- talks - lists.cs.princeton.edu

Colloquium Speaker Song-Chun Zhu Monday, Nov 16, 12:30pm
by Nicole E. Wagenblast 16 Nov '15

16 Nov '15

Colloquium Speaker Song-Chun Zhu , UCLA Monday, November 16- 12:30pm Computer Science 105 A Cognitive Architecture for Human-Robot Collaborations Based on Spatial, Temporal and Causal And-Or Graphs In this talk, I will present an ongoing effort for developing autonomous robots that can collaborate with humans in real world scenes and tasks. One objective is to explore a cognitive architecture that can embrace modern progresses in vision, cognition, learning, NLP, and cognitive robot using a unified knowledge representation --- the spatial, temporal and causal ang-or graph (STC-AOG). The STC-AOG is a probabilistic, graphical and compositional model that represents stochastic context sensitive grammars for the hierarchical structures in scenes and objects (spatial), in events and actions (temporal), and in the effects of actions on the scenes (causal). In addition, the representation must also consider the theory of mind, i.e the beliefs and intents of others, for collaborations. I will show a few examples of human robot collaborations. Song-Chun Zhu received a Ph.D. degree from Harvard University in 1996. He is currently a professor of Statistics and Computer Science, and director of the Center for Vision, Learning, Cognition and Autonomy at UCLA. His work in computer vision received a number of honors, including the Marr Prize in 2003 for image parsing, the Marr Prize honorary nominations in 1999 for texture modeling and 2007 for object modeling. As a junior faculty he received the Sloan Fellow in Computer Science, NSF Career Award, and ONR Young Investigator Award in 2001. In 2008 he received the Aggarwal prize from the Intl Association of Pattern Recognition for “contributions to a unified foundation for visual pattern conceptualization, modeling, learning, and inference”. He received the Helmholtz Test-of-time prize at 2013. He is a fellow of the IEEE Computer Society since 2011. He is PI of two consecutive ONR MURI projects on Scene/Event Understanding and Commonsense Reasoning respectively. In recent years, he is also interested in situated dialogues and cognitive robots with the support of DARPA MSEE and SIMPLEX projects.

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Colloquium Speaker Song-Chun Zhu Monday, Nov 16, 12:30pm
by Nicole E. Wagenblast 15 Nov '15

15 Nov '15

Colloquium Speaker Song-Chun Zhu , UCLA Monday, November 16- 12:30pm Computer Science 105 A Cognitive Architecture for Human-Robot Collaborations Based on Spatial, Temporal and Causal And-Or Graphs In this talk, I will present an ongoing effort for developing autonomous robots that can collaborate with humans in real world scenes and tasks. One objective is to explore a cognitive architecture that can embrace modern progresses in vision, cognition, learning, NLP, and cognitive robot using a unified knowledge representation --- the spatial, temporal and causal ang-or graph (STC-AOG). The STC-AOG is a probabilistic, graphical and compositional model that represents stochastic context sensitive grammars for the hierarchical structures in scenes and objects (spatial), in events and actions (temporal), and in the effects of actions on the scenes (causal). In addition, the representation must also consider the theory of mind, i.e the beliefs and intents of others, for collaborations. I will show a few examples of human robot collaborations. Song-Chun Zhu received a Ph.D. degree from Harvard University in 1996. He is currently a professor of Statistics and Computer Science, and director of the Center for Vision, Learning, Cognition and Autonomy at UCLA. His work in computer vision received a number of honors, including the Marr Prize in 2003 for image parsing, the Marr Prize honorary nominations in 1999 for texture modeling and 2007 for object modeling. As a junior faculty he received the Sloan Fellow in Computer Science, NSF Career Award, and ONR Young Investigator Award in 2001. In 2008 he received the Aggarwal prize from the Intl Association of Pattern Recognition for “contributions to a unified foundation for visual pattern conceptualization, modeling, learning, and inference”. He received the Helmholtz Test-of-time prize at 2013. He is a fellow of the IEEE Computer Society since 2011. He is PI of two consecutive ONR MURI projects on Scene/Event Understanding and Commonsense Reasoning respectively. In recent years, he is also interested in situated dialogues and cognitive robots with the support of DARPA MSEE and SIMPLEX projects.

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Fwd: EE Seminar - December 1, 2015, 4:30 pm, E-Quad B205 - Muhammad Naveed
by Jennifer Rexford 13 Nov '15

13 Nov '15

> > From: "Lori A. Bailey" <lbailey(a)Princeton.EDU> > Subject: EE Seminar - December 1, 2015, 4:30 pm, E-Quad B205 - Muhammad Naveed > Date: November 13, 2015 at 10:41:48 AM EST > To: ee-seminar(a)Princeton.EDU > Reply-To: "Lori A. Bailey" <lbailey(a)Princeton.EDU> > > > > Speaker: Muhammad Naveed > University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign > Title: Inference Attacks on Property-Preserving Encrypted Databases > Date: December 1, 2015 > Time: 4:30 p.m. > Room: E-Quad, Room B205 > Host: Prof. Prateek Mittal > > Abstract: Many encrypted database (EDB) systems have been proposed in the last few years as cloud computing has grown in popularity and data breaches have increased. The state-of-the-art EDB systems for relational databases can handle SQL queries over encrypted data and are competitive with commercial database systems. These systems, most of which are based on the design of CryptDB (SOSP 2011), achieve these properties by making use of property-preserving encryption schemes such as deterministic (DTE) and order-preserving encryption (OPE). > > In this paper, we study the concrete security provided by such systems. We present a series of attacks that recover the plaintext from DTE- and OPE-encrypted database columns using only the encrypted column and publicly-available auxiliary information. We consider well-known attacks, including frequency analysis and sorting, as well as new attacks based on combinatorial optimization. > > We evaluate these attacks empirically in an electronic medical records (EMR) scenario using real patient data from 200 U.S. hospitals. When the encrypted database is operating in a steady-state where enough encryption layers have been peeled to permit the application to run its queries, our experimental results show that an alarming amount of sensitive information can be recovered. In particular, our attacks correctly recovered certain OPE-encrypted attributes (e.g., age and disease severity) for more than 80% of the patient records from 95% of the hospitals; and certain DTE-encrypted attributes (e.g., sex, race, and mortality risk) for more than 60% of the patient records from more than 60% of the hospitals. > > The paper appeared at ACM CCS 2015 and is available at: http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/senyk/pubs/edb.pdf <http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/senyk/pubs/edb.pdf>. > > Biography: Muhammad Naveed is a fifth (and final) year PhD student in computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is currently visiting Prof. Elaine Shi at the Cornell University. He develops provably-secure and practical cryptographic systems for real applications. He also works on systems security and genomics privacy. He is a recipient of the 2015 Google PhD fellowship in Security, the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi fellowship (2011–2016), and CS@Illinois C.W. Gear Outstanding Graduate Student Award. See his homepage www.cryptoonline.com <http://www.cryptoonline.com/> for more details.

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EE Seminar Announcement - David Patterson, UC-Berkeley - November 11, 2015
by Nicole E. Wagenblast 11 Nov '15

11 Nov '15

Hi Res PRI_E_electrical_below_w-shield.jpg “Instruction Sets Want to Be Free: A Case for RISC-V” David Patterson, Professor, Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, University of California-Berkeley Wednesday, November 11, 2015 4:30 – 5:45 pm Reception to Follow Friend Center, Convocation Room Abstract: We start by quickly reviewing 50 years of computer architecture to show there is now widespread agreement on instruction set architecture (ISA). Unlike most other fields, despite this harmony there is no open alternative to proprietary offerings from ARM and Intel. Thus, we propose RISC-V (“RISC Five”), which targets Systems on a Chip (SoC). It has: * A small base of <50 classic RISC instructions that run a full open-source software stack. * Opcodes reserved for tailoring an SoC to applications. * Standard instruction extensions optionally included in an SoC. * Incorporated, as an open ISA, community suggestions before extensions are finalized. * A foundation to evolve the RISC-V slowly based solely on technical reasons voted on by members vs. by companies that inflate ISAs rapidly for business as well as technical reasons; ARM and Intel average about 2 new instructions per month. * No restrictions: there is no cost, no paperwork, and anyone can use it. Attendees will get a 2-page reference card (“green card”), which lists all RISC-V extensions, to contrast this minimal ISA with the 3,600-page x86 manual and the 5,400-page ARMv8 manual. We conclude by recapping 10 RISC-V chips built using Agile methods in just 4 years, including how shockingly cheap it is today to manufacture 100 2x2-mm, 28-nm chips. We used Chisel, a new hardware design language that reduces design effort by greatly increasing reuse. Bio: David Patterson joined UC Berkeley nearly 40 years ago. He has been Director of several research labs, Chair of Berkeley’s CS Division, Chair of the Computing Research Association, and President of ACM. His most successful projects are likely Reduced Instruction Set Computers (RISC), Redundant Arrays of Inexpensive Disks (RAID), and Network of Workstations (NOW), all of which helped lead to multi-billion-dollar industries. This research led to many papers, 6 books, and about 35 honors for him and his friends, including election to the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame. He shared the IEEE von Neumann Medal and the NEC C&C Prize with John Hennessy, co-author of two of his books and President of Stanford University. Host: Ruby Lee, Forrest G. Hamrick Professor in Engineering, Professor of Electrical Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering This seminar is supported with funds from the Korhammer Lecture Series

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MAE Seminar- Allison Okamura, Friday, November 13
by Nicole E. Wagenblast 11 Nov '15

11 Nov '15

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Seminar Modeling, Planning, and Control for Robot-Assisted Medical Interventions Allison Okamura, Stanford University Friday, November 13, 3:30pm Bowen Hall Room 222 Many medical interventions today are qualitatively and quantitatively limited by human physical and cognitive capabilities. This talk will discuss several robot-assisted intervention techniques that will extend humans’ ability to carry out interventions more accurately and less invasively. First, I will describe the development of minimally invasive systems that deliver therapy by steering needles through deformable tissue and around internal obstacles to reach specified targets. Second, I will review recent results in haptic (touch) feedback for robot-assisted teleoperated surgery, in particular the display of tissue mechanical properties. Finally, I will demonstrate the use of dynamic models of the body to drive novel rehabilitation strategies. All of these systems incorporate one or more key elements of robotic interventions: (1) quantitative descriptions of patient state, (2) the use of models to plan interventions, (3) the design of devices and control systems that connect information to physical action, and (4) the inclusion of human input in a natural way. Allison M. Okamura received the BS degree from the University of California at Berkeley in 1994, and the MS and PhD degrees from Stanford University in 1996 and 2000, respectively, all in mechanical engineering. She is currently a professor in the mechanical engineering department at Stanford University, with a courtesy appointment in Computer Science. She is Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation and an IEEE Fellow. Her academic interests include haptics, teleoperation, virtual and augmented reality, medical robotics, neuromechanics and rehabilitation, prosthetics, and engineering education. Outside academia, she enjoys spending time with her husband and two children, running, and playing ice hockey. For more information about her research, please see the Collaborative Haptics and Robotics in Medicine (CHARM) Laboratory website: http://charm.stanford.edu.

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PL Seminar- Yaron Minsky, Mon Nov 16, 4:30pm
by Nicole E. Wagenblast 10 Nov '15

10 Nov '15

Programming Languages Seminar Yaron Minsky, Jane Street Capital Monday, November 16, 4:30 p.m Computer Science Room 302 Types and abstractions for concurrent programming This talk describes the design of Async, a monadic concurrency library for the OCaml programming language.

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Colloquium Speaker John Leonard, Tues Nov 10- 12:30pm
by Nicole E. Wagenblast 10 Nov '15

10 Nov '15

Colloquium Speaker John Leonard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Tuesday, November 10, 2015 - 12:30pm Computer Science 105 Mapping, Localization, and Self-Driving Vehicles This talk will discuss the critical role of mapping and localization in the development of self-driving vehicles. After a discussion of some of the recent amazing progress and open technical challenges in the development of self-driving vehicles, we will discuss the past, present and future of Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) in robotics. We will review the history of SLAM research and will discuss some of the major challenges in SLAM, including choosing a map representation, developing algorithms for efficient state estimation, and solving for data association and loop closure. We will also present recent results on object-based mapping in dynamic environments and real-time dense mapping using RGB-D cameras. Joint work with Sudeep Pillai, Tom Whelan, Michael Kaess, John McDonald, Hordur Johannsson, Maurice Fallon, David Rosen, Ross Finman, Paul Huang, Liam Paull, Nick Wang, and Dehann Fourie. John J. Leonard is Samuel C. Collins Professor of Mechanical and Ocean Engineering and Associate Department Head for Research in the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering. He is also a member of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). His research addresses the problems of navigation and mapping for autonomous mobile robots. He holds the degrees of B.S.E.E. in Electrical Engineering and Science from the University of Pennsylvania (1987) and D.Phil. in Engineering Science from the University of Oxford (1994). He was team leader for MIT's DARPA Urban Challenge team, which was one of eleven teams to qualify for the Urban Challenge final event and one of six teams to complete the race. He is the recipient of an NSF Career Award (1998) and the King-Sun Fu Memorial Best Transactions on Robotics Paper Award (2006). He is an IEEE Fellow (2014).

