November 2019 - vrg - dgp mailing lists

Fanny's Dec. schedule
by Fanny Chevalier 30 Nov '19

30 Nov '19

Hi all, This is a heads up that I will not be holding my (bi-)weekly meetings with students from Dec. 11 onward. I am *not* out of office for the period Dec 11- Dec 22, and will happily schedule exceptional meetings on demand during that period for the most pressing matters. I will be out of office Dec. 23 - Jan 5 included. I can be reached for work-related, or personal-related emergency and non-work chit-chat, but I won’t hold meetings unless absolutely necessary. I’ll send a doodle pool next term to figure out new regular meeting times with every one of you. Best, Fanny — Fanny Chevalier Assistant Professor Department of Computer Science and Department of Statistical Sciences University of Toronto fanny(a)cs.toronto.edu http://fannychevalier.net/

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[Save the Date/Meet] Thurs, Dec 5 - DLS Speaker Barbara Grosz, 11am BA1210
by Fanny Chevalier 28 Nov '19

28 Nov '19

FYI. > Begin forwarded message: > > From: Sheila McIlraith <sheila(a)cs.toronto.edu> > Subject: [Save the Date/Meet] Thurs, Dec 5 - DLS Speaker Barbara Grosz, 11am BA1210 > Date: 28 November 2019 at 00:08:47 GMT-5 > To: faculty(a)cs.toronto.edu > > > Dear DCS faculty colleagues, > > Just a reminder of our DLS next week with Barbara Grosz from Harvard. > > Details are appended. > > - Sheila > > ========= > > https://web.cs.toronto.edu/news-events/events/dls1903 > > A Harvard news article related to the topic of her talk: > https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/01/harvard-works-to-embed-ethic… > > Thursday, December 5 > 11am > BA1210 > > >> From Ethical Challenges of Intelligent Systems to Embedding Ethics in Computer Science > > Barbara J. Grosz, Higgins Research Professor, Natural Sciences, Harvard University > > Abstract: > Computing technologies have become pervasive in daily life, sometimes bringing unintended but harmful consequences. For students to learn to think not only about what technology they could create, but also whether they should create that technology and to recognize the ethical considerations that should constrain their design, computer science curricula must expand to include ethical reasoning about the societal value and impact of these technologies. This talk will describe Harvard's Embedded EthiCS initiative, a novel approach to integrating ethics into computer science education that incorporates ethical reasoning throughout courses in the standard computer science curriculum. It changes existing courses rather than requiring wholly new courses. The talk will begin with a short description of my experiences teaching the course "Intelligent Systems: Design and Ethical Challenges" that inspired the design of Embedded EthiCS. It will then describe the goals behind the design, the way the program works, lessons learned and challenges to sustainable implementations of such a program across different types of academic institutions. > > Biography: Barbara Grosz is Higgins Research Professor of Natural Sciences in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University and a member of the External Faculty of Santa Fe Institute. She has made groundbreaking contributions to the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) through her pioneering research in natural language processing and in theories of multi-agent collaboration and their application to human-computer interaction. Her current research explores ways to use models developed in this research to improve health care coordination and science education. She co-founded Harvard's Embedded Ethics program, which integrates teaching of ethical reasoning into core computer science courses. A member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Philosophical Society, she is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a corresponding fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She received the 2009 ACM/AAAI Allen Newell Award, the 2015 IJCAI Award for Research Excellence, and the 2017 Association for Computational Linguistics Lifetime Achievement Award. She was founding dean of science and then dean of Harvard's Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and she is known for her role in the establishment and leadership of interdisciplinary institutions and for her contributions to the advancement of women in science. Professor Grosz serves on the boards of several scientific, scholarly and academic institutions. > >

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Talk by Narges Mahyar (UMass Amherst) Tuesday Nov 26, 11am, DGP Seminar room
by Nicole Sultanum 26 Nov '19

26 Nov '19

Hello folks, As many of you know, prof. Narges Mahyar will be visiting the lab this coming Tuesday, *Nov 26*. Thank you for those who signed up for demos. Her talk will be at *11am* in the seminar room (BA 5187), see details below: ***** *Title:* Social Computing and Visualization to Democratize Public Participation *Abstract* Public participation is a pillar of a functioning democracy. Much of the recent work in utilizing technology for facilitating public participation has been focused on broadening access and data collection from the public. However, these technologies still face several challenges in democratizing public participation, such as including marginalized populations and integrating data analysis into civic decision-making processes. In this talk, I present examples of my recent work using social computing and visualization technologies for further democratizing public participation. These examples demonstrate applications of 1) collaborative technologies and interactive visualization to increase public engagement, 2) online platforms and crowdsourcing techniques to scale public participation, and empower the public to contribute meaningfully in a short amount of time, 3) low barrier technology to engage reticent participants to provide feedback during town hall meetings, and 4) visualization tools to enable civic leaders to make sense of a large amount of public input better. I describe a vision for expanding my research on building novel tools towards advanced stages of the decision-making process, such as collaborative sensemaking of complex civic data and consensus-building. *Bio * *Narges Mahyar is an Assistant Professor in the College of Information and Computer Sciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Victoria, an MS in Information Technology from the University of Malaya, and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Tehran Azad University. Her Ph.D. was funded by SAP Business Objects for four years, where she worked closely with SAP experts and research teams to develop novel technologies for collaborative visual analytics tasks. She was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia from 2014-2016. Prior to joining UMass she completed a second postdoctoral fellowship in the Design Lab at the University of California San Diego from 2016-2018. Her research papers have received awards at the premier venues in Visualization, Social computing and Landscape Architecture, including the outstanding paper award from the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture 2017, the honorable mention award from Interactive Surfaces and Spaces conference in 2016 and the best paper award from IEEE VAST 2014.* Cheers, Nicole

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[Tux] HCI Poster Showcase Tomorrow
by Tovi Grossman 25 Nov '19

25 Nov '19

Dear TUX Community, Tomorrow there will be another HCI poster showcase (a similar event was held last year) which I'd like to invite you to. This will be a presentation of posters that the students in the Human-Computer Interaction course I am teaching at U of T have prepared. The course is cross-listed as a fourth-year undergraduate / graduate course. For their final term project, they have been conducting a literature review and proposing new ideas on an HCI topic of choice. Tomorrow they will be presenting their findings in the format of a poster. This year the poster showcase will be held in the ground floor atrium of the Bahen building (40 St George St). You are welcome to come by and see the posters and meet the undergraduate and graduate students that have been studying HCI at U of T this semester. Date: Tuesday, November 26 Time: 3:15pm-5:00pm Location: Bahen Ground Floor Atrium (40 St George St.) Hope to see you there! Thanks, Tovi Tovi Grossman, Ph.D. Assistant Professor Department of Computer Science University of Toronto 40 St. George St, Toronto Toronto, Ontario M5S 2E4 Canada www.cs.toronto.edu <http://www.cs.toronto.edu> _______________________________________________ tux-announce mailing list tux-announce(a)dgp.toronto.edu https://www.dgp.toronto.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tux-announce

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Fwd: Academic job search Q & A for grad students & postdocs with Eyal & others: Tue 26 Nov 12:15
by Fanny Chevalier 24 Nov '19

24 Nov '19

FYI. > Begin forwarded message: > > From: Joseph Jay Williams <williams(a)cs.toronto.edu> > Subject: Academic job search Q & A for grad students & postdocs with Eyal & others: Tue 26 Nov 12:15 > Date: 24 November 2019 at 11:01:06 GMT-5 > To: faculty(a)cs.toronto.edu > Cc: gradmetaskillschair(a)googlegroups.com > > You might consider forwarding this to your students who are interested in academic jobs or going on the market: > > Eyal de Lara (chair of U of T faculty search committee, who’s been involved in 30+ faculty hires in the last few years, and so can provide a unique perspective) generously agreed to do a Q & A with grad students to give advice on the process of academic job search. > > This Q & A is happening this Tue, 26 Nov, 12:15-1:30 in BA 5256. > > The agenda will include, for example, discussing how to prepare good research statements, how the application might be reviewed. > > Grad students can type questions into this Google Doc anonymously (Add any questions you have here <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jSScWSdqQD4oX79yd9pp0EGVUX1h8J_8P3a4hki…>) > > They can also see existing resources compiled by grad student volunteers at tiny.cc/gmsajob - GradMetaSkills Academic Job - List of Advice, Resources, Examples for Academic Job Search <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jSScWSdqQD4oX79yd9pp0EGVUX1h8J_8P3a4hki…> > Grad MetaSkills Community (Grad Skills Seminar) > > > > Joseph Jay Williams > www.josephjaywilliams.com <http://www.josephjaywilliams.com/> > Assistant Professor > Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto > Intelligent Adaptive Interventions (IAI) research group

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Demos for Narges Mahyar - Visiting Professor @ UMass
by Nicole Sultanum 20 Nov '19

20 Nov '19

Hello folks, Prof. Narges Mahyar <https://www.cics.umass.edu/people/mahyar-narges> from University of Massachussets Amherst will be visiting DGP next week on Tuesday, November 26 for a talk and demos. She has done really cool work intersecting Data Vis, collaborative systems, interactive surfaces, urban design/planning, and civic engagement, which should be of interest to many of you. She's also a great person to chat about research, so I'd recommend you to sign up for a slot even if your ideas are still in early stages and you don't have much to show. Please send me a message if you would like to sign up for a demo/chat slot with Narges, with your availability; I should be able to accommodate slots in the morning (10-12) and in the afternoon (2-4). Thanks, Nicole

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Demos for Narges Mahyar - Visiting Professor @ UMass
by Nicole Sultanum 20 Nov '19

20 Nov '19

Hello folks, Prof. Narges Mahyar <https://www.cics.umass.edu/people/mahyar-narges> from University of Massachussets Amherst will be visiting DGP next week on Tuesday, November 26 for a talk and demos. She has done really cool work intersecting Data Vis, collaborative systems, interactive surfaces, urban design/planning, and civic engagement, which should be of interest to many of you. She's also a great person to chat about research, so I'd recommend you to sign up for a slot even if your ideas are still in early stages and you don't have much to show. Please send me a message if you would like to sign up for a demo/chat slot with Narges, with your availability; I should be able to accommodate slots in the morning (10-12) and in the afternoon (2-4). Nicole

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[Tux] Reminder: Prof. Michel Beaudouin-Lafon today @ Autodesk!
by Shaza'a Fayyaz 19 Nov '19

