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Next Week's ORFE Department Colloquia: Tuesday, October 7, 2025 at 4:30 PM: Milind Tambe, Harvard University
by Emily C. Lawrence 03 Oct '25

03 Oct '25

Next Week’s ORFE Department Colloquium Date & Time: Tuesday, October 7, 2025 at 4:30 PM Location: 104 - Computer Science Speaker: [ https://orfe.princeton.edu/events/2025/milind-tambe-harvard-university | Milind Tambe, Harvard University ] Title: Optimizing Social Impact: Field Deployments, Bandit Algorithms, and the Role of LLM Agents Abstract: For nearly two decades, my team’s work on AI for Social Impact (AI4SI) has focused on optimizing limited resources in critical areas like public health, conservation, and public safety. In this talk, I will highlight field test results from our deployed work in India, demonstrating measurable improvements in effectiveness for the world's two largest mobile health programs for maternal and child care. We have leveraged innovative restless and collaborative bandit algorithms to achieve these gains, revealing new technical directions in the process. Additionally, I will present our ongoing research on network-based HIV testing in South Africa, which is modeled as a branching bandit problem. These projects, along with our other health-related projects in Africa, illustrate a core challenge in our field. Deploying end-to-end AI4SI systems requires us to repeat three labor intensive steps: understanding stakeholder challenges, building tailored models, and rigorous field testing. I'll share initial results on how we can leverage current LLM-based agents and multiagents to accelerate this AI4SI process, significantly improving the speed and scale of social impact applications that focus on resource optimization. Bio: Milind Tambe is Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science; concurrently, he is also Principal Scientist and Director at Google Deepmind. Prof. Tambe and his team have developed pioneering AI systems that deliver real-world impact in public health (e.g., maternal and child health), public safety, and wildlife conservation. He is recipient of the AAAI Award for Artificial Intelligence for the Benefit of Humanity, AAAI Feigenbaum Prize, IJCAI John McCarthy Award, AAAI Robert S. Engelmore Memorial Lecture Award, AAMAS ACM Autonomous Agents Research Award, INFORMS Wagner prize for excellence in Operations Research practice, Military Operations Research Society Rist Prize, Columbus Fellowship Foundation Homeland security award and commendations and certificates of appreciation from the US Coast Guard, the Federal Air Marshals Service and airport police at the city of Los Angeles. He is a fellow of AAAI and ACM. * Please join us for a meet and greet with some light refreshments from 4:00pm – 4:30pm in the Sherrerd Hall Atrium before the talk.

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Hee Seung (Will) Hwang will present his General Exam "COMPACT: COMPositional Atomic-to-Complex Visual Capability Tuning" on Monday, October 6, 2025 at 1:00 PM in CS 402.
by CS Grad Department 01 Oct '25

01 Oct '25

Hee Seung (Will) Hwang will present his General Exam " COMPACT: COMPositional Atomic-to-Complex Visual Capability Tuning " on Monday, October 6, 2025 at 1:00 PM in CS 402. Committee Members: Olga Russakovsky (advisor), Zhuang Liu , Manoel Horta Ribeiro Abstract: Visual Instruction Tuning (VIT) data of Multi-modal Large Language Models (MLLMs) have continuously scaled in volume, with “the more the merrier” mentality when it comes to data. However, a natural question to ask is whether this blind scaling can be wasteful, and whether leveraging more informative samples can enable faster training and perhaps even more accurate models. In this paper, we present COMPACT (COMPositional Atomic-to-complex Visual Capability Tuning), a VIT data recipe that explicitly controls training sample complexity by combining multiple atomic visual capabilities in a single training example. Concretely, we synthesize rich and informative text questions for each image, allowing us to significantly reduce the number of training examples required for effective visual instruction tuning. COMPACT demonstrates superior data efficiency compared to existing data reduction methods. When applied to the LLaVA-665K VIT dataset, COMPACT reduces the data budget by 90% while still achieving 100.18% of the full VIT performance (compared to only 97.47% by state-of-the-art) across ten multimodal benchmarks. Further, training on this COMPACT data even improves performance compared to training with full-scale data on particularly complex benchmarks such as MM-Vet (8.6%) and MMStar (2.9%). COMPACT offers a scalable and efficient synthetic data generation recipe to improve on visual language tasks. Reading List: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lhdxFBNmEkr1Kw_D6Te-4Bp4Btp7Zp7u1UAI38h… Everyone is invited to attend the talk, and those faculty wishing to remain for the oral exam following are welcome to do so.

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Ryan Liu will present his General Exam "From Overthinking to Simulation: Cognitive Science Approaches to Understanding and Applying LLMs" on Friday, October 3, 2025 at 3:30 PM in Friend 108 and via zoom.
by CS Grad Department 30 Sep '25

30 Sep '25

Ryan Liu will present his General Exam " From Overthinking to Simulation: Cognitive Science Approaches to Understanding and Applying LLMs " on Friday, October 3, 2025 at 3:30 PM in Friend 108 and via zoom. Zoom link: https://princeton.zoom.us/j/5754794053 Committee Members: Tom Griffiths (advisor), Lydia Liu , Manoel Ribeiro Abstract: The rapid development of large language models (LLMs) brings challenges as well as opportunities. Techniques like reasoning and RLHF have made models difficult to understand, but the resulting models are capable of novel applications like simulating human behavior. My research aims to deepen our understanding and broaden the applications of these models, using foundational concepts in cognitive and social sciences to inform LLM research. To understand models, I ground ideas such as “overthinking” and “helpfulness/honesty” into theoretically sound cognitive frameworks (deliberation and Gricean maxims, respectively). This approach lets me evaluate LLMs in rigorous experiments with intuitive results, such as relating chain-of-thought to human overthinking, studying how LLMs ascribe rationality to humans, and showing how LLMs navigate conflicts between honesty and helpfulness. To explore the capacity of LLMs to simulate people, I have worked on applications like simulating audiences to improve communication and emulating human research subjects. The former is inspired by episodic future thinking, whereas the latter tackles a classic challenge in social science. Broadly, I believe LLMs can benefit greatly from the social and cognitive sciences, and hope to continue my work bridging these fields. Reading List: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LvO5lFA6qX2enACuY00975duqfRcLWxiHD7SE6L… Everyone is invited to attend the talk, and those faculty wishing to remain for the oral exam following are welcome to do so.

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Upcoming talks in AI, ML, neuroscience, and behavior
by Emily C. Lawrence 30 Sep '25

30 Sep '25

Dear Colleagues: I wanted to call your attention to these upcoming lunch talks of general interest in AI, ML, neuroscience, and behavior. October 3: Curiosity Styles in the (Natural & Artificial) Wild [ https://pph.princeton.edu/events/2025/curiosity-styles-natural-artificial-w… | https://pph.princeton.edu/events/2025/curiosity-styles-natural-artificial-w… ] October 7: Reading Minds and Machines [ https://csml.princeton.edu/events/reading-minds-machines | https://csml.princeton.edu/events/reading-minds-machines ] October 10: Understanding the world of misinformation and misbeliefs [ https://pph.princeton.edu/events/2025/understanding-world-misinformation-an… | https://pph.princeton.edu/events/2025/understanding-world-misinformation-an… ] - Prof. Guillermo Sapiro ECE

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Princeton Precision Health seminar: Dani Bassett (Penn) Fri, Oct 3
by Emily C. Lawrence 30 Sep '25

30 Sep '25

Please join Princeton Precision Health for a lunchtime seminar on Friday, October 3, at 12 pm at 252 Nassau Street . Professor Dani Bassett, the J. Peter Skirkanich Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, in the Departments of Bioengineering, Electrical & Systems Engineering, Physics & Astronomy, Neurology, and Psychiatry, will present, “ [ https://pph.princeton.edu/events/2025/curiosity-styles-natural-artificial-w… | Curiosity Styles in the (Natural & Artificial) Wild ] .” Abstract. What is curiosity? Across disciplines, some scholars offer a range of definitions while others eschew definitions altogether. Is the field of curiosity studies simply too young? Should we, as has been argued in neuroscience, press forward in definition-less characterization? At this juncture in the field’s history, we turn to an examination of curiosity styles, and ask: How has curiosity been practiced over the last two millennia and how is it practiced today? We exercise a recent historico-philosophical account to catalogue common styles of curiosity and test for their presence as humans browse Wikipedia. Next we consider leading theories from psychology and mechanics that could explain curiosity styles, and formalize those theories in the mathematics of network science. Such a formalization allows theories of curiosity to be explicitly tested in human behavioral data and for their relative mental affordances to be investigated. Moreover, the formalization allows us to train artificial agents to build in human-like curiosity styles through reinforcement learning. Finally, with styles and theories in hand, we expand out to a study of several million users of Wikipedia to understand how curiosity styles might or might not differ around the world and track factors of social inequality. Collectively, our findings support the notion that curiosity is practiced---differently across people---as unique styles of network building, thereby providing a connective counterpoint to the common acquisitional account of curiosity in humans. Hope to see you there! [ https://pph.princeton.edu/events | View ] all upcoming PPH events. Please note that getting to the seminar space at 252 Nassau Street currently requires that you climb a set of stairs. If an accommodation is needed, please contact PPH in advance at: [ mailto:princetonPPH@princeton.edu | princetonPPH(a)princeton.edu ]

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Princeton Robotics Seminar: B. Pietro Filardo, Friday Sept 26 at 11am
by Emily C. Lawrence 24 Sep '25

24 Sep '25

Hi everyone, Our next robotics seminar speaker is B. Pietro Filardo, Founder & CEO at Pliant Energy Systems Inc. Speaker: B. Pietro Filardo Date: 09/26/2025 Time: 11:00 AM EST Location: Bowen 222 [ https://robo.princeton.edu/seminar | https://robo.princeton.edu/seminar ] We are looking forward to seeing you there! Please stay tuned for more details. Title: From Energy Harnessing to Marine Robotics & Back Again Abstract: Pliant Energy Systems Inc began as a renewable energy startup with concepts that proved to be more fund-able when applied to marine robotics. The company’s founder, Pietro Filardo, will tell the unusual story how of a very small startup repeatedly pivoted to win $20M of government funding to develop their technology. Pietro’s video-heavy presentation will show how initial concepts and sketches materialized into generators, pumps, and propeller-less autonomous underwater robots that traverse sand, ice and snow. He will also present an overview of Pliant’s ongoing US Navy funded marine robotics program and conclude with a new project that circles back to their foundational energy harnessing origins. Best Regards, Robotics Seminar Committee

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ORFE Department Colloquium: TODAY at 4:30 PM: Dimitris Bertsimas, MIT
by Emily C. Lawrence 23 Sep '25

23 Sep '25

Today’s ORFE Department Colloquium Date & Time: Tuesday, September 23, 2025 at 4:30 PM Location: 104 - Computer Science Speaker: [ https://orfe.princeton.edu/events/2025/dimitris-bertsimas-mit | Dimitris Bertsimas, MIT ] Title: A vision of Customized and Adaptive Online Education using Gen-AI Abstract: I present a vision for online education that adapts the context, the duration, the language and the depth of a lecture to the learner. This is a vision of personalized education that, in my opinion, will revolutionize education and will change universities in the years to come. I outline the current efforts in these directions within Open Learning at MIT. * Please join us for a meet and greet with some light refreshments from 4:00pm – 4:30pm in the Sherrerd Hall Atrium before the talk.

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Barak Nehoran will present his FPO "Separations of Fundamental Quantum Properties and Their Role in Shaping Cryptography Beyond Classical Limits" on October 9, 2025 at 12:30pm in CS 402
by Gradinfo 22 Sep '25

22 Sep '25

Barak Nehoran will present his FPO "Separations of Fundamental Quantum Properties and Their Role in Shaping Cryptography Beyond Classical Limits" on October 9, 2025 at 12:30pm in CS 402 Examiners: Ran Raz (adviser), Mark Zhandry (adviser), and Alex Lombardi Readers: Gillat Kol and Sarang Gopalakrishnan All are welcome to attend. Please see abstract below. Quantum computers will break much of the cryptography that secures the internet, but they will also enable entirely new cryptographic frameworks with security based on the principles of quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics prevents certain information processing tasks: unlike classical data, quantum information cannot generally be recognized, cannot be written down on paper (formally called “telegraphed”), and cannot be copied (formally, “cloned”). Some quantum information classicizes, or resembles its classical counterpart, by allowing one or more of these tasks, while other information remains fully quantum and resists all such classicizing tasks. We argue that differences between such classicizing tasks, especially cases when one task is efficient but another is not, are essential for enabling quantum cryptography with no classical analog. The earliest quantum cryptography explored was quantum money, which is quantum information that can be recognized efficiently but not cloned. Wiesner first defined it in 1968, with a public-key version introduced by Bennett, Brassard, Breidbart, and Wiesner in 1982. Many proposals for public-key quantum money have appeared over the past 43 years, yet proving the security of any of them has remained challenging. We use new tools from the mathematics of group representations and group actions to give the first secure construction of public-key quantum money that does not rely on obfuscation, and the first to also offer collision resistance. We also introduce quantum fire, which describes quantum information that can be cloned efficiently but not telegraphed. Like fire, it can be spread indefinitely from a single source, but only as long as it is kept alive. We provide a secure construction of quantum fire in the black-box setting and give a framework for a potential construction in the plain model. We further show that classicizing tasks can also characterize complexity classes involving efficient quantum verification, offering a new perspective on the fundamental question of the relative power of classical and quantum proofs.

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ORFE Colloquia: Tuesday, Sept 23, at 4:30PM: Dimitris Bertsimas, MIT
by Emily C. Lawrence 18 Sep '25

18 Sep '25

Next Week’s ORFE Department Colloquium Date & Time: Tuesday, September 23, 2025 at 4:30 PM Location: 104 - Computer Science Speaker: [ https://orfe.princeton.edu/events/2025/dimitris-bertsimas-mit | Dimitris Bertsimas, MIT ] Title: A vision of Customized and Adaptive Online Education using Gen-Ai Abstract: I present a vision for online education that adapts the context, the duration, the language and the depth of a lecture to the learner. This is a vision of personalized education that, in my opinion, will revolutionize education and will change universities in the years to come. I outline the current efforts in these directions within Open Learning at MIT.

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DeCenter Book Talk: Beyond Banks: Technology, Regulation, and the Future of Money
by Emily C. Lawrence 16 Sep '25

16 Sep '25

On behalf of The Princeton Center for the Decentralization of Power Through Blockchain Technology ( [ https://decenter.princeton.edu/ | DeCente ] r) and the Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies ( [ https://gceps.princeton.edu/ | GCEPS ] ) we are delighted to invite you to a book talk featuring [ https://www.lawschool.cornell.edu/faculty-research/faculty-directory/daniel… | Dan Awrey ] , Beth and Marc Goldberg Professor of Law at Cornell Law School and author of Beyond Banks: Technology, Regulation, and the Future of Money. The event will take place on Wednesday, October 8th, at 12:15 PM in the Computer Science Building, Room 104 . The discussion will be moderated by [ https://www.linkedin.com/in/carolyn-wilkins-b9417338/?originalSubdomain=ca | Carolyn Wilkins ] , Senior Advisor at the Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies, Princeton University, and former Senior Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada. Open to the Public and the Princeton University Community; Livestream available on [ https://mediacentrallive.princeton.edu/ | Media Central ] . For any questions, please email [ mailto:decenter@princeton.edu | decenter(a)princeton.edu ] . We look forward to your participation! Madelyn LaBuda Administrative and Events Coordinator DeCenter Engineering Quad, C215 Princeton University E: ml2512 [ mailto:email@princeton.edu | @princeton.edu ] M: 570-599-5338

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