AI Institutes Virtual Organization

AI-SDM Seminar Series: AI Assurance for Public Good
2025-01-31 15:00 - 16:30 (America/New_York) | Zoom webinar
The AI Institute for Societal Decision Making (AI-SDM) is excited to host several AI scientists and directors from MITRE at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) on Friday, January 31, 2025!

Seminar Title: AI Assurance for Public Good
Seminar Speakers from MITRE:

Ozgur Eris, Managing Director of the AI and Autonomy Innovation Center
Christina Liaghati, Manager of the Trustworthy & Secure AI Department and MITRE ATLAS Lead
Ben Wellner, Chief Scientist for Generative AI

Seminar Date & Time: Friday, January 31, 2025 | 3:00 – 4:30 pm, Eastern Time
Seminar Locations:

Newell-Simon Hall, Room 4305 (fourth floor), CMU
Zoom (Click to register for the meeting.)

In-Person Meetings with MITRE Speakers:
MITRE speakers will also be available to meet in person at CMU throughout the day with anyone who is interested. Sign up for a meeting time slot. (Catered lunch will be provided to those who select the lunch time slot.)

More about the AI-SDM Seminar Series

Visit the Featured AI-SDM Events webpage to learn more about this seminar, see the upcoming seminar schedule, and register for upcoming seminars.

Upcoming AI-SDM?Seminars:

Friday, February 14, 2025 | 3:00 – 4:30 pm Eastern Time | Valerie Chen
Friday, February 28, 2025 | 3:00 – 4:30 pm Eastern Time | Aviral Kumar
Friday, March 21, 2025 | 3:00 – 4:30 pm Eastern Time | Terri Adams
Friday, April 4, 2025 | 11:30 am – 1:00 pm Eastern Time | Deb Roy
Friday, April 11, 2025 | 11:30 am – 1:00 pm Eastern Time | Rayid Ghani
Friday, April 25, 2025 | 11:30 am – 1:00 pm Eastern Time | Tom Griffiths
Friday, May 9, 2025 | 3:00 – 4:30 pm Eastern Time | Giacomo De Nicola

TILOS-SDSU Seminar: Challenging Estimation Problems in Vehicle Autonomy
2025-02-12 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Gold Auditorium at San Diego State University, 473 Avenue of the Art, San Diego, CA, 92115, United States
Zoom: https://SDSU.zoom.us/j/88253557555

AI-SDM Seminar Series: Effective Human-AI Interactions in an Evolving AI Landscape
2025-02-14 15:00 - 16:30 (America/New_York) | Zoom webinar
Join the next AI Institute for Societal Decision Making (AI-SDM) seminar on Friday, February 14, 2025!

Effective Human-AI Interactions in an Evolving AI Landscape

Abstract: The evolving AI landscape means that models have the potential to support human decision-makers and users in a wide range of fields and applications. And yet, human-AI interactions in many deployment contexts still face practical challenges. In this talk, we discuss how to design and evaluate these interactions in two common paradigms. The first half focuses on predictive decision-making, and the role of explanations in facilitating appropriate reliance on AI recommendations. The second half explores more complex settings where AI are “copilots”, highlighting gaps in existing evaluations and proposing a new in-the-wild framework. We conclude by discussing common themes across paradigms and lessons learned for building effective human-AI interactions.

Speaker: Valerie Chen, PhD Student, Machine Learning Department, CMU
Valerie’s research aims to improve human-AI interactions by leveraging insights from practical user studies to design new interactive systems. Her research sits at the intersection of ML, NLP, and HCI. Valerie is a recipient of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, a former intern at MSR’s Fairness, Accountability, Transparency & Ethics in AI group, and was selected as a Rising Star in Data Science.

Date & Time: Friday, February 14, 2025 | 3:00 – 4:30 pm, Eastern Time
Locations:

Newell-Simon Hall, Room 4305 (fourth floor), CMU
Zoom (After registering, you’ll receive a confirmation email with information about how to join the meeting.)

More about the AI-SDM Seminar Series

Visit the Featured AI-SDM Events webpage to learn more about this seminar, see the upcoming seminar schedule, and register for upcoming seminars.

Upcoming AI-SDM Seminars:

Friday, February 28, 2025 | 3:00 – 4:30 pm Eastern Time | Ananya Rao
Friday, March 21, 2025 | 3:00 – 4:30 pm Eastern Time | Terri Adams
Friday, April 4, 2025 | 11:30 am – 1:00 pm Eastern Time | Deb Roy
Friday, April 11, 2025 | 11:30 am – 1:00 pm Eastern Time | Rayid Ghani
Friday, April 25, 2025 | 11:30 am – 1:00 pm Eastern Time | Tom Griffiths
Friday, May 9, 2025 | 3:00 – 4:30 pm Eastern Time | Giacomo De Nicola

AI-SDM Seminar Series: Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Coordination for Disaster Response
2025-02-28 15:00 - 16:30 (America/New_York) | Zoom webinar
Join the next AI Institute for Societal Decision Making (AI-SDM) seminar on Friday, February 28, 2025. Register now!

Heterogeneous Multi-Agent Coordination for Disaster Response

Abstract: Using robots in disaster response scenarios can improve situational awareness and search effectiveness. Heterogeneous robots, each with different sensing and motion capabilities, can be coordinated to gather information more efficiently than a single robot or a homogeneous team. This talk will cover two key aspects of heterogeneous multi-agent coordination for disaster response.

Speaker: Ananya Rao, PhD Student, Robotics Institute, CMU
Ananya Rao is a PhD candidate at CMU’s Robotics Institute, advised by David Wettergreen and Howie Choset. Her work focuses on multi-agent exploration of extreme environments, particularly on planning for search and rescue and planetary exploration. She has a BS in Computer Science and an MS in Robotics from CMU. Her work has been published at several top-tier robotics conferences and received the Best Paper Award at the International Symposium on Distributed Autonomous Robotic Systems (DARS) in 2021.

Date & Time: Friday, February 28, 2025 | 3:00 – 4:30 p.m., Eastern Time
Locations:

Newell-Simon Hall, Room 4305 (fourth floor), CMU
Zoom (After registering, you’ll receive a confirmation email with information about how to join the meeting.)

More about the AI-SDM Seminar Series

Visit the Featured AI-SDM Events webpage to learn more about this seminar, see the upcoming seminar schedule, and register for upcoming seminars.

Upcoming AI-SDM Seminars:

Friday, March 21, 2025 | 3:00 – 4:30 pm Eastern Time | Terri Adams
Friday, April 4, 2025 | 11:30 am – 1:00 pm Eastern Time | Deb Roy
Friday, April 11, 2025 | 11:30 am – 1:00 pm Eastern Time | Rayid Ghani
Friday, April 25, 2025 | 11:30 am – 1:00 pm Eastern Time | Tom Griffiths
Friday, May 9, 2025 | 3:00 – 4:30 pm Eastern Time | Giacomo De Nicola

ARNI Distinguished Seminar Series: Marlene Berhmann
2025-02-28 15:30 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Join ARNI on Friday, February 28, 3:30 – 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time for a hybrid seminar, featuring Dr. Marlene Behrmann!
The Development, Hemispheric Organization, and Plasticity of High-Level Vision
Locations:

Zuckerman Institute
Kavli Auditorium, 9th Floor
Columbia University
3227 Broadway, New York, NY 10027
For access to the Zuckerman Institute, please email Lena Mei @ lm3440@columbia.edu 24 hours prior to the event.
Join Zoom

Abstract:

Adults recognize complex visual inputs, such as faces and words, with remarkable speed, accuracy and ease, but a full understanding of these abilities is still lacking. Much prior research has favoured a binary separation of faces and words, with the right hemisphere specialized for the representation of faces, and the left hemisphere specialized for the representation of words. Close scrutiny of the data, however, suggest a more graded and distributed hemispheric organization, as well as differing hemispheric profiles across individuals. Combining detailed behavioral data with structural and functional imaging data reveals how the distribution of function both within and between the two cerebral hemispheres emerges over the course of development, and a computational account of this mature organization is offered and tested. Provocatively, this mature profile is more malleable than previously thought, and cross-sectional and longitudinal data acquired from individuals with hemispherectomy reveal how a single hemisphere can subserve both visual classes. Together, the findings support a view of cortical visual organization (and perhaps, the organization of other functions too) as plastic and dynamic, both within and between hemispheres.
ARNI Distinguished Seminar Series Flyer

