Computer Science

CS Department Seminar: Ophir Frieder (Georgetown University))

May 7, 2012

Title: Humane ComputingSpeaker: Ophir Frieder (http://www.cs.georgetown.edu/~ophir/), Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20057Time: Monday, May 7th, 2:00pm-3:00pmLocation: Babbio 321Host: Adriana Compagnoni Abstract:Humane Computing is the design, development, and implementation of computing systems that directly focus on improving the human condition or experience. In that light, three efforts are presented, namely, improving foreign name search technology, spam detection algorithms for peer-to-peer file sharing systems, and novel techniques for urinary tract infection treatment.The first effort is in support of the Yizkor Books project of the Archives Section of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Yizkor Books are commemorative, firsthand accounts of communities that perished before, [Read more...]

CS Department Seminar: YingLi Tian (CUNY)

April 30, 2012

Title: Computer Vision Technology for Applications to Assist Blind PeopleSpeaker: YingLi Tian (http://www-ee.ccny.cuny.edu/www/web/yltian/home.html), City College of New York, NYC, NY 10031Time: Monday, April 30th, 2:00pm-3:00pmLocation: Babbio 321Host: Gang HuaAbstract: Recent technology developments in computer vision, digital cameras, and portable computers make it possible to develop practical computer vision-based algorithms to help blind persons independently explore unfamiliar environments and improve the quality of their daily life. In this talk, I will introduce the research conducted in CCNY Media Lab for applying computer vision technologies to assist people who are visually impaired including indoor navigation and wayfinding, banknote recognition, and clothing pattern recognition. [Read more...]

CS Department Seminar: Elena Bernardis (UPenn)

April 23, 2012

Title: Finding Many Small Structures in Microscopic ImagesSpeaker: Elena Bernardis, Department of Radiology, University of Pennsylvania, (https://www.rad.upenn.edu/sbia/Elena.Bernardis/)Date: April 23th, 2012Time: 2:00pm--3:30pmLocation: Babbio 321Abstract:Extracting and counting numerous `dots', i.e. small round regions, in large microscopic images is encountered in a wide range of medical and scientific applications. In this talk, I will present a dot finding method for popping out these regions of interest based on spectral graph partitioning, where pixels are nodes of a weighted graph, and finding dots becomes dissecting the graph based on weighted connections between nodes. In contrast to most previous approaches that rely on sharp boundaries, [Read more...]

CS Department Distinguished Lecture: Susan Landau (Harvard University)

April 18, 2012

Title: Untangling Attribution: Understanding the Requirements for Network AttributionSpeaker: Susan Landau, Department of Computer Science, Harvard University (http://privacyink.org/)Date: April 18th, 2012Time: 1:30pm--3:00pmLocation: Babbio 122Special Note: A reception will be held at the Atrium of the Babbio Center right after the distinguished seminar. Everyone is welcome to join.Abstract:As a result of increasing spam, DDoS attacks, cybercrime, and data exfiltration from corporate and government sites, there have been multiple calls for an Internet architecture that enables better network attribution at the packet layer. The intent is for a mechanism that links a packet to some packet level personally identifiable information. But cyberattacks [Read more...]

CS Department Seminar: Martial Hebert (CMU)

April 9, 2012

Title: Toward practical approaches to understanding scenes from images and 3D point cloudsDate: April 09, 2012Time: 2:00pm-3:30pmLocation: Babbio 321Speaker: Prof. Martial Hebert (http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~hebert/), Department of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon UniversityAbstract:I will first give an overview recent and current work in the cmu vision group in the area of scene understanding, briefly discussing ideas on combining statistical and reasoning techniques, incorporating external, non-visual knowledge, and discovering models from unsupervised data. I will then focus of one aspect of this work in which we want to generate efficiently semantic segmentation of scenes. A typical approach to this type of problems uses a [Read more...]

CS Department Distinguished Lecture: Roberto Tamassia (Brown University)

April 4, 2012

Title: Data Privacy and Security in Cloud Computing Speaker: RobertoTamassia, Department of Computer Science, Brown University (http://www.cs.brown.edu/~rt/) Date: April 04, 2012 Time: 2:00pm-3:30pm Location: EAS 222 Abstract: Cloud storage is an emerging trend in information technology. However, the fact that users no longer have physical possession of the data raises new challenges in terms of data privacy and security. Encrypting the data is not enough to assure privacy. Since information may be leaked through the pattern in which users access the data. We show how to achieve efficient privacy-preserving data access using low communication and storage overhead. Regarding data security, we present methods for efficiently verifying [Read more...]

CS Department Seminar: Jana Kosecka, (George Mason University)

March 26, 2012

Title: 3D Reconstruction and Semantic Parsing of Urban EnvironmentsSpeaker: Jana Kosecka, Department of Computer Science, George Mason University (http://www.cs.gmu.edu/~kosecka/)Date: March 26, 2012Time: 2:00pm-3:30pmLocation: Babbio 321Abstract:Recent advances in techniques for capturing large scale models of urban environments, give rise to many novel applications which require rapid and realistic 3D modelling. I will present an 3D reconstruction approach utilizing properties of piecewise planarity and restricted number of plane orientations to suppress the ambiguities causing failures of standard dense stereo methods. I will describe how to formulate this problem in MRF framework built on an image presegmented into superpixels and demonstrate superior performance [Read more...]

CS Department Seminar: Vladimir Pavlovic, (Rutgers University)

March 20, 2012

Title: Conditional Ordinal Random Fields - Ratings vs. ClassesSpeaker: Vladimir Pavlovic, (Rutgers University, http://seqam.rutgers.edu/site/)Time: 1:30pm-3:00pm Location: Babbio 321Abstract:Conditional Random Fields (CRFs) are the staple of many diets in computer vision today, from image segmentation, over image annotation, to activity recognition. The underlying assumption in those tasks is that some states, typically latent, take their values from a set of nominal categories while exhibiting some sort of local smoothness. These nominal categories typically indicate classes (e.g., foreground vs background or an object class assignment). However, in some modeling settings it is more reasonable to assume that the tags indicate ordinal categories [Read more...]

CS Department Seminar: Will Dormann, (Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute's CERT Coordination Center)

March 19, 2012

Title: Vulnerability Discovery Through FuzzingSpeaker: Will Dormann, (Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute's CERT Coordination Center)Time: 2:00pm-3:30pmLocation: Babbio 321Abstract:Fuzz testing is a technique of providing unexpected data to an application for the purpose of finding bugs, such as application crashes. Some crashes are exploitable, meaning that they could be leveraged to achieve arbitrary code execution. Fuzzing is a technique that can be used to improve the reliability and security of software by uncovering bugs; some of which may be exploitable.I will discuss fuzzing basics, with a focus on mutation-based techniques. CERT has developed fuzzing tools, including the FOE and BFF frameworks. [Read more...]

CS Department Seminar: Alexander Malkis, (Madrid Institute of Advanced Studies in Software Development Technologies)

March 5, 2012

Title: Verification of Software Barriers Speaker: Alexander Malkis (Madrid Institute of Advanced Studies in Software Development Technologies) (http://software.imdea.org/people/alexander.malkis/) Time: 2:00pm-3:30pm Location: Babbio 321 Abstract: We describe frontiers in verification of the software barrier synchronization primitive. So far most software barrier algorithms have not been mechanically verified. We show preliminary results in automatically proving the correctness of the major software barriers. Biography: Alexander has obtained his Diploma degree from the University of Saarland, Germany, in 2004-2005, for a work on polyedges (= bond animals) under Raimund Seidel. He continued his studies in Saarbrücken and Freiburg, obtaining his PhD thesis in 2010 at the University of Freiburg for [Read more...]

CS Department Seminar: Elaine Weyuker (AT&T Labs Research)

February 27, 2012

Title: Looking for Bugs In all the RIGHT Places Speaker: Elaine Weyuker (http://www.research.att.com/people/Weyuker_Elaine_Jfbid=tSYcTCsG7Co), AT&T Labs Research, Florham Park, NJTime: Monday, February 27th, 11:00amLocation: Babbio 203Host: Adriana Compagnoni Abstract:It would obviously be very valuable to know in advance which files in the next release of a large software system are most likely to contain the largest numbers of faults. To accomplish this, we developed a negative binomial regression model and used it to predict the expected number of faults in each file of the next release of a system. The predictions are based on code characteristics and fault and modification history [Read more...]

CS Department Seminar: Sanmay Das (Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute)

February 14, 2012

Title: Bayesian Reinforcement Learning With Censored Observations andApplications in Dynamic PricingSpeaker: Sanmay Das (http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~sanmay/), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180-3590Time: Tuesday, Feburary 14th, 11:00amLocation: Lieb 319Host: George KamberovAbstract:In many real-world applications, a decision-maker receives censored information from the world. A censored observation is one where the value of a measurement is only partially known -- for example, whether or not a buyer values an item enough to purchase it at a particular price, or whether or not a particular drug dosage level is toxic. The decision-maker often controls the threshold at which censoring occurs (the seller sets a price; the [Read more...]

CS Department Seminar: Stephen Checkoway (UC San Diego)

February 13, 2012

Title: Motor, Voters, and the Future of Embedded Security Speaker: Stephen Checkoway (http://cseweb.ucsd.edu/~scheckow/), University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093-0404Time: Monday, February 13th, 11:00amLocation: Babbio 203Host: Susanne WetzelAbstract: The stereotypical view of computing, and hence computer security, is a landscape filled with laptops, desktops, smartphones and servers; general purpose computers in the proper sense. However, this is but the visible tip of the iceberg. In fact, most computing today is invisibly embedded into systems and environments that few of us would ever think of as computers. Indeed, applications in virtually all walks of modern life, from automobiles to medical [Read more...]

CS Department Seminar: Samuel "Dov" Gordon (Columbia University)

February 8, 2012

Title: Secure Computation: From Theory Towards Practice Speaker: Samuel "Dov" Gordon (http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~gordon/), Columbia University, New York, NY 10032 Time: Wednesday, February 8th, 11:00am Location: Babbio 203 Host: Antonio R Nicolosi Abstract: In 1982, Yao introduced the field of "secure computation", in which n parties, holding private inputs x_1,...,x_n, engage in a protocol to compute some function f(x_1,...,x_n), while revealing nothing more than the output. In the decade that followed, the topic of secure computation was thoroughly explored, and almost every theoretical question was answered. In the past decade, the focus has shifted towards improving efficiency, and building implementations. Today, secure computation is poised to become an [Read more...]

CS Department Seminar: Samantha Kleinberg (Columbia University)

February 6, 2012

Title: Causality, Probability, and Time Speaker: Samantha Kleinberg (http://people.dbmi.columbia.edu/samantha/), Columbia University, New York, NY 10032 Time: Monday, February 6th, 11:00am Location: Babbio 203 Host: Adriana Compagnoni Abstract: Whether we want to know the cause of a stock's price movements (in order to trade on this information), the key phrases that can alter public opinion of a candidate (in order to optimize a politician’s speeches), or which genes work together to regulate a disease causing process (so we may intervene and disrupt it), we want to understand the causes for an effect of interest. In order to use these relationships to alter or predict behavior, we also [Read more...]

CS Department Seminar: Changhe Yuan (Mississippi State University)

January 30, 2012

Title: Learning Optimal Bayesian Networks: Novel Formulations and EfficientAlgorithmsSpeaker: Changhe Yuan (http://www.cse.msstate.edu/~cyuan/), Mississippi State University, Mississippi State, MS 39762Time: Monday, January 30th, 2:00pmLocation: Babbio 321Host: George KamberovAbstract: Probabilistic graphical models such as Bayesian networks (BNs) represent a successful marriage between graph theory and probability theory, and provide principled approaches to solving reasoning and decision making problems involving uncertainty. Applying Bayesian networks to real-world problems typically requires building graphical representations of the problems at hand. One popular approach is to use score-based methods to find high-scoring structures for given data. Since finding the optimal solution is provably hard, early research focused mainly [Read more...]

CS Department Seminar:Georgios Portokalidis (Columbia University)

January 25, 2012

Title: Protecting Commodity Software From Zero-Day Attacks Speaker: Georgios Portokalidis(http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~porto/Home.html) Columbia University,New York City, 10027 Time: Wednesday, January 25th, 11:00am Location: Babbio 203 Host: Susanne Wetzel Abstract:Software is continuously becoming larger and more complex. Software bugs have been repeatedly exploited by attackers to gain control of remote systems, exfiltrate sensitive data, and install malicious software, resulting in significant financial damages. In this talk, I will present various systems we have developed that can detect and prevent zero-day attacks exploiting memory corruption bugs. In particular, I will describe Argos, an x86 emulator that tracks network data throughout execution to identify their invalid use as jump targets, [Read more...]

CS Department Seminar: Julia Stoyanovich (University of Pennsylvania)

January 23, 2012

Title: Ranked exploration of large structured datasets Speaker: Julia Stoyanovich (http://www.cis.upenn.edu/~jstoy/) University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104 Time: Monday, January 23th, 11:00am Location: Babio 203 Host: Wendy Hui Wang Abstract: In online applications such as Yahoo! Personals and Trulia.com, users define structured profiles in order to find potentially interesting matches. Typically, profiles are evaluated against large datasets and produce thousands of ranked matches. Highly ranked results tend to be homogeneous, which hinders data exploration. For example, a dating website user who is looking for a partner between 20 and 40 years old, and who sorts the matches by income from higher to lower, will see a large [Read more...]

CS Department Seminar: Stanislaw Jarecki (UC Irvine)

January 9, 2012

Title: Secure Protocols for Information Sharing and Authentication Speaker: Stanislaw Jarecki (http://www.ics.uci.edu/~stasio/), University of California, Irvine, CA 92697-3425 Time: Monday, January 9th, 11:00am Location: Babio 320 Host: Susanne Wetzel Abstract: Ubiquitous information sharing brings revolutionary positive changes to our world, but it also creates new privacy and security vulnerabilities, often with unforeseen consequences. This poses a question as to which information-sharing tasks can be computed in a way that limits the information each participant needs to release to the other parties. A celebrated result of Andrew Yao from 1982 showed a general protocol for computing the output of any two-party task while hiding all the remaining [Read more...]

CS Department Seminar: Cole Schlesinger (Princeton University)

December 5, 2011

Title: Modular Protections Against Non-control Data Attacks Speaker: Cole Schlesinger (http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~cschlesi/), Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540 Time: Monday, December 5th, 2:00pm Location: Babio 320 Host: David Naumann Abstract: This talk introduces Yarra, a conservative extension to C to protect applications from non-control data attacks. Yarra programmers specify their data integrity requirements by declaring critical data types and ascribing these critical types to important data structures. Yarra guarantees that such critical data is only written through pointers with the given static type. Any attempt to write to critical data through a pointer with an invalid type (perhaps because of a buffer overrun) is detected dynamically. We formalize [Read more...]