Events

Speaker:  Dr. Nikhil Swamy, Microsoft Research, Redmond

Title:  Proof-oriented Programming for Critical Compute Infrastructure

Abstract: 

From the early days of computer science, the potential of mathematical proofs of programs to eradicate large classes of software errors has been widely recognized; however, historically, few practical applications were feasible. The proof techniques were difficult to apply to full-fledged programming languages, and proofs were hard to scale to large programs. But things are changing with recent progress in programming languages and theorem provers, enabling program proofs to be applied to industrial-scale software.

At Microsoft Research, we have been developing a proof-oriented programming language called F*. Proof-oriented programming (PoP) is a paradigm in which programs and their proofs are co-developed in a single framework, enabling both daring programming patterns which, without proofs, would be too risky; conversely, PoP also forces the design and use of robust abstractions that facilitate modular, scalable proofs. We maintain a corpus of proof-oriented code developed in F*, now approaching nearly a million lines of code. Some of this code now runs in the Windows kernel and Azure cloud computing stack, the Linux kernel, Firefox, Python, and several other popular software packages.

While the expertise needed to use a proof-oriented language like F* is still substantial, with continued advances, proof-oriented programming could become the standard way of building the complex, highly optimized programs that underpin society's critical compute infrastructure.

Bio:  Nikhil Swamy is a Senior Principal Researcher in the RiSE group at Microsoft Research, Redmond. His work covers various topics including type systems, program logics, functional programming, and program proof, often applied to build provably secure programs, including web applications, cryptographic software, and low-level systems code. He has been developing F* since before its first commit on GitHub.

Host:  Dr. Alex Summers, UBC Computer Science

Speaker:  Dr. Elisabeth André, Professor, University of Augsburg

Title:  Socio-Affective Signals as Facilitators of Human-Human and Human-Agent Interaction

Abstract:

Social interactions profoundly shape our human life. This presentation explores the potential of imbuing machines with socially-aware interfaces, creating pathways for more natural and intuitive interactions between humans and technology. I will introduce computational methodologies aimed at instilling socially interactive behaviors in robots and virtual characters, covering the following three essential components: Social Perception, Socially-Aware Behavior Synthesis, and Learning Socially-Aware Behaviors. In addition to exploring analytical methods rooted in cognitive and social science theories, I will delve into data-driven approaches that empower artificial agents to acquire socially interactive behaviors from observations of human-human interactions or from real-life engagements with human interlocutors. I will also discuss the potential and challenges associated with neural behavior generation techniques, which offer the promise of elevating virtual agents and social robots to new levels of human-likeness. Particularly, the talk will address conditional motion synthesis with transformer models and diffusion models tailored for human behavior imitation and generation. Throughout the presentation, I will provide practical insights and examples derived from our work across various application domains. I will also demonstrate how analytic and generative AI may be used to enrich human-human interactions of people with special needs.

Bio:

Elisabeth André is a full professor of Computer Science and Founding Chair of Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence at Augsburg University in Germany. She has a long track record in multimodal human-machine interaction, embodied conversational agents, social robotics, affective computing and social signal processing. Her work has won many awards including the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz Prize 2021 of the German Research Foundation (DFG), with 2.5 Mio € the highest endowed German research award. In 2017, she was elected to the CHI Academy, an honorary group of leaders in the field of Human-Computer Interaction. To honor her achievements in bringing Artificial Intelligence techniques to Human-Computer Interaction, she was awarded a EurAI fellowship (European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence) in 2013. In 2019, she was named one of the 10 most influential figures in the history of AI in Germany by National Society for Informatics (GI). Elisabeth André is a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities, the Academy of Europe, the Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association and the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

Host:  Dr. Cristina Conati, UBC Computer Science

All are welcome to attend this research talk.

Title: Harnessing Data for Social Impact: Empowering Communities through Visualization and Social Computing

Speaker: Narges Mahyar, Assistant Prof. U Mass Amherst & Harvard Radcliffe Fellow

Date/Time: Thu Dec 7 11am-noon

Location: Forest Sciences Centre 2330 (DFP Classroom)

Abstract: Today’s world faces several complex problems, such as climate change, transportation, infrastructure, education, and healthcare. Technology, if designed right, can play an essential role in informing people, raising awareness, sharing data, and connecting communities and decision-makers to take data-informed actions. In this talk, I present examples of my recent work on building and studying community-centered tools to empower the general public to engage in real-world sociotechnical problems such as urban planning and climate change and bring their ideas and comments for shaping future policies. These examples demonstrate my multidisciplinary approach in combining information visualization, HCI, applied ML, and human-centered AI to design and build innovative tools and technologies to address complex sociotechnical problems. I then describe a vision for expanding my research to further advance democracy, equity, well-being, and sustainability by fostering the inclusion and empowerment of marginalized populations. I also briefly present my work on inclusive data visualization to empower the public to understand the data that is increasingly part of their lives and make better data-informed decisions. I close with a discussion of how my work can be applied to other sociotechnical problems, such as health informatics and learning sciences.

Bio: Narges Mahyar is an Assistant Professor in the Manning College of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Currently she holds a position as a Radcliffe Fellow at Harvard University. Narges’s research falls at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction, Information Visualization, Social Computing, and Design. She designs, develops, and evaluates novel social computing and visualization techniques that help people explore, understand, and make data-informed decisions. In addition, over the past nine years, she has focused on an emerging interdisciplinary area of “Digital Civics,” which explores new strategies for scaling and diversifying public engagement in massive decision-making processes related to civic issues. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Victoria, an MS in Information Technology from the University of Malaya, and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Tehran Azad University. She was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia from 2014 to 2016 and in the Design Lab at the University of California San Diego from 2016 to 2018. Her recognition in the field has been repeatedly confirmed through many accolades for her research, including five Best Paper Awards from CHI 2023, Eurovis 2022, CSCW 2020, the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture 2017, and VAST 2014; and three Best Paper Honorable Mention Awards from TiiS 2022, DIS 2021 and ISS 2016.

Host: Tamara Munzner

Abstract: Today's world faces several complex problems, such as climate change, transportation, infrastructure, education, and healthcare. Technology, if designed right, can play an essential role in informing people, raising awareness, sharing data, and connecting communities and decision-makers to take data-informed actions. In this talk, I present examples of my recent work on building and studying community-centered tools to empower the general public to engage in real-world sociotechnical problems such as urban planning and climate change and bring their ideas and comments for shaping future policies. These examples demonstrate my multidisciplinary approach in combining information visualization, HCI, applied ML, and human-centered AI to design and build innovative tools and technologies to address complex sociotechnical problems. I then describe a vision for expanding my research to further advance democracy, equity, well-being, and sustainability by fostering the inclusion and empowerment of marginalized populations. I also briefly present my work on inclusive data visualization to empower the public to understand the data that is increasingly part of their lives and make better data-informed decisions. I close with a discussion of how my work can be applied to other sociotechnical problems, such as health informatics and learning sciences.