2012
Toniann Pitassi
Professor, Theory of Computing, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
Computational Frameworks for Privacy and Fairness
Toniann Pitassi is an expert in computational complexity and proof complexity, where the goal is to understand the inherent limitations of proofs and computation. The most famous problem in the area, the P versus NP problem, is the driving force behind much of Pitassi’s research. Pitassi’s research has led to lower bounds for many proof systems, using techniques from model theory, combinatorics and communication complexity. Pitassi’s other research aims to develop computational frameworks for privacy and fairness. She is the recipient of several awards, including an NSF Young Investigator award, and a Premiere’s Research Excellence Award.
[Webcast]
Geoffrey Hinton
Professor, Artificial Intelligence, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
Does the brain do inverse graphics?
Geoffrey Hinton designs machine learning algorithms. His aim is to discover a learning procedure that is efficient at finding complex structure in large, high-dimensional datasets and to show that this is how the brain learns to see. His contributions include back-propagation, Boltzmann machines, distributed representations, mixtures of experts, variational learning, and deep belief nets. His current research uses local “capsules’’ composed of a few hundred neurons that perform complicated internal computations on their inputs and encapsulate the results into a small vector of highly informative outputs that reveal the hidden structure in the data.
[Webcast]
2011
Aaron Hertzmann
Associate Professor, Computer Graphics, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
Steacie Prize Lecture: Principles of Humanoid Locomotion Control
Tuesday, March 1, 2011 11:00 am, Bahen Centre for Information Technology, 40 St. George Street, Rm. 1180
Aaron Hertzmann, 2010 Steacie Prize for Natural Sciences, has worked at Pixar Animation Studios, University of Washington, Microsoft Research, Mitsubishi Electric Research Lab, Interval Research Corporation and NEC Research Institute. His other awards include the MIT TR100, an Ontario Early Researcher Award, a Sloan Foundation Fellowship, a Microsoft New Faculty Fellowship, a UofT CS Teaching Award and the CACS/AIC Outstanding Young CS Researcher Award. He received a BA in Computer Science and Art & Art History from Rice University, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from New York University.
Watch a video of the lecture here.
Ron Baecker
Professor, Human Computer Interaction, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
Technologies for Aging Gracefully
Tuesday, March 22, 2011 11:00 am, Bahen Centre for Information Technology, 40 St. George Street, Rm. 1180
Ron Baecker is the Bell Chair in Human-Computer Interaction, co-founder of the Dynamic Graphics Project, founder of the Knowledge Media Design Institute, and founder and director of the Technologies for Aging Gracefully lab (TAGlab) at the University of Toronto. He is also Affiliate Scientist with the Kunin-Lunenfeld Applied Research Unit of Baycrest and Adjunct Scientist with the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute. He has been named one of the 60 Pioneers of Computer Graphics by ACM SIGGRAPH, has been elected to the CHI (Computers and Human Interaction) Academy by ACM SIGCHI, and has been given the Canadian Human Computer Communications Society Achievement Award. His B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. are from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Watch a video of the lecture here.
C.C. (Kelly) Gotlieb
Professor Emeritus, Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
Monday, March 28, 2011 4:00 pm, Bahen Centre for Information Technology, 40 St. George Street, Rm. 1160
Kelly Gotlieb is the founder of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Toronto, and is widely regarded as the “Father of Computing in Canada”. As stated in his 1996 Order of Canada investiture, “(Kelly) has been largely responsible for leading Canadians into the modern age of computing.” Now in his 90th year, Gotlieb remains extremely active. He has served for the last twenty years as the co-chair of the awards committee for the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), which is the largest international scientific and educational organization for computing, and continues to this day to give invited talks at various meetings. Awards and honors include: Fellowships in the Royal Society of Canada, the Association of Computing Machinery, the British Computer Society, and the Canadian Information Processing Society; and four honorary doctorates from the University of Toronto, the University of Waterloo, the Technical University of Nova Scotia and the University of Victoria.
Watch a video of the lecture here.
Craig Boutilier
Professor, Artificial Intelligence, Department of Computer Science, University of TorontoIndividual, Social and Market Choice: Computational Assessment of Human Preference
Tuesday, May 3, 2011 11:00 am, Bahen Centre for Information Technology, 40 St. George Street, Rm. 1180
Craig Boutilier served as Chair of the Department of Computer Science from 2004-2010. He has provided consulting, visiting or advisory roles at Rockwell International, Stanford University, Brown University, Carnegie Mellon University, and CombineNet, Inc. He recently served as Program Chair for 21st International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI-09), and is Associate Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research. Boutilier is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), has been awarded the Isaac Walton Killam Research Fellowship, an IBM Faculty Award and a Killam Teaching Award from the University of British Columbia. He received his Ph.D from the University of Toronto and joined the University of British Columbia for eight years; returning to Toronto in 1999.
Watch a video of the lecture here.
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Further Information
If you require further information, please contact Sara Franca (sfranca@cs.toronto.edu).