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• May

  13

  ECE Seminar: Avrin Blum

  Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE)

  10:00 AM L440, Technological Institute

  EVENT DETAILS

  LLM reasoning is becoming a powerful tool for mathematics, planning, decision support, and even agents acting on your behalf in the world. However, LLMs can make mistakes, suggest (or perform) unsafe actions, and in general are not always that reliable. In this work, we consider the problem of interactively training verifiers that could interface with these generators to make them more reliable, safer, and better aligned with their user’s preferences. We consider this problem from a learning-theoretic perspective, analyzing the types of guarantees achievable for learning capable verifiers for these tasks, and highlighting the different roles of “soundness” versus “completeness” forms of errors in our analysis. This work is joint with Maria-Florina Balcan, Korinna Fragkia, Zhiyuan Li, and Dravyansh Sharma.

  Avrim Blum is Professor, Chief Academic Officer, and Interim President at the Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago (TTIC). Before TTIC, he was a faculty member in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University for 25 years. Blum’s main research interests are in Machine Learning Theory, Algorithmic Game Theory, Approximation Algorithms, and Societal Issues in Machine Learning. He has served as Program Chair for the Conference on Learning Theory (COLT), the IEEE Symposium on Foundations of Computer Science (FOCS), and the Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science Conference (ITCS). Blum is recipient of the AI Journal Classic Paper Award, the ICML/COLT 10-Year Best Paper Award, the ACM Paris Kanellakis Award, the Sloan Fellowship, the NSF National Young Investigator Award, and the Herbert Simon Teaching Award, and he is a Fellow of the ACM.

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  TIME Wednesday, May 13, 2026 at 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM

  LOCATION L440, Technological Institute    map it

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  CONTACT Amani Walker    amani.walker@northwestern.edu EMAIL

  CALENDAR Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE)

• Jun

  3

  ECE Seminar: Gil Zussman

  Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE)

  10:00 AM L440, Technological Institute

  EVENT DETAILS

  Join us for our weekly Electrical and Computer Engineering Speaker Series, where innovation meets insight. Each week, we host a distinguished speaker from academia, industry, or research who will share cutting-edge developments, emerging trends, and real-world applications shaping the future of ECE.

  From advances in artificial intelligence and embedded systems to breakthroughs in communications, power systems, and beyond, these talks are designed to spark curiosity, inspire new ideas, and connect our community with leaders in the field.

  Whether you're a student, researcher, or simply passionate about technology, this series offers a valuable opportunity to learn, ask questions, and engage with exciting work at the forefront of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

  Stay tuned for weekly updates on upcoming topics and speakers!

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  TIME Wednesday, June 3, 2026 at 10:00 AM - 11:30 AM

  LOCATION L440, Technological Institute    map it

  ADD TO CALENDAR

  CONTACT Amani Walker    amani.walker@northwestern.edu EMAIL

  CALENDAR Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE)