News & EventsDepartment Events & Announcements
Events
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Jan22
EVENT DETAILS
Wednesday / CS Seminar
January 22nd / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
Ankit Garg, Microsoft Research IndiaTalk Title
Arithmetic circuits: lower bounds, learning and applicationsAbstract
Arithmetic circuits are a natural model for computing polynomials via the basic operations of addition and multiplication. One of the fundamental open problems in this area is of proving lower bounds, i.e. finding an explicit polynomial that cannot be computed by polynomial sized arithmetic circuits (aka the VP vs VNP problem). While the question of proving lower bounds for general arithmetic circuits is still open, there has been remarkable progress in proving lower bounds for restricted classes of arithmetic circuits. Another important problem in this area is that of learning arithmetic circuits: given a polynomial (via query or black box access), output a small arithmetic circuit computing it (if one exists). This problem is hard in the worst case. I will present a meta framework for learning arithmetic circuits in the non-degenerate case using lower bound methods. We instantiate and implement this meta framework for various classes of arithmetic circuits. Then I will talk about extending the algorithms to the noisy setting as well as surprising and remarkable applications to classical problems in machine learning such as subspace clustering and mixtures of Gaussians. This is based on joint works with Pritam Chandra, Neeraj Kayal, Kunal Mittal, Chandan Saha and Tanmay Sinha.Biography
Ankit Garg is a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research India since July 2018. Prior to this, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Microsoft Research New England from 2016 - 2018. He completed his PhD in 2016 from Princeton University under the supervision of Prof Mark Braverman. His research has spanned several areas of theoretical computer science such as communication complexity, arithmetic complexity, optimization, mixture models and optimization. Several of his research papers have been published in top conferences in computer science such as STOC, FOCS, CCC, NeuRIPS and QIP, and recognized by Simons award for graduate students in theoretical computer science and a Siebel scholarship.Research/Interest Areas
Theoretical Computer Science, Algorithms, Computational Complexity Theory---
Zoom: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/92525649422?pwd=N6DlLBx6RRAtrar8vk27te6cjmzqXP.1
Panopto: https://northwestern.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=4d9fd60c-89e5-48f6-bbdb-b261015638de
DEI Minute: tinyurl.com/cspac-dei-minuteTIME Wednesday, January 22, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Jan23
EVENT DETAILS
Thursday / CS Teaching Demonstration
January 23rd / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
Ram KesavanTalk Title
Ram Kesavan Teaching Demonstration,Abstract
This talk first briefly covers my career, transition to academia, and research interests. The remainder is a teaching demonstration, a lecture from a standard Operating Systems class, such as CS343. The lecture assumes that I/O connectivity and storage devices (hard drives, solid state drives, etc.) have been taught in prior lectures. It describes techniques used by systems practitioners to protect the data written to storage devices, including RAID.
Biography
Over his 25-year technology career, Ram Kesavan has worked in the systems area---primarily in storage, file systems, distributed systems, and distributed databases. He most recently worked in the database organization at Google Cloud, first as the Uber-TL of the Firestore team, and then as an individual contributor in the Spanner team working on Spanner Graph and ANN search indexing. Prior to Google he worked mostly in the WAFL file system team at NetApp, initially as a developer and then eventually as a Technical Director. Over the past 8 years, he has published 13 peer-reviewed papers that describe some of his technical work while at Google Cloud and NetApp. He has delivered guest lectures at various universities in the US, and formulated and taught a module on storage systems a few times at IIT Madras and IIT Delhi. He holds 22 patents, a PhD from The Ohio State University, and a BTech from IIT Madras.Research/Interest Areas
storage and file systems, distributed systems, distributed databases
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Zoom: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/97056811324?pwd=lL8HioCZicmMk3mNQmEzu0S0FqBi4j.1
Panopto: https://northwestern.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=c8efc434-f838-4d6f-bf76-b2670177de29TIME Thursday, January 23, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Jan24
EVENT DETAILS
Friday / CS Seminar
January 24th / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
Meena Jagadeesan, UC BerkeleyTalk Title
Steering Machine Learning Ecosystems of Interacting AgentsAbstract
"Modern machine learning models—such as LLMs and recommender systems—interact with humans, companies, and other models in a broader ecosystem. However, these multi-agent interactions often induce unintended ecosystem-level outcomes such as clickbait in classical content recommendation ecosystems, and more recently, safety violations and market concentration in nascent LLM ecosystems.
In this talk, I discuss my research on characterizing and steering ecosystem-level outcomes. I take an economic and statistical perspective on ML ecosystems, tracing outcomes back to the incentives of interacting agents and to the ML pipeline for training models. First, in LLM ecosystems, we show how analyzing a single model in isolation fails to capture ecosystem-level performance trends: for example, training a model with more resources can counterintuitively hurt ecosystem-level performance. To help steer ecosystem-level outcomes, we develop technical tools to assess how proposed policy interventions affect market entry, safety compliance, and user welfare. Then, turning to content recommendation ecosystems, we characterize a feedback loop between the recommender system and content creators, which shapes the diversity and quality of the content supply. Finally, I present a broader vision of ML ecosystems where multi-agent interactions are steered towards the desired algorithmic, market, and societal outcomes."
Biography
Meena Jagadeesan is a 5th year PhD student in Computer Science at UC Berkeley, where she is advised by Michael I. Jordan and Jacob Steinhardt. Her research investigates multi-agent interactions in machine learning ecosystems from an economic and statistical perspective. She has received an Open Philanthropy AI Fellowship and a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship.Research/Interest Areas
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Economics and Computation
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Zoom: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/92665903240?pwd=YGOjSzB0Pxk4oDvRsVBbA0auFIvH0p.1
Panopto: https://northwestern.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=408ccd84-8bf4-409a-b995-b261015654c8
DEI Minute: tinyurl.com/cspac-dei-minuteTIME Friday, January 24, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Jan29
EVENT DETAILS
Monday / CS Seminar
January 13th / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
TBATalk Title
TBAAbstract
TBABiography
TBAResearch/Interest Areas
TBA
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Zoom: TBA
Panopto: TBA
DEI Minute: tinyurl.com/cspac-dei-minuteTIME Wednesday, January 29, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Jan30
EVENT DETAILS
TBA
TIME Thursday, January 30, 2025 at 9:00 AM - 11:00 AM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Jan31
EVENT DETAILS
Friday / CS Seminar
January 31st / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
Daniel Halpern, Harvard UniversityTalk Title
Why AI Needs Social ChoiceAbstract
In many modern AI paradigms, we encounter tasks reminiscent of social choice theory: collecting preferences from individuals and aggregating them into a single joint outcome. However, these tasks differ from traditional frameworks in two key ways: the space of possible outcomes is so enormous that we can only hope to collect sparse inputs from each participant, and the outcomes themselves are often highly complex. This talk explores these challenges through two case studies: Polis, a platform for democratic deliberation (https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.15608), and Reinforcement Learning From Human Feedback (RLHF), a method for fine-tuning LLMs to align with societal preferences (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.14758). In both cases, the focus is on evaluating existing methods through an axiomatic lens and designing new methods with provable guarantees.Biography
Daniel Halpern is a final-year PhD student at Harvard University advised by Ariel Procaccia. He is supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and a Siebel Scholarship. His research broadly sits at the intersection of algorithms, economics, and artificial intelligence. Specifically, he considers novel settings where groups of people need to make collective decisions, such as summarizing population views on large-scale opinion aggregation websites, using participant data to fine-tune large language models, and selecting panel members for citizens’ assemblies. In each, he develops practical and provably fair solutions to aggregate individual preferences.---
Zoom: https://northwestern.zoom.us/j/96824870974?pwd=QfxpsRpfWcDlx4TXPswbAd8X4Dqhyb.1
Panopto: https://northwestern.hosted.panopto.com/Panopto/Pages/Viewer.aspx?id=2159520b-1d46-4ece-ba17-b268017475c6
DEI Minute: tinyurl.com/cspac-dei-minuteTIME Friday, January 31, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Feb3
EVENT DETAILS
Monday / CS Seminar
January 13th / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
TBATalk Title
TBAAbstract
TBABiography
TBAResearch/Interest Areas
TBA
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Zoom: TBA
Panopto: TBA
DEI Minute: tinyurl.com/cspac-dei-minuteTIME Monday, February 3, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Feb5
EVENT DETAILS
Monday / CS Seminar
January 13th / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
TBATalk Title
TBAAbstract
TBABiography
TBAResearch/Interest Areas
TBA
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Zoom: TBA
Panopto: TBA
DEI Minute: tinyurl.com/cspac-dei-minuteTIME Wednesday, February 5, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Feb7
EVENT DETAILS
Monday / CS Seminar
January 13th / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
TBATalk Title
TBAAbstract
TBABiography
TBAResearch/Interest Areas
TBA
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Zoom: TBA
Panopto: TBA
DEI Minute: tinyurl.com/cspac-dei-minuteTIME Friday, February 7, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Feb10
EVENT DETAILS
Monday / CS Seminar
January 13th / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
TBATalk Title
TBAAbstract
TBABiography
TBAResearch/Interest Areas
TBA
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Zoom: TBA
Panopto: TBA
DEI Minute: tinyurl.com/cspac-dei-minuteTIME Monday, February 10, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Feb12
EVENT DETAILS
Monday / CS Seminar
January 13th / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
TBATalk Title
TBAAbstract
TBABiography
TBAResearch/Interest Areas
TBA
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Zoom: TBA
Panopto: TBA
DEI Minute: tinyurl.com/cspac-dei-minuteTIME Wednesday, February 12, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Feb14
EVENT DETAILS
Monday / CS Seminar
January 13th / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
TBATalk Title
TBAAbstract
TBABiography
TBAResearch/Interest Areas
TBA
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Zoom: TBA
Panopto: TBA
DEI Minute: tinyurl.com/cspac-dei-minuteTIME Friday, February 14, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Feb17
EVENT DETAILS
Monday / CS Seminar
January 13th / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
TBATalk Title
TBAAbstract
TBABiography
TBAResearch/Interest Areas
TBA
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Zoom: TBA
Panopto: TBA
DEI Minute: tinyurl.com/cspac-dei-minuteTIME Monday, February 17, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Feb19
EVENT DETAILS
Monday / CS Seminar
January 13th / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
TBATalk Title
TBAAbstract
TBABiography
TBAResearch/Interest Areas
TBA
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Zoom: TBA
Panopto: TBA
DEI Minute: tinyurl.com/cspac-dei-minuteTIME Wednesday, February 19, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Feb21
EVENT DETAILS
Monday / CS Seminar
January 13th / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
TBATalk Title
TBAAbstract
TBABiography
TBAResearch/Interest Areas
TBA
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Zoom: TBA
Panopto: TBA
DEI Minute: tinyurl.com/cspac-dei-minuteTIME Friday, February 21, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Feb24
EVENT DETAILS
Monday / CS Seminar
January 13th / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
TBATalk Title
TBAAbstract
TBABiography
TBAResearch/Interest Areas
TBA
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Zoom: TBA
Panopto: TBA
DEI Minute: tinyurl.com/cspac-dei-minuteTIME Monday, February 24, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Feb26
EVENT DETAILS
Monday / CS Seminar
January 13th / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
TBATalk Title
TBAAbstract
TBABiography
TBAResearch/Interest Areas
TBA
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Zoom: TBA
Panopto: TBA
DEI Minute: tinyurl.com/cspac-dei-minuteTIME Wednesday, February 26, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Feb28
EVENT DETAILS
Monday / CS Seminar
January 13th / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
TBATalk Title
TBAAbstract
TBABiography
TBAResearch/Interest Areas
TBA
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Zoom: TBA
Panopto: TBA
DEI Minute: tinyurl.com/cspac-dei-minuteTIME Friday, February 28, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Mar3
EVENT DETAILS
Monday / CS Seminar
January 13th / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
TBATalk Title
TBAAbstract
TBABiography
TBAResearch/Interest Areas
TBA
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Zoom: TBA
Panopto: TBA
DEI Minute: tinyurl.com/cspac-dei-minuteTIME Monday, March 3, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Mar5
EVENT DETAILS
Monday / CS Seminar
January 13th / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
TBATalk Title
TBAAbstract
TBABiography
TBAResearch/Interest Areas
TBA
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Zoom: TBA
Panopto: TBA
DEI Minute: tinyurl.com/cspac-dei-minuteTIME Wednesday, March 5, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Mar7
EVENT DETAILS
Monday / CS Seminar
January 13th / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
TBATalk Title
TBAAbstract
TBABiography
TBAResearch/Interest Areas
TBA
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Zoom: TBA
Panopto: TBA
DEI Minute: tinyurl.com/cspac-dei-minuteTIME Friday, March 7, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Mar10
EVENT DETAILS
Monday / CS Seminar
January 13th / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
TBATalk Title
TBAAbstract
TBABiography
TBAResearch/Interest Areas
TBA
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Zoom: TBA
Panopto: TBA
DEI Minute: tinyurl.com/cspac-dei-minuteTIME Monday, March 10, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Mar12
EVENT DETAILS
Monday / CS Seminar
January 13th / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
TBATalk Title
TBAAbstract
TBABiography
TBAResearch/Interest Areas
TBA
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Zoom: TBA
Panopto: TBA
DEI Minute: tinyurl.com/cspac-dei-minuteTIME Wednesday, March 12, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)
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Mar14
EVENT DETAILS
Monday / CS Seminar
January 13th / 12:00 PM
Hybrid / Mudd 3514Speaker
TBATalk Title
TBAAbstract
TBABiography
TBAResearch/Interest Areas
TBA
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Zoom: TBA
Panopto: TBA
DEI Minute: tinyurl.com/cspac-dei-minuteTIME Friday, March 14, 2025 at 12:00 PM - 1:00 PM
LOCATION 3514, Mudd Hall ( formerly Seeley G. Mudd Library) map it
CONTACT Wynante R Charles wynante.charles@northwestern.edu EMAIL
CALENDAR Department of Computer Science (CS)