
We share our experience using LLMs to obtain new results in mathematics and computer science. We begin with an illustrative example from load-balancing in planet-scale cloud systems, outlining the abilities and limitations of LLMs. Next, we describe our experience with AlphaEvolve, an evolutionary language model from Google DeepMind, to establish new results in the approximability of the Traveling Salesman Problem (TSP), and MAX-CUT problem. We also derive new bounds for several Ramsey numbers. Our methodology entails evolving fleets of Python programs that generate proof chunks to yield these results, and to accelerate proof verification by up to 10,000x. We suggest that our results on inapproximability and Ramsey theory could not have been discovered by hand, and conclude with reflections on the state and promise of AI in mathematics and CS research.Biography:
Prabhakar Raghavan is the Chief Technologist at Google, where he has held several senior roles since joining in 2012, including Senior Vice President with oversight of Search, Maps, Advertising, Gemini and Payments, and before that, responsibility for Gmail, Google Drive, Calendar and Google Docs. Previously, he led Yahoo! Labs and served as CTO at Verity, Inc following over a decade at IBM Research. He co-authored the textbooks Randomized Algorithms and Introduction to Information Retrieval. Raghavan received a PhD from Berkeley and a Dottore ad honorem from the University of Bologna, and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.---
ZoomTIME Thursday, May 14, 2026 at 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM
LOCATION ITW 1350, Ford Motor Company Engineering Design Center map it
CONTACT Dru Redmond drucilla.redmond@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
-
May15
EVENT DETAILS
lessThe big data revolution along with the success of black-box machine learning models have given us access to a large volumes of information. These models are then used to inform all manner of algorithmic and decision-making tasks. However, black-box machine learning models can be unreliable in ways that are hard to predict, and we are far from having a full characterization of the failure modes of these methods. If the black-box model could be arbitrarily wrong, conventional worst-case analysis may suggest that the best an algorithm can do is to ignore it, as it could be as hurtful as it might be helpful. This is pessimistic, as model predictions are often useful and valuable, even if it is hard to predict failure. In many high-stakes applications it is unreasonable, if not irresponsible, to fully disregard model predictions.
An alternative is to evaluate an algorithm both on reliability, and on how well it uses the black-box model. This thesis develops new algorithmic methods that simultaneously utilize the model as well as possible when it is correct, while also remaining robust in the setting where the model is not useful, or even misleading. A key aspect of this thesis is simultaneously providing
(1) pessimistic guarantees: that the method is reliable even when the black-box model is not, and
(2) optimistic guarantees: that the method provably distills useful information if the black-box model provides it.
This work extends the areas of algorithms with predictions and conformal prediction, and develops new algorithmic techniques that make new connections to other areas of algorithms including robust statistics, and online algorithms.
TIME Friday, May 15, 2026 at 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
LOCATION Mudd 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)
-
May18
EVENT DETAILS
lessMonday / Student Seminar
May 18 / 12:00 PM
Mudd 3514Speaker: TBA
Title: TBA
Abstract: TBA
Bio: TBA
TIME Monday, May 18, 2026 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
-
May20
EVENT DETAILS
lessWednesday / CS Distinguished Lecture
May 20 / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
Julio OttinoTalk Title
From Clocks to Clouds: Computer Science and the New Architecture of RealityAbstract
"Computer science has become one of the most powerful intellectual forces of our time. It does something no other field quite does: it discovers like science, invents like engineering, and creates like art. In doing so, it has helped build the infrastructure of modern reality—algorithms, platforms, networks, and increasingly, AI systems that shape how billions of people think, interact, and decide.
This talk places computer science on a larger intellectual canvas. It contrasts two ways of seeing the world: one rooted in determinism, decomposition, and control—what we might call the “clock” worldview—and another grounded in emergence, adaptation, and irreducible complexity—the “cloud” worldview. Computer science sits uniquely at the intersection of these modes of thinking.
The field’s greatest achievements have come from its mastery of “clock thinking”: formalization, algorithms, optimization, and scalable systems. But the world these systems now inhabit—and increasingly create—is a “cloud world”: dynamic, interconnected, and only partially predictable.
This mismatch raises a central question: what does computer science need to become when it is not just solving problems, but designing environments—and increasingly, reality itself?
The talk argues that the next phase of the field will require complementing its extraordinary precision with new forms of rigor—tools for navigating uncertainty, reasoning under incomplete models, and designing for emergence rather than control.
Computer science has already shaped the landscape we live in. The question now is whether it will also develop the intellectual frameworks needed to understand—and responsibly guide—the worlds it is creating."Biography
Julio Mario Ottino is a researcher, engineering scientist, academic leader, educator, artist, and author. He is Founder and Co-Director of the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems, McCormick Institute Professor of Engineering, and Professor of Management and Organizations at Northwestern University. Widely recognized as a world authority on chaos and complexity, he has been a Guggenheim Fellow and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. As Dean of Engineering, he launched major university-wide initiatives, programs, degrees, and centers spanning design, energy and sustainability, human–computer interaction, and entrepreneurship. His most recent book is The Nexus: Augmented Thinking for a Complex World — The New Convergence of Art, Technology, and Science (MIT Press, 2022).Research Areas: complex systems
TIME Wednesday, May 20, 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)
-
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
LOCATION TGS Commons, 2122 Sheridan Road map it
CONTACT Wynante Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
-
May28
EVENT DETAILS
lessJoin us for free bagels and coffee followed by an informal discussion hosted by CSPAC and CSSI.
TIME Thursday, May 28, 2026 at 9:00 AM - 11:00 PM
CONTACT Wynante Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)