News & EventsDepartment Events & Announcements
Events
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Oct1
EVENT DETAILS
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New this quarter
Lunch will be served at 11:30. We warmly encourage you to arrive then and enjoy the food and conversation with colleagues before the talk.---
Wednesday / CS Seminar
October 1st / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
Lane Gunderman, University of Illinois at ChicagoTalk Title
Designing Quantum Codes using Physics ConstraintsAbstract
Quantum computers are widely believed to enable massive computational speedups for certain tasks. The downside to quantum computers, due to their very nature, is that they require having reliable information that is extremely susceptible to noise. For this reason quantum error-correction is expected to be needed to perform reliable computations. In this talk I will discuss my work in improving the quality of error-correction through two different approaches. Firstly designing around different platform's qubit characteristics, such as mobility. Secondly, as many qubit devices are a simplification of the physics underlying these systems, I have developed methods for generating quantum error-correcting codes which are perhaps more suitable for these systems and can better leverage the true dynamics of the system.Biography
Lane is originally from Chicago (or Evanston depending on the year). He obtained Bachelor degrees in physics and math from MIT, then obtained his PhD from the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) at the University of Waterloo in Canada in the Fall of 2022. He then worked at Xanadu Quantum Technologies for about a year, then joined HRL for half a year, before joining UIC's ECE department, in the Fall of 2024.TIME Wednesday, October 1, 2025 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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Nov14
EVENT DETAILS
lessThis one-day workshop, which is part of the Fall 2025 IDEAL Special Program on High Dimensional and Complex Data Analysis, will explore the interplay between metric embeddings, high-dimensional geometry, and algorithmic problems in data science and theoretical computer science. Topics include geometric and probabilistic methods for understanding metric spaces, embeddings with low distortion, and the implications of high-dimensional phenomena for efficient computation and data representation. The workshop will bring together researchers from mathematics, computer science, and related areas to foster exchange across these connected fields.
TIME Friday, November 14, 2025
LOCATION Mudd Library, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Indira Munoz indira.munoz@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Nov14
EVENT DETAILS
lessAdaptive, Scalable, and Quality‐Oriented Solutions for Developing Educational Assessments through Human‐AI Collaboration
Assessments are foundational to education, shaping how teachers teach, how students learn, and how accountability is maintained across the educational ecosystem. Yet, creating and delivering high‐quality assessments remains one of the most time‐consuming aspects of teaching. Educators, especially those in under‐resourced schools, often lack the time, training, and support to design effective assessments that are aligned with curricula and diverse student needs. While recent advances in large language models (LLMs) show the potential to reduce this burden, they also raise concerns about quality and teacher trust. In specific domains such as data visualization education, researchers and educators face similar challenges: existing assessments for measuring visualization literacy (the ability to read and interpret visualizations) are lengthy, rigid, and difficult to scale or adapt. Across both general and visualization‐specific contexts, improving efficiency, maintaining quality, and building trust in assessment development and delivery requires systems that lower technical barriers, promote content reuse and adaptation, and integrate meaningfully into educators’ existing workflows. This dissertation addresses these challenges through three complementary projects that develop adaptive, scalable, quality‐oriented solutions for assessment development. The first project introduces A‐VLAT and A‐CALVı, computerized adaptive tests for visualization literacy that maintain precision and reliability while halving test length. The second project presents VILA, a pipeline that leverages LLMs to generate visualization literacy questions at scale, combining automated generation with expert‐driven evaluation to ensure quality and validity. The third project extends these ideas to general K–12 education, where we codesigned a web‐based system, Ripplet, that supports multilevel reusable interactions with LLMs for creating, editing, and adapting assessments. Together, these projects contribute to the development of assessment systems that improve efficiency, scalability, and quality.
TIME Friday, November 14, 2025 at 1:30 PM - 3:30 PM
LOCATION 1-127, Frances Searle Building map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Nov17
EVENT DETAILS
lessMonday / CS Seminar
November 17th/ 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
Shaddin Dughmi, USCTalk Title
A Combinatorial Lens on Supervised LearningAbstract
I will describe some recent joint results on the theory of supervised learning which follow from surprising connections to combinatorial optimization. Most notably, by connecting learning to bipartite matching on infinite graphs we derive several algorithmic and structural characterizations of learning which hold somewhat broadly.Biography
"Shaddin Dughmi is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at USC and the Neild visiting professor at Northwestern University. He received a B.S. in computer science, summa cum laude, from Cornell University in 2004, and a Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University in 2011. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award, the Arthur L. Samuel best doctoral thesis award, and the ACM EC best student paper award.
Shaddin is broadly interested in questions that stimulate the development of new algorithmic techniques, and shed insight on the power and limitations of algorithms. Work in his group has investigated such questions in a variety of domains: game theory, mechanism design, multi-agent systems, persuasion and information design, delegation and contract theory, decision making subject to online or stochastic uncertainty, and the theory of machine learning."---
CSPAC Community Connections:
Zoom Link
Panopto LinkTIME Monday, November 17, 2025 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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Nov19
EVENT DETAILS
lessWednesday / CS Seminar
November 19 / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
Robert Rand, University of ChicagoTalk Title
Quantum Programming in QunityAbstract
Qunity is a high-level functional language for writing quantum programs in the style of OCaml or Haskell. Qunity treats classical and quantum data equivalently, allowing us to run the same programs on classical data and quantum superpositions. It takes key concepts from classical programming, like pattern matching, try-catch blocks, and data duplication and lifts them to the quantum setting. In this talk, I will describe Qunity, along with recent extensions that enable easier classical and pure quantum programming, and its compiler to quantum circuits.Biography
Robert Rand is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on programming languages and verification for quantum computing and his main projects include the Qunity quantum programming language, the BellKAT DSL for quantum networking, and VyZX, a verified ZX calculus library. He also works on a range of verification projects, from adding automation to the Rocq proof assistant to developing quantum program logics. Robert developed and maintains the INQWIRE QuantumLib, an open-source library for verified quantum computing in Rocq, which underlies many of his projects including his online textbook, Verified Quantum Computing.TIME Wednesday, November 19, 2025 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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Nov20
EVENT DETAILS
lessCS Community! Join us for our monthly free bagels and coffee while mingling with fellow faculty and students.
TIME Thursday, November 20, 2025 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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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 HoltzmanTalk Title
TBAAbstract
TBABiography
TBA---
Zoom: TBA
Panopto: TBATIME 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)