This talk will focus on what new graduates entering into industry in fields related to data science may experience as they transition from academia. Focusing on Dr. Sidle's first few years after graduate school, we will discuss the wide variety of working environments early data scientists can be faced with. This presentation highlights the unexpected parts of working in industry, including the challenges of DevOps, data engineering, and implementing explainable machine learning.

Programming languages are simultaneously formal systems and user interfaces with which programmers work. Unfortunately, programmers have a hard time writing safe software: serious bugs and security vulnerabilities are common. In many cases, however, languages with strong safety guarantees have been hard to use. In this talk, I'll discuss user-centered design methods I developed to help language designers create languages that are easier to use.

Generating data with complex patterns, such as images, audio, and molecular structures, requires fitting very flexible statistical models to the data distribution. Even in the age of deep neural networks, building such models is difficult because they typically require an intractable normalization procedure to represent a probability distribution.

Abstract

This February, we bring you the next installment of the Global Health Leaders Seminar series from Nimmi Ramanujam and the Center for Global Women's Health Technologies! We will hear from Dr. Krista Donaldson, CEO of Equalize Health, a global team of designers, engineers, medical professionals and business minds whose slogan is "medical technology for everyone."
This virtual event will be Friday February 25st, 12-1pm.

Abstract

Quantum computers will reshape the landscape of cryptography. On the one hand, they threaten the security of most modern cryptosystems. On the other, they offer fundamentally new ways to realize tasks that were never before thought to be possible. In this talk, I will explore the interplay between quantum computation and cryptography, and the many exciting questions at this intersection. I will describe examples that leverage quantum computers to protect against coercion in online elections, and to prevent piracy of software.

Short Biography

Experts recommend a plethora of advice for staying safe online, yet people still use weak passwords, fall for scams, or ignore software updates. Such inconsistent adoption of protective behaviors is understandable given the need to navigate other priorities and constraints in everyday life. Yet when the actions taken are insufficient to mitigate potential risks, it leaves people - especially those already marginalized - vulnerable to dire consequences from financial loss to abuse and harassment.

In recent years, machine learning techniques have been increasingly applied to many critical problems in the cybersecurity domain, including detecting malware, spam, online fraud, hate speech, etc. However, there are many challenges to reliably deploy these solutions for security applications, since real-world adversaries are constantly trying to evade machine learning systems. My research focuses on solving this problem by increasing the cost for attackers to succeed.

The Electron-Ion Collider will be a new discovery machine for unlocking the secrets of the "glue" that binds the building blocks of visible matter in the universe. The EIC will consist of two intersecting accelerators, one producing an intense beam of electrons (Electron Storage Ring), the other a high-energy beam of protons or heavier atomic nuclei (Hadron Storage Ring), which are steered into collisions of spin-polarized beams in the Interaction Region.

Addressing climate change will require concerted action across society, including the development of innovative technologies. While methods from artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have the potential to play an important role, these methods often struggle to contend with the physics, hard constraints, and complex decision-making processes that are inherent to many climate and energy problems.