Audience: Undergraduate Students
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Presenter: Sai Teja Peddinti, Google Abstract: As the digital landscape expands, traditional models of threat mitigation and user support are failing to keep pace with the unprecedented security, privacy, and safety challenges. Fortunately, the rise of large language models (LLMs) offers a powerful new paradigm for defense. This talk explores how LLMs are being leveraged…
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Figuerres, S. (ECE) – Ion Transport Mechanisms for Bioelectronics
Ion transfer as the movement of charged species across spaces and interfaces is the basis of signaling in nearly all biological systems. My research is grounded in the idea that precise control over ion transfer enables direct manipulation of biological function. Specifically, I focus on how ion transport can be engineered to regulate both collective…
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Morey, C. (BMEB) – Innovations in Interdependence: Genomic and Functional Evolution in Invertebrates and Their Intracellular Symbionts
Intracellular symbionts are microorganisms, such as bacteria, that live within host cells. These associations are widespread throughout the invertebrate tree of life, and can perform a diversity of key metabolic, immune-response, or other functions that the host is dependent on for survival or reproduction. Intracellular symbioses allow both the host and the symbiont to occupy…
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Okamoto, F. (BMEB) – Improving read-to-pangenome alignment in complicated genomic regions
Many genetics pipelines start by aligning sequencing reads to a reference genome. Aligners attempt to find the position in the reference sequence which best matches the read sequence, but this breaks down when the reads come from a sample with variation relative to the reference. A proposed alternative, pangenome graphs, is supposed to fix such…
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Bose, S. (ECE) – Learning-Augmented Optimization, Control, and Inference in Modern Power Systems
The electric grid is essential to modern society, and recent developments such as renewable energy sources (RESs), battery energy storage systems (ESSs), and microgrids (MGs) have necessitated novel computational methods for planning and operations. Machine learning offers a promising lever here, both as an accelerator for and proxy to traditional optimization-based problems. In this thesis,…
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Imlau Dagostini, J. (CSE) – Intent-Driven Orchestration for Scientific Computing
The growing complexity of high-performance computing (HPC) systems poses a fundamental challenge for domain scientists, whose primary objective is to obtain scientifically valid results rather than to optimize resource utilization. Modern leadership-class facilities combine heterogeneous CPUs, GPUs, and specialized accelerators across systems that simultaneously support traditional scientific simulations and AI-driven workloads. This creates a vast,…
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Shen, G. (CSE) – Library-Level Choreographic Programming
Modern software increasingly relies on distributed systems to provide accessible, scalable, and reliable services. Choreographic programming brings a global perspective to distributed system development: programmers write a single program that describes the behavior of a whole system, and a compiler projects that global description into local programs run by each node. By making distributed control…
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Lietz, R. (CM) – Reflecting on Failure: Designing and Evaluating Archetype Profiles as a Tool for Self-Reflection
Self-reflection holds significant potential for learning, behavior change, and emotional processing, yet designing technologies that effectively support it remains challenging, particularly when reflection involves difficult experiences such as failure. Most current technologies avoid negative experiences altogether, leaving users without support at precisely the moments when reflection could be most valuable. This dissertation investigates how technology…
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Xie, Y. (CM) – Crop Circles of Play: Forces and Formation in the Dyadic Magic Circle
Cooperative two-player play produces distinctive social experiences between players: intimacy, trust, cooperation, communitas. Since Huizinga, the frame within which these experiences arise has been called the Magic Circle: a temporarily-set-apart space through which play does its social work. It has been a central organizing concept across game studies, performance theory, and HCI because it points…
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Ortiz Barbosa, D. (CSE) – HARDENING AUTONOMOUS CYBER-PHYSICAL SYSTEMS AGAINST ADVERSARIAL CONDITIONS
Autonomous systems, such as Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) and drones, are increasingly deployed across a wider array of contexts for both civilian and military use. As these systems become more common, they may be targeted by malicious actors seeking to exploit and abuse them, compromising safety-critical operations. Among the ways to protect these systems simulation based…