Past events

RSVP Link
Thursday, May 14th, 9 - 11 a.m.
University Recreation and Wellness Center - Beacon Room

Graduating undergraduate students and some of their families and friends are invited to join the Department of Computer Science & Engineering in celebrating their accomplishments. This is a casual event to mingle with other graduates, take photos, and listen to speakers.  There will be light snacks and beverages at the event. This does not include a ceremony where names will be read and a stage crossing takes place. Please see the information under "College Commencements" for more information on stage crossings.

Student speakers:

Adithya Saravu
Adithya Saravu is a Founding Engineer at Entelligence AI — a Mayfield Fund-backed, pre-Series A startup building a full-stack, self-healing production reliability platform for AI-generated code. His role spans core engineering, product strategy, and venture capital fundraising. He graduated with a CS degree from the College of Science and Engineering in December 2025 and is currently based in San Francisco

Baanee Singh
Baanee Singh is a Computer Science student at the University of Minnesota with a passion for applying technology to real-world challenges. She has been involved in undergraduate research, focusing on geospatial analysis and machine learning, and has also worked as a teaching assistant. She is actively engaged in student leadership as a board member for STEMBridge and Captain of the Twin Cities Bhangra team. After graduating, she plans to return to complete her master’s degree and continue growing in the field of computer science.

College/University Commencement

2026 College of Science & Engineering Undergraduate Commencement

Thursday, May 14, 2026
1 p.m. - Ceremony begins
3M Arena at Mariucci, University of Minnesota
1901 4th Street S.E., Minneapolis

Questions: [email protected]

2026 College of Liberal Arts Undergraduate Commencement

Sunday, May 17, 2026
Two ceremonies (according to CLA major): 11 am and 4 pm

Questions: [email protected]

RSVP Link
Thursday, May 7, 9 - 11 a.m.
University Recreation and Wellness Center - Beacon Room

All graduating graduate students and their families and friends are invited to join the Department of Computer Science & Engineering in celebrating their accomplishments. This is a casual event to mingle with other graduates, take photos, and listen to speakers. There will be light snacks and beverages at the event. This does not include a ceremony where names will be read and a stage crossing takes place.

College/University Commencement

The computer science colloquium takes place on Mondays from 11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. This week's speaker, Sebastian Elbaum (University of Virginia), will be giving a talk titled "From Sensors to Driving Rules: End-to-End Analysis for AV Assurances"

Abstract

Biography

The Natural Language Processing course (CSci 5541) will host a poster presentation session on Tuesday, April 28, 2026, from 4:00 PM to 5:15 PM at Walter 402. Students will present their final project posters showcasing their work in natural language processing.

Spring 2026 Posters

The computer science colloquium takes place on Mondays from 11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. This week's speaker, Magdalena Balazinska (University of Washington), will be giving a talk titled "Self-enhancing video data management in a multimodal database system"

Abstract

Biography

The computer science colloquium takes place on Mondays from 11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. This week's speaker, Rakesh Agrawal (Data Insights Laboratories), will be giving a talk titled "Whither Educational Data Intelligence?"

Abstract

Biography

The computer science colloquium takes place on Mondays from 11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. This week's speaker, Gaurav Sukhatme (University of Southern California), will be giving a talk titled "Learning Coordinated, Performant, and Safe Flight with 20 Neurons"

Abstract

We have recently demonstrated the possibility of learning controllers that are zero-shot transferable to groups of real quadrotors via large-scale, multi-agent, end-to-end reinforcement learning. We train policies parameterized by neural networks that can control individual drones in a group in a fully decentralized manner. Our policies, trained in simulated environments with realistic quadrotor physics, demonstrate advanced flocking behaviors, perform aggressive maneuvers in tight formations while avoiding collisions with each other, break and re-establish formations to avoid collisions with moving obstacles, and efficiently coordinate in pursuit-evasion tasks. The model learned in simulation transfers to highly resource-constrained physical quadrotors. Motivated by these results and the observation that neural control of memory-constrained, agile robots requires small yet highly performant models, the talk will conclude with some thoughts on coaxing learned models onto devices with modest computational capabilities.

Biography

Gaurav S. Sukhatme is Professor of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Southern California (USC). He is the inaugural Director of the USC School of Advanced Computing and the Executive Vice Dean of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. He holds the Donald M. Aldstadt Chair in Advanced Computing and was the Chairman of the USC Computer Science Department from 2012-17. He earned a B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Bombay and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from USC. He is the co-director of the USC Robotics Research Laboratory and directs the USC Robotic Embedded Systems Laboratory. His research is in networked robots, learning robots, and field robotics. He is a Fellow of the AAAI, AAAS, and the IEEE, a recipient of the NSF CAREER award, the Okawa Foundation research award, and an Amazon research award. He is one of the founders of the Robotics: Science and Systems conference and was the program chair of 2005 RSS 2005, ICRA 2008 and IROS 2011. He is the Editor-in-Chief of Autonomous Robots (Springer Nature).
 