19 Nov '19

Hello TUX! A reminder that today we have a Sanders Series Lecture by Prof. Michel Beaudouin at Autodesk. We look forward to seeing you there! Ali, Fraser, Daniel and Tovi Sanders Series Invited Lecture - Prof. Michel Beaudouin-Lafon: Towards Unified Principles of Interaction November 19, 2019. Autodesk-Research @ 661 University Avenue #200, Toronto, ON. Lunch reception begins at 12:30 pm. Presentation begins at 1:00 pm. Abstract Even though today’s computers are used for many different types of tasks, they still rely on user interfaces designed for office workers in the 1980s. HCI researchers have produced a slew of innovative interaction styles, from gestural interaction to mixed reality and tangible interfaces, but they have not replaced traditional GUIs. I argue that we must devise fundamental principles of interaction that unify, rather than separate, these interaction styles in order to support the diversity of uses and users. I describe ongoing work on my ERC advanced grant, ONE, which explores how the concepts of information substrates and interaction instruments can help us create digital environments that users can appropriate and (re)combine at will. Bio Michel Beaudouin-Lafon is Professor of Computer Science, Classe Exceptionnelle, at Université Paris-Sud and a senior fellow of Institut Universitaire de France. He has worked in human-computer interaction for over 30 years and is a member of the ACM SIGCHI Academy. His research interests include fundamental aspects of interaction, novel interaction techniques, computer-supported cooperative work and engineering of interactive systems. He has published over 180 papers and is an ACM Distinguished Speaker. He heads the 22M€ Digiscope project and is the laureate of an ERC Advanced Grant. Michel was director of LRI, the laboratory for computer science joint between Université Paris-Sud and CNRS and now heads the Human-Centered Computing lab at LRI. He is also chair of the department of Computer Science at Université Paris-Saclay (2400 faculty, staff and Ph.D. students). He founded AFIHM, the Francophone association for human-computer interaction and has been active in ACM and SIGCHI for over 20 years, including sitting on the editorial boards of ACM Books and ACM TOCHI, on the ACM Council and ACM Publications Board, as founder of ACM Europe and EUACM, and as vice-chair of the newly created ACM Technology Policy Council. He served as Technical Program Co-chair for CHI 2013 in Paris (3500 participants) and received the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award in 2015. OUR SPONSORS: TUX is made possible by the support of our sponsors, Steven Sanders, Autodesk, University of Toronto Department of Computer Science, and Chatham Labs. _______________________________________________ tux-announce mailing list tux-announce(a)dgp.toronto.edu https://www.dgp.toronto.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tux-announce

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[Tux] TUX: Prof. Michel Beaudouin-Lafon tomorrow @ Autodesk!
by Shaza'a Fayyaz 18 Nov '19

18 Nov '19

Hello TUX! A reminder that tomorrow we have a Sanders Series Lecture by Prof. Michel Beaudouin at Autodesk. We look forward to seeing you there! Ali, Fraser, Daniel and Tovi Sanders Series Invited Lecture - Prof. Michel Beaudouin-Lafon: Towards Unified Principles of Interaction November 19, 2019. Autodesk-Research @ 661 University Avenue #200, Toronto, ON. Lunch reception begins at 12:30 pm. Presentation begins at 1:00 pm. Abstract Even though today’s computers are used for many different types of tasks, they still rely on user interfaces designed for office workers in the 1980s. HCI researchers have produced a slew of innovative interaction styles, from gestural interaction to mixed reality and tangible interfaces, but they have not replaced traditional GUIs. I argue that we must devise fundamental principles of interaction that unify, rather than separate, these interaction styles in order to support the diversity of uses and users. I describe ongoing work on my ERC advanced grant, ONE, which explores how the concepts of information substrates and interaction instruments can help us create digital environments that users can appropriate and (re)combine at will. Bio Michel Beaudouin-Lafon is Professor of Computer Science, Classe Exceptionnelle, at Université Paris-Sud and a senior fellow of Institut Universitaire de France. He has worked in human-computer interaction for over 30 years and is a member of the ACM SIGCHI Academy. His research interests include fundamental aspects of interaction, novel interaction techniques, computer-supported cooperative work and engineering of interactive systems. He has published over 180 papers and is an ACM Distinguished Speaker. He heads the 22M€ Digiscope project and is the laureate of an ERC Advanced Grant. Michel was director of LRI, the laboratory for computer science joint between Université Paris-Sud and CNRS and now heads the Human-Centered Computing lab at LRI. He is also chair of the department of Computer Science at Université Paris-Saclay (2400 faculty, staff and Ph.D. students). He founded AFIHM, the Francophone association for human-computer interaction and has been active in ACM and SIGCHI for over 20 years, including sitting on the editorial boards of ACM Books and ACM TOCHI, on the ACM Council and ACM Publications Board, as founder of ACM Europe and EUACM, and as vice-chair of the newly created ACM Technology Policy Council. He served as Technical Program Co-chair for CHI 2013 in Paris (3500 participants) and received the ACM SIGCHI Lifetime Service Award in 2015. OUR SPONSORS: TUX is made possible by the support of our sponsors, Steven Sanders, Autodesk, University of Toronto Department of Computer Science, and Chatham Labs. _______________________________________________ tux-announce mailing list tux-announce(a)dgp.toronto.edu https://www.dgp.toronto.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tux-announce

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Community/Seminar for Learning Grad "MetaSkills", such as coming up with research questions, finding jobs, project management, collaboration, managing stress:
by Joseph Jay Williams 15 Nov '19

15 Nov '19

Hi everyone, I'm going to send this email out today to grad-students(a)cs.toronto.edu. I welcome any feedback/suggestions on the email or planned activities, or if you know people want want to volunteer. And i'm not just spamming you, you will all see this soon anyway so think of it as a secret advance look :D. You can make comments/suggested edits at this URL: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JJpLV61vh0Aq-Np5LY0Cj6KmFLHI7BjmisKn6t9… ****** Subject line: Community/Seminar for Learning Grad "MetaSkills", such as coming up with research questions, finding jobs, project management, collaboration, managing stress: Hi Everyone! I am chairing the Grad MetaSkills Community, which is a novel take on previous years' Grad Skills Seminar. The kickoff meeting is Tue 1215-1:30 in BA 5256. 1.Goal & Examples of Grad MetaSkills. The goal is to speed up your learning and practicing of the MetaSkills that are only implicitly acquired (or not acquired at all) from your typical course and research/internship activities. Examples of questions this community can help you improve your answers to: > How do I come up with better research ideas? > How do I maximize chances of getting an academic/industry job I want? > How do I collaborate more effectively? > How do I manage & get help in managing stress & improving well-being? 2. Current Plan & How you can improve on it. Discussion Forum & Online Resources in Wiki/Google Drive I'm very open as to what form this takes, and anyone with ideas and energy should step in and start making them happen. As a prototype – something concrete to make *something* happen and provide something people can complain about and try to improve :D – here is the current plan. The community will start with: > A Google drive of resources. tiny.cc/gmsfolder Grad MetaSkills Folder-editable <https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1CxlcuYrx7zfklKqsJVxm7mLBACkXOCIs> > A discussion forum that acts as opt-in mailing list,and in person seminar meetings. (need someone to set up a Google Group Q & A forum and get people added) But now's your time to make suggestions or requests or say what you think should happen (and better yet, take some actions to make it happen!). Feel free to reach out with questions or unsolicited advice, either in the Gdoc or emailing gradmetaskillschair(a)googlegroups.com. 3. Action item: Add requests for topics, links to resources, ideas to Gdoc at URL tiny.cc/gmsinput Can you set a time to go to this Google doc and add some information? tiny.cc/gmsinput Resources, Advice, Questions for Grad MetaSkills Community <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jKOiIGsqeQDFFpdK_ryB7PlO_KtpGNWbxIzwdv0…> It could be: (a) any requests (topics or questions you want discussed), (b) links to resources (e.g. Blog posts,tweets, papers with good advice), or (c) ideas for what this community should do. We will crowdsource this, and iteratively try things out. 4. Kickoff meeting Tue 26 Nov, 12:15-1:30 in BA 5256. Want to volunteer to help? We also need some volunteers to help with different parts of the community, like setting up discussion forum, organizing online resources, recording talks. it could be anywhere from 2-10 hours a month (negotiable with you). We might be able to look into you being paid for this time. The kickoff meeting is Tue 1215-1:30 in BA 5256. (we can pay for lunch if someone volunteers to organize it). Look forward to talking more! Joseph (& rest of Grad MetaSkills committee: Florian Skhurti, Amir Massoud Farahmand, Steve Easterbrook) Joseph Joseph Jay Williams www.josephjaywilliams.com Assistant Professor Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto Intelligent Adaptive Interventions (IAI) research group

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vrg November 2019