Past events

The computer science colloquium takes place on Mondays from 11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.

This week's speaker, Casey Fiesler (University of Colorado), will be giving a talk titled "Doing Computer Science: The Case for Ethics Integration in Computing Education".

Abstract

Considering the constant stream of new controversies surrounding technology, it is no longer in question that concepts like ethics, responsibility, and justice are relevant to computing practice and research. However, these topics are still often framed as specialties rather than as foundational for every aspect of the field.  In this talk, I will provide an overview of the current state of ethics education in computing and make a case for an integrated approach that embeds ethics content into existing technical classes, with concrete strategies as well as preliminary lessons from implementing this approach in introductory programming courses. Finally, I will show more generally how broadening our idea of what "counts" as computer science can help broaden participation in computing.

Biography

Dr. Casey Fiesler is an assistant professor and founding faculty in the Department of Information Science as well as Computer Science, by courtesy, at University of Colorado Boulder, where she researches and teaches in the areas of technology ethics, internet law and policy, and social computing. Also a public scholar, she is a frequent commentator and speaker on topics of technology ethics and policy, as well as women in STEM (including consulting with Mattel on their computing-related Barbies). Her work on research ethics for data science, ethics education in computing, and broadening participation in computing is supported by the National Science Foundation, as well as Mozilla and Omidyar Network as part of the Responsible Computer Science Challenge. She is a member of the SIGCHI Research Ethics Committee and the legal committee for the Organization for Transformative Works. She holds a PhD in Human-Centered Computing from Georgia Tech and a JD from Vanderbilt Law School.

The University of Minnesota will be closed (floating holiday).

View the full schedule of University holidays.
 

The University of Minnesota will be closed in observance of Thanksgiving Day.

View the full schedule of University holidays.
 

This week, we're presenting a bonus computer science colloquium on Wednesday from 11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.

This week's speaker, Gowtham Kaki (University of Colorado Boulder), will be giving a talk titled "Mergeable Replicated Data Types".

Abstract

Programming distributed applications with replicated state is challenging given the complexity of reasoning about different evolving states on different replicas. Existing approaches to this problem impose significant burden on application developers to consider the effect of how operations performed on one replica are witnessed and applied on others. In this talk, I present Mergeable Replicated Data Types (MRDTs) — a new abstraction to structure the replicated state that addresses this problem. MRDTs equip replicated state with a versioning scheme, and an ability to merge concurrent versions of the state in presence of a common ancestor version.  MRDTs are accompanied by an expressive distributed programming model that lets distributed applications be built using ordinary data types extended with three-way merge functions. Importantly, merge functions for various data types can be derived from the first principles, facilitating their automatic promotion to replicated data types. I present an OCaml implementation called Quark that adapts Git version control infrastructure to efficiently support MRDTs. As a testament to the versatility and practicality of MRDTs, I demonstrate various distributed application prototypes we built in this paradigm, and discuss their performance.

Biography

Gowtham Kaki is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at CU Boulder. His research interests are Programming Languages and Formal Methods with a focus on automated verification techniques for concurrent and distributed programs. Gowtham earned his Ph.D in Computer Science from Purdue University in 2019. He received several recognitions for his thesis work, including Google’s PhD Research Fellowship (2018), Purdue’s Maurice H. Halstead Award (2018), and his alma mater BITS Pilani’s 30-under-30 award (2019). 

The computer science colloquium takes place on Mondays from 11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.

This week's talk is a part of the Cray Distinguished Speaker Series. This series was established in 1981 by an endowment from Cray Research and brings distinguished visitors to the Department of Computer Science & Engineering every year.

This week's speaker is Lin Zhong from Yale University.

Abstract

Computing is cheap and getting cheaper while spectrum is always scarce. Massive MIMO technology employs many antennas and massive computational power at the base station so that the latter can serve many users concurrently, reusing the same spectrum spatially. Despite its theoretical appeal, massive MIMO poses nontrivial scalability challenges to the design and implementation of both the base station and network systems. Over eight years ago, we reported the world's first massive MIMO base station prototype, Argos, which helped elevate massive MIMO to an important technology for 5G. Recently the third generation of Argos has been adopted as a key component of a national Platform for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR). This talk shares our experience of building three generations of Argos and our ongoing effort toward commoditizing future telecom infrastructures.

Biography

Lin Zhong is Professor of Computer Science with Yale University. He received his B.S and M.S. from Tsinghua University and Ph.D. from Princeton University. From 2005 to 2019, he was with Rice University. At Yale, he leads the Efficient Computing Lab to make computing, communication, and interfacing more efficient and effective. He and his students received the best paper awards from ACM MobileHCI, IEEE PerCom, and ACM MobiSys (3), and ACM ASPLOS. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the Duncan Award from Rice University, and the RockStar Award from ACM SIGMOBILE. He is a Fellow of IEEE. More information about his research can be found at http://www.yecl.org.

The University of Minnesota Data Science in Multi-Messenger Astrophysics program is organizing the second annual Women in Data Science Symposium. Due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the symposium this year will take the form of a virtual panel discussion. The panelists will be four women data science leaders in academia, research, and industry. The event will be moderated by two graduate student DSMMA trainees. 

Join them to hear about the multifaceted career opportunities that await you!  Listen as successful women discuss their career paths and challenges they have faced. Exchange ideas, discover new opportunities and learn about the future of the field. 

Please sign up for the Women in Data Science Workshop scheduled for Saturday, November 21 from 10:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m. For more details about the program, visit the Women in Data Science Symposium webpage.

Grad students! Please join us for the Computer Science & Engineering Graduate Town Hall on Friday, November 20 from 1:30 - 2:30 p.m. Central.

The intention is to give you a chance to ask questions, provide feedback, and interact directly with the department leadership regarding your graduate experience. You can join the meeting via this Zoom link.

You can use the link below to RSVP as well as provide feedback regarding your experiences in your courses and with the department as a Computer Science or Data Science graduate student. Please note that you can remain anonymous to provide feedback: z.umn.edu/csgrad_townhall

We look forward to reading your comments and seeing you at the Graduate Town Hall!

Prospective students can RSVP for an information session to learn about the following graduate programs:

• Computer Science M.S.
• Computer Science MCS
• Computer Science Ph.D.
• Data Science M.S.
• Data Science Post-Baccalaureate Certificate

During the information session, we will go over the following:

• Requirements (general)
• Applying
• Prerequisite requirements
• What makes a strong applicant
• Funding
• Resources
• Common questions
• Questions from attendees

Spring semester registration begins for students admitted to degree or certificate programs on Tuesday, November 10.

View the full academic schedule on One Stop.
 

The computer science colloquium takes place on Mondays from 11:15 a.m. - 12:15 p.m.

This week's speaker, Pamela Wisiniewski (University of Central Florida), will be giving a talk titled "Risk and Resilience: A Teen-centered Perspective on Teens and Technology Use".

Abstract

We often equate keeping teens safe online to shielding them from experiencing online risks – such as information breaches, cyberbullying, sexual solicitations, and exposure to explicit content. However, this abstinence-only approach tends to be very parent-centric and does not take into account the developmental needs and experiences of our youth.  For instance, parental control apps operate by monitoring and restricting teens’ mobile activities, instead of helping teens self-regulate their online behavior. By valuing control over autonomy, we violate the personal privacy of teens and inadvertently show them that they are not to be trusted. We often assume teens have no personal agency when it comes to their own online safety, and that they cannot effectively manage online risks by themselves. Yet, developmental psychologists have shown that some level of autonomy and risk-seeking behaviors are a natural and necessary part of adolescent developmental growth. In fact, shielding teens from any and all online risks may be detrimental to this process. Further, Dr. Wisniewski’s research shows that parents are often not authoritative figures when it comes to the risks their teens are experiencing online; thus, an over-reliance on parental mediation to ensure teen online safety may be problematic. As such, Dr. Wisniewski’s research takes a teen-centric approach to understanding adolescent online risk experiences, how teens cope with these risks, and ultimately challenges the assumptions that have been made about how to protect teens online. Her research suggests new approaches that empower teens online by enhancing their risk-coping, resilience, and self-regulatory behaviors, so that they can learn to more effectively protect themselves from online risks.

Biography

Dr. Wisniewski is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Central Florida. She is a Human-Computer Interaction scholar whose research lies at the intersection of Social Computing and Privacy. Dr. Wisniewski is an expert in the interplay between social media, privacy, and online safety for adolescents. She was one of the first researchers to recognize the need for a resilience-based approach, rather than an abstinence-based approach to adolescent online safety, and to back this stance up with empirical data. She has authored over 75 peer-reviewed publications and has won multiple best papers (top 1%) and best paper honorable mentions (top 5%) at top conferences in her field. She has been awarded over $2.96 million in external grant funding, and her research has been featured by popular news media outlets, including ABC News, NPR, Psychology Today, and U.S. News and World Report. She is an inaugural member of the ACM Future Computing Academy and the first computer scientist to ever be selected as a William T. Grant Scholar. She is also the recipient of the National Science Foundation’s prestigious CAREER Award for her innovative, teen-centric approach to adolescent online safety, “Safety by Design: Protecting Adolescents from Online Risks.”