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Soudeh Ghorbani talk Fri Nov 13 11am-11.30am
by Nicole E. Wagenblast 09 Nov '15

09 Nov '15

Soudeh Ghorbani, a PhD student at UIUC working with Brighten Godfrey, is visiting Princeton on November 13 to give a talk. Please see details of her talk below. What: Micro Load Balancing in Data Centers with DRILL When: Friday November 13 from 11am-11.30am Where: COS 302 Speaker: Soudeh Ghorbani, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ~~~~~ Micro Load Balancing in Data Centers with DRILL The trend towards simple data center network fabric strips most network functionality, including load balancing capabilities, out of the network core and pushes them to the edge. We investigate a different direction of incorporating minimal load balancing intelligence into the network fabric and show that this slightly smarter fabric significantly enhances performance. We provide a very simple in-network load balancing scheduling algorithm called DRILL which is purely local to each switch. DRILL leverages local load sensing and randomization concepts to distribute load among multiple paths. Through simulation, we show that this simple approach outperforms CONGA, a recent global edge-based load balancing scheme for data centers. We also formally prove the switch-level stability and throughput-efficiency of DRILL’s scheduling algorithm. ~~~~~ Srinivas

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Talk: Kristin J. Dana, Reflectance Gradients for Material Recognition
by Jianxiong Xiao 09 Nov '15

09 Nov '15

Speaker: Prof. Kristin J. Dana http://www.ece.rutgers.edu/~kdana/Home.html Date: Nov 9, 2015 (today) Time: 12:30-13:30 Place: CS 402 Title: Reflectance Gradients for Material Recognition Abstract: We introduce a novel method for using reflectance to identify materials. Reflectance offers a unique signature of a material but is challenging to measure and use for recognizing materials due to its high-dimensionality. Cameras can be used to capture reflectance, but typically from a sparse set of viewing angles. In this work, one-shot reflectance is captured using a unique optical camera measuring dense reflectance disks where the pixel coordinates correspond to surface viewing angles. Angular gradients computed in this reflectance space reveal the material class. These reflectance disks encode discriminative information for efficient and accurate material recognition. We introduce a framework called reflectance hashing that models the reflectance disks with dictionary learning and binary hashing. We demonstrate the effectiveness of reflectance hashing for material recognition with a number of real-world materials.

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Colloquium Speaker Amir Ali Ahmadi Thurs, Nov 12- 4:30pm
by Nicole E. Wagenblast 06 Nov '15

06 Nov '15

Colloquium Speaker Amir Ali Ahmadi, Princeton University, ORFE Thursday, November 12, 2015 - 4:30pm Computer Science 105 Structured Sum of Squares Polynomials in Optimization and Control In recent years, algebraic techniques in optimization such as sum of squares (SOS) programming have led to powerful semidefinite programming relaxations for a wide range of NP-hard problems in computational mathematics. We begin by giving an overview of these techniques, emphasizing their implications for optimization and Lyapunov analysis of dynamical systems, and pointing out some challenges that remain in terms of scalability. We then introduce new algebraic relaxation schemes that are very similar to SOS relaxations in nature but instead of semidefinite programs result in linear or second order cone programs. These are what we call ``DSOS and SDSOS programs.'' We show that these relaxations are orders of magnitude more scalable than SOS relaxations while enjoying many of the same asymptotic theoretical guarantees. (Joint work with Anirudha Majumdar.) Time permitting, we will also present our recently-introduced area of ``robust-to-dynamics optimization'', which has to do with optimizing over invariant sets of dynamical systems. (Joint work with Oktay Gunluk.) Amir Ali Ahmadi ( http://aaa.princeton.edu/ ) is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Operations Research and Financial Engineering at Princeton University and an Associated Faculty member of the Department of Computer Science. Amir Ali received his PhD in EECS from MIT and was a Goldstine Fellow at the IBM Watson Research Center prior to joining Princeton. His research interests are in optimization theory and in computational aspects of dynamics and control. Amir Ali's recent awards include the INFORMS Computing Society Prize (for best series of papers at the interface of operations research and computer science), the AFOSR Young Investigator Program Award, the Goldstine Fellowship of IBM Research, the Best Conference Paper Award of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, and the prize for one of two most outstanding papers published in the SIAM Journal on Optimization and Control in 2013-2015. Amir Ali is also a three-time recipient of the NSF Oberwolfach Fellowship and a best student paper award finalist at the 47th IEEE Conference on Decision and Control.

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