TILOS Seminar: Synthetic Tasks as Testbeds for Attributing Model Behavior
2025-03-12 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Halicioglu Data Science Institute Room 123, 3234 Matthews Ln, La Jolla, CA, 92093, United States

Athena Lunch Series Panel: Coffee Chat with a PI
2025-03-20 14:00 - 15:00 (America/New_York) | Duke University, Wilkinson Building, 534 Research Drive, Durham, NC, 27705, United States
Featuring Principal Investigators (PIs) Maria Gorlatova and Bhuvana Krishnaswamy
Find out about their career journeys and challenges and hear the advice they would give young students and professionals. Come prepared with questions for the panelists and an exciting conversation!
This hybrid event is open to the public. Register now!
March 20, 2025
2:00 – 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time
Duke University (Wilkinson 419) & Zoom
Learn more about the Athena AI Institute.

AI-SDM Seminar Series: The Role of Uncertainty in Decision-Making During High Consequential Events
2025-03-21 14:00 - 15:30 (America/Halifax) | Zoom webinar
Join the next AI Institute for Societal Decision Making (AI-SDM) seminar on Friday, March 21, 2025, featuring Terri Adams, PhD! Register now.

The Role of Uncertainty in Decision-Making During High Consequential Events

Abstract: With the increased risk of natural disasters, efforts are underway to improve all aspects of emergency response. Regardless of the type of disaster, whether health or weather-related, there are high degrees of uncertainty associated with the unfolding of each event. As emergency managers, first responders, and the public seek to maximize their response to disasters, it is essential to understand the impacts of uncertainty on decision-making. This seminar will explore the impact of uncertainty on decision-makers during high consequence events.

Speaker: Terri Adams, Professor of Sociology and Criminology and Associate Dean of the Office of External Affairs, Howard University
Terri Adams, Ph.D., is a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology at Howard University. She currently serves as the Associate Dean of the Office of External Affairs, responsible for the research portfolio at the Graduate School. Dr. Adams also serves as the Deputy Director of the NOAA Cooperative Science Center in Atmospheric Sciences and Meteorology (NCAS-M) at Howard University and Director of the Howard University Initiative on Public Opinion. Her research takes an interdisciplinary approach to examine issues with theoretical and practical implications.
Dr. Adams’ specific research interests include emergency management, behavioral responses to severe weather and climate, and the impact of trauma and disasters on individuals and organizations. Her work centers on individuals’ and organizations’ decision-making processes in the face of crisis events. She is the author of Policing in Natural Disasters: Stress, Resilience, and the Challenges of Emergency Management, which takes a critical review of the challenges faced by first responders before, during, and after natural disasters.

Date & Time: Friday, March 21, 2025 | 2:00 – 3:30 pm, Eastern Time
Locations:

Gates and Hillman Centers, Room 8102 (eighth floor), Carnegie Mellon University
Zoom (After registering, you’ll receive a confirmation email with information about how to join the meeting.)

Register now!
Dr. Adams will also be available to meet throughout the day with anyone who is interested. Sign up for a time slot. (If you choose the lunch time slot, you’ll get catered lunch!)
More about the AI-SDM Seminar Series

Visit the Featured AI-SDM Events webpage to learn more about this seminar, see the upcoming seminar schedule, and register for upcoming seminars.

Upcoming AI-SDM Seminars:

Friday, April 25, 2025 | 11:30 am – 1:00 pm Eastern Time | Tom Griffiths
Friday, May 9, 2025 | 3:00 – 4:30 pm Eastern Time | Giacomo De Nicola

TILOS Seminar: Single location regression and attention-based models
2025-03-27 14:00 - 15:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Halicioglu Data Science Institute Room 123, 3234 Matthews Ln, La Jolla, CA, 92093, United States
Title: Single location regression and attention-based models
Speaker: Claire Boyer, Université Paris-Saclay
Abstract: Attention-based models, such as Transformer, excel across various tasks but lack a comprehensive theoretical understanding, especially regarding token-wise sparsity and internal linear representations. To address this gap, we introduce the single-location regression task, where only one token in a sequence determines the output, and its position is a latent random variable, retrievable via a linear projection of the input. To solve this task, we propose a dedicated predictor, which turns out to be a simplified version of a non-linear self-attention layer. We study its theoretical properties, by showing its asymptotic Bayes optimality and analyzing its training dynamics. In particular, despite the non-convex nature of the problem, the predictor effectively learns the underlying structure. This work highlights the capacity of attention mechanisms to handle sparse token information and internal linear structures.
Zoom: https://bit.ly/TILOS-Seminars

TILOS Seminar: Foundational Methods for Foundation Models for Scientific Machine Learning
2025-04-02 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Halicioglu Data Science Institute Room 123, 3234 Matthews Ln, La Jolla, CA, 92093, United States

ICICLE AI Institute & OSU CSE Distinguished Seminar Series
2025-04-10 11:15 - 12:15 (America/New_York)
Title: Harnessing Responsible AI for Science Discovery, Innovation, and Impact
Speaker: Manish Parashar, University of Utah
When: April 10, 2025 11:15 AM – 12:15 PM EST
Location: DL 260 Dreese Laboratory, 2015 Neil Ave, Columbus, OH 43210
Zoom link: https://osu.zoom.us/j/93195486710?pwd=[REDACTED]

TILOS Seminar: Amplifying human performance in combinatorial competitive programming
2025-04-16 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom webinar

AI-SDM Seminar Series: Using Machine Learning and Psychology to Predict and Understand Human Decisions
2025-04-25 11:30 - 13:00 (America/Halifax) | Zoom webinar
Join the next AI Institute for Societal Decision Making (AI-SDM) seminar on Friday, April 25, 2025. Register now!

Using Machine Learning and Psychology to Predict and Understand Human Decisions

Abstract: Machine learning (ML) methods provide increasingly powerful tools for generating predictions about human behavior. However, simply using off the shelf methods to generate predictions potentially misses opportunities to benefit from and contribute to the psychological literature. This will cover three ways in which theory and data can interact through ML: using theories to pre-train machine learning models; using theories to constrain ML models; and using unconstrained ML models to critique explanatory theories. These cases will be illustrated with examples from the study of human decision-making, discussing risky choice, moral judgments, behavioral game theory, and open-ended decision-making, and highlights from some recent work using large language models (LLMs) to predict human decisions.

Speaker: Tom Griffiths,Professor of Psychology and Computer Science, Princeton University
Tom Griffiths is the Henry R. Luce Professor of Information Technology, Consciousness and Culture in the Departments of Psychology and Computer Science at Princeton University. His research explores connections between human and machine learning, using ideas from statistics and artificial intelligence to understand how people solve the challenging computational problems they encounter in everyday life. He has made contributions to the development of Bayesian models of cognition, probabilistic machine learning, nonparametric Bayesian statistics, and models of cultural evolution, and his recent work has demonstrated how methods from cognitive science can shed light on modern artificial intelligence systems. Tom completed his PhD in Psychology at Stanford University in 2005, and taught at Brown University and the University of California, Berkeley before moving to Princeton. He has received awards for his research from organizations ranging from the American Psychological Association to the National Academy of Sciences and is a co-author of the book Algorithms to Live By, introducing ideas from computer science and cognitive science to a general audience.

Date & Time: Friday, April 25, 2025 | 11:30 a.m. – 1:00 p.m., Eastern Time
Locations:

GHC 6115, CMU
Zoom (After registering, you’ll receive a confirmation email with information about how to join the meeting.)

Dr. Griffiths will also be available to meet throughout the day with anyone who is interested. Click here to sign up for a time slot!
More about the AI-SDM Seminar Series

Visit the Featured AI-SDM Events webpage to learn more about this seminar, see the upcoming seminar schedule, and register for upcoming seminars.

Upcoming AI-SDM Seminar:

Friday, May 9, 2025 | 3:00 – 4:30 pm Eastern Time | Giacomo De Nicola

DynamicsAI Data-Driven Science and Engineering Seminars: Multifidelity, domain decomposition, and stacking for improving training for physics-informed networks
2025-04-25 12:00 - 13:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom webinar
Join DynamicsAI’s seminar on Friday, April 25, 2025 at 12:00 – 1:00 p.m. Pacific for “Multifidelity, domain decomposition, and stacking for improving training for physics-informed networks.”
This hybrid event features Dr. Amanda Howard of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL)!
Register now and get virtual access info.
Physics-informed neural networks and operator networks have shown promise for effectively solving equations modeling physical systems. However, these networks can be difficult or impossible to train accurately for some systems of equations. One way to improve training is through the use of a small amount of data, however, such data is expensive to produce. We will introduce our novel multifidelity framework for stacking physics-informed neural networks and operator networks that facilitates training by progressively reducing the errors in our predictions for when no data is available. In stacking networks, we successively build a chain of networks, where the output at one step can act as a low-fidelity input for training the next step, gradually increasing the expressivity of the learned model. We will finally discuss the extension to domain decomposition using the finite basis method, including applications to newly-developed Kolmogorov-Arnold Networks. Applications will be discussed for accelerating simulations of computational fluid dynamics.
About the Speaker: Amanda Howard is a mathematician at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory specializing in computational fluid dynamics and scientific machine learning (ML). She received her PhD in applied mathematics from Brown University in 2018 and her BS in mathematics from Stanford University in 2012. Her PhD research focused on computational methods for fluid-solid multiphase flows. Her current research includes scientific ML methods for cases with limited data, including multifidelity and physics-informed ML.

AIFS Speaker Series: The Imperative for Open Source Frontier Al - Oumi's Platform & Strategy
2025-05-02 15:30 - 16:30 (America/Los_Angeles) | Zoom webinar
Join us on Zoom to hear how Oumi is fostering open source frontier AI and broad collaboration across academia, industry, and the world. Register now!
WHAT: Free 45-minute event with talk by CEO Emmanouil Koukoumidis plus Q&A
WHEN: Friday, May 2, 2025, 3:30 (PDT)
REMOTE: via Zoom
WHO SHOULD ATTEND: This event is open to all, whether you are a part of the university community or the public.
FEATURED SPEAKER: Emmanouil (Manos) Koukoumidis, CEO of Oumi PBC
The Imperative for Open Source Frontier AI – Oumi’s Platform & Strategy
Open source is the best path to developing the most advanced, trusted, and versatile AI; the AI that would unlock industry applications and truly empower the sciences.
Unfortunately, frontier AI has become increasingly closed giving rise to significant concerns and risks.
Oumi CEO, Dr. Manos Koukoumidis, will discuss the efforts that Oumi, alongside 20+ academics, recently started to put us on a better path by betting on and fostering open source frontier AI. Learn how Oumi empowers sciences, the industries and even AgTech hackathons!
Learn more and register: https://aifs.ucdavis.edu/education-and-outreach/speaker-series

TILOS Seminar: Optimal Quantization for LLMs and Matrix Multiplication
2025-05-23 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Halicioglu Data Science Institute Room 123, 3234 Matthews Ln, La Jolla, CA, 92093, United States

TILOS Seminar: A New Paradigm for Learning with Distribution Shift
2025-10-01 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Halicioglu Data Science Institute Room 123, 3234 Matthews Ln, La Jolla, CA, 92093, United States

Optimization for ML and AI Seminar: High-dimensional Optimization with Applications to Compute-Optimal Neural Scaling Laws
2025-10-24 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | UC San Diego and Virtual, 9500 Gilman Dr, La Jolla, CA, 92093, United States

TILOS Seminar: AI Safety Theory: The Missing Middle Ground
2025-11-12 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Halicioglu Data Science Institute Room 123, 3234 Matthews Ln, La Jolla, CA, 92093, United States

TILOS Seminar: Certifiably Correct Machine Perception
2025-11-19 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | SDSU and Virtual
Zoom: https://SDSU.zoom.us/j/84993405398

TILOS Seminar: 95 Percent: Bridging the Gap Between Prototype and Product
2025-12-03 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Zoom: https://SDSU.zoom.us/j/82711917109

Optimization for ML & AI Seminar: Training Neural Networks at Any Scale
2025-12-03 13:00 - 14:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Zoom: https://bit.ly/Opt-AI-ML

Optimization for ML and AI Seminar: Stochastic-Gradient and Diagonal-Scaling Algorithms for Constrained Optimization and Learning
2025-12-05 11:00 - 12:00 (America/Los_Angeles)

TILOS Seminar: Incentivizing Emergent Behaviors for LLMs via Reinforcement Learning
2025-12-08 10:00 - 11:00 (America/Los_Angeles)
Zoom: https://bit.ly/TILOS-Seminars