This weeks NLP Seminar, Maarten Sap (Carnegie Mellon University), will be giving a talk titled "Enabling Human-centric and Culturally Aware Safety of AI Agents"

Abstract

AI safety has made substantial strides, yet still struggles to keep up with increasingly agentic AI use cases, and often overly focuses on technical solutions rather than human centered ones. In this talk, I'll outline some recent works towards making AI safety more human-centric and culturally aware. 
First, I'll introduce HAICosystem and OpenAgentSafety, two new interactive benchmarks for evaluating LLM agents in multi-turn and tool-using interactions via simulations, which shows that agents still have safety issues due to tool use that were not previously known.
Then, focusing on users, I'll outline a recent study on how LLM agents should or should not refuse queries, showing that user perceptions, trust, and willingness to use LLMs are strongly affected by their refusal strategies, and that many current LLMs use least-preferred refusal strategies.
Finally, I'll cover an oft-overlooked aspect of safety, namely, cultural safety. Introducing MC-Signs, a new benchmark to measure the cultural safety of LLMs, VLMs, and T2I systems with respect to culturally offensive non-verbal communication (e.g., hand gestures), showing strong western-centric biases of all AI systems.
I'll conclude with some future directions towards better cultural and human-centric safety.  

Biography

Maarten Sap is an assistant professor in Carnegie Mellon University's Language Technologies Department (CMU LTI), and a courtesy appointment in the Human-Computer Interaction institute (HCII). He is also a part-time research scientist and AI safety lead at the Allen Institute for AI. His research focuses on (1) measuring and improving AI systems' social and interactional intelligence, (2) assessing and combatting social inequality, safety risks, and socio-cultural biases in human- or AI-generated language, and (3) building narrative language technologies for prosocial outcomes. He has presented his work in top-tier NLP and AI conferences, receiving paper awards or nominations at NeurIPS 2025, NAACL 2025, EMNLP 2023, ACL 2023, FAccT 2023, WeCNLP 2020, and ACL 2019. He was named a 2025 Packard Fellow and a recipient of the 2025 Okawa Research Award. His research has been covered in the press, including the New York Times, Forbes, Fortune, Vox, and more.

The computer science colloquium takes place on Mondays from 11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. This week's speaker, Gloria Mark (University of California, Irvine), will be giving a talk titled "The Cognitive Costs of Technology Use: Attention, Multitasking, and Stress"

Abstract

We are undergoing a fundamental shift in how we think, work, and focus in the digital age. While personal technologies are designed to extend our capabilities, my research shows that they often lead to increased multitasking and stress—factors that can hinder performance. To understand technology use, I study people in their real-world environments using sensors and other mixed methods. In this talk, I’ll begin by showing how our attention spans on screens have significantly decreased over the past two decades. I’ll discuss how this change is connected to broader sociotechnical changes in our lives. I’ll present different types of attention people experience and their relation to mood and wellbeing. AI is also influencing how we pay attention and reason. Finally, I will discuss solutions at both the individual and collective levels for gaining agency with attention, sharing insights on how people can recognize and work with their natural attentional rhythms.

Biography

Gloria Mark is Professor Emerita at UC Irvine and a leading researcher on how digital technology shapes the modern mind. For more than two decades, she has studied how our tools alter the way we think, focus, and feel. A Fulbright Scholar and member of the ACM SIGCHI Academy, she has authored over 200 papers focusing on the human side of technology. Her work has been featured on The Ezra Klein Show, CBS Sunday Morning, NPR’s Hidden Brain, Freakonomics, and Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, among many others. Her award-winning book, Attention Span, named the #1 Best Business and Management Book of 2023 by The Globe and Mail and a Next Big Idea Book Club selection, explores how our attention has become the defining struggle of the digital age. Through her writing and her Substack, The Future of Attention, she envisions a future where technology empowers, rather than overwhelms, and where we can flourish together.
 

The computer science colloquium takes place on Mondays from 11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m. This week's speaker, Leonardo de Moura (Amazon Web Services), will be giving a talk titled "Lean: Machine-Checked Mathematics and Verified Programming"

Abstract

Imagine a world where mathematicians, programmers, and AI systems can collaborate with complete trust in each other's work. This is the promise of Lean, an open-source project that's transforming how we approach mathematics, software development, and artificial intelligence. Lean provides machine-checkable proofs, eliminating the need for manual verification and allowing humans and AI to build upon each other's work with confidence. By addressing the "Trust Bottleneck," Lean opens doors to cross-disciplinary collaboration. In this talk, we'll explore how Lean is impacting these fields. We’ll see how it's providing mathematicians with a new way to construct and verify complex proofs, enabling software developers to rigorously verify critical systems, and creating a foundation for more reliable AI for science and mathematics. We'll also discuss the role of the Lean Focused Research Organization (FRO), a non-profit dedicated to advancing Lean and growing its community. The FRO is driving Lean's development as both a proof assistant and an extensible programming language, empowering users to customize its capabilities for diverse applications. Through real-world examples from academia and industry, we'll discover how Lean is paving the way for a more efficient, reliable, and collaborative future in mathematics, software development, and AI.

Biography

Leo is a Senior Principal Applied Scientist in the Automated Reasoning Group at AWS. In his spare time, he dedicates himself to serving as the Chief Architect of the Lean FRO, a non-profit organization that he proudly co-founded alongside Sebastian Ullrich. He is also honored to hold a position on the Board of Directors at the Lean FRO, where he actively contributes to its growth and development. Before joining AWS in 2023, he was a Senior Principal Researcher in the RiSE group at Microsoft Research, where he worked for 17 years starting in 2006. Prior to that, he worked as a Computer Scientist at SRI International. His research areas are automated reasoning, theorem proving, decision procedures, SAT and SMT. He is the main architect of several automated reasoning tools: Lean, Z3, Yices 1.0 and SAL. Leo’s work in automated reasoning has been acknowledged with a series of prestigious awards, including the CAV, Haifa, and Herbrand awards, as well as the ACM SIGPLAN Programming Languages Software Award twice for Z3 and Lean. Leo’s work has also been reported in the New York Times and many popular science magazines such as Wired, Quanta, Nature News, and Scientific American.