Presentations this week
Monday, March 16, 2026
Data Systems Seminar Series
Eliminating Spurious Dependencies in Data: From Cleaning to Private Data Generation
Mostafa Milani, Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science, Western University
10:30 a.m. • DC 1302
Seminar • Cryptography, Security, and Privacy (CrySP)
Toward More Usable and Secure Authentication
Collins Munyendo, Postdoctoral Scholar
Center for Effective Global Action, University of California, Berkeley
10:30 a.m. • DC 1304
Wednesday, March 18, 2026
Data Systems Seminar Series
Efficient Query Processing and Learning on Dirty Data
Boris Glavic, Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago
10:15 a.m. • DC 3301 | DSG Lab
Seminar • Systems and Networking
Towards More Trustworthy and Efficient Systems
Hugo Lefeuvre, Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Department of Computer Science, University of British Columbia
10:30 a.m. • DC 1304
PhD Seminar • Data Systems | Graph Data Management
Empirical Analysis of Locality for Graph Ordering Techniques
Zeynep Korkmaz, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
12:00 p.m. • DC 3301
Supervisors: Professors M. Tamer Özsu, Khuzaima Daudjee
PhD Defence • Cryptography, Security, and Privacy (CrySP) | Threshold Cryptosystems
Practical Distributed Key Generation and Signatures
Chelsea Komlo, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
1:00 p.m. • Hybrid: DC 2310 | Online PhD defence
Supervisors: Professors Ian Goldberg, Douglas Stebila
Seminar
Presentation of the National Institute of Informatics, and Collaboration Opportunities
Dr. Emmanuel Planas
Deputy Director, Global Liaison Office
National Institute of Informatics, Tokyo
2:10 p.m. • Hybrid: DC 1304 | Online seminar
Thursday, March 19, 2026
Master’s Thesis Presentation • Human–Computer Interaction
DSCode Comparator: An Interactive Interface for Comparing Models and Evaluating Code for Data Science Tasks
Xinxin Yu, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
1:00 p.m. • DC 3317
Supervisor: Professor Anamaria Crisan
Friday, March 20, 2026
Master’s Thesis Presentation • Programming Languages
Linear Scala is All You Need for Safe Static Memory and Alias Management
Amirhossein Pashaeehir, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
3:00 p.m. • Hybrid: DC 2314 | Online master’s thesis presentation
Supervisor: Professor Ondřej Lhoták
Upcoming presentations
Monday, March 23, 2026
PhD Defence • Information Retrieval | Natural Language Processing
Benchmarks, Data, and Evaluation for Robust Retrieval and Retrieval-Augmented Generation on Heterogeneous Domains and Languages
Nandan Thakur, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
11:00 a.m. • Hybrid: DC 2310 | Online PhD defence
Supervisor: Professor Jimmy Lin
Tuesday, March 24, 2026
CrySP Speakers Series on Privacy
For All Tomorrow’s Survivors: Computer Security in Interpersonal Threat Models
Thomas Ristenpart, Professor
Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto
1:30 p.m. • Hybrid: DC 1304 | Online talk
Wednesday, March 25, 2026
Master’s Thesis Presentation • Artificial Intelligence | Machine Learning
Training and Evaluating Semantic Segmentation Models with Soft Labels
Nima Jamali, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
11:00 a.m. • Hybrid: DC 2314 | Online master’s thesis presentation
Supervisors: Professors Olga Veksler, Yuri Boykov
Thursday, March 26, 2026
PhD Seminar • Software Engineering
Validating Mixed-Integer Programming Solvers
Xintong Zhou, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
1:00 p.m. • Hybrid: DC 2564 | Online PhD seminar
Supervisor: Professor Chengnian Sun
Friday, March 27, 2026
PhD Defence • Data Systems | Graph Data Management
Locality Optimizations and Analysis for Storage Hierarchies of Graph Databases
Zeynep Korkmaz, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
10:00 a.m. • DC 2314
Supervisors: Professors M. Tamer Özsu, Khuzaima Daudjee
Tuesday, March 31, 2026
PhD Defence • Human–Computer Interaction | Artificial Intelligence
Leveraging Interactive Human–AI Collaboration Methods to Enhance Key Stages of Programming Workflows
Xuye Liu, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
10:00 a.m. • Online PhD defence
Supervisor: Professor Jian Zhao
Monday, April 6, 2026
PhD Seminar • Human–Computer Interaction
To Slide or Not to Slide: Exploring Techniques for Comparing Immersive Videos
Xizi (Lucy) Wang, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
10:00 a.m. • DC 2314
Supervisor: Professor Jian Zhao
PhD Defence • Artificial Intelligence | Machine Learning
Efficient Inference-time Control and Alignment
Ahmad Rashid, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
10:30 a.m. • Hybrid: DC 2310 | Online PhD defence
Supervisor: Professor Pascal Poupart
Tuesday, April 7, 2026
PhD Seminar • Software Engineering
Evaluating the Impact of Upfront Identification of D Requirements on Computer-based System Quality and Development Time in Agile Context
Belen Bonilla, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
9:30 a.m. • DC 2564
Supervisor: Professor Daniel Berry
Thursday, April 9, 2026
PhD Defence • Algorithms and Complexity
How to Color Graphs, and How Not to Chase Pointers
Parth Mittal, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
10:00 a.m. • Hybrid: DC 2314 | Online PhD defence
Supervisor: Professor Sepehr Assadi
Friday, April 10, 2026
PhD Defence • Systems and Networking
Efficiently Training Deep Learning Models on Elastic and Heterogeneous Cloud Resources
Runsheng (Benson) Guo, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
2:00 p.m. • Online PhD defence
Supervisor: Professor Khuzaima Daudjee
Tuesday, April 14, 2026
PhD Defence • Systems and Networking
Mitigating Risks to Dependability from Vibe-Coding C for Embedded Systems
Murray Dunne, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
12:00 p.m. • Online PhD defence
Supervisor: Professor Sebastian Fischmeister
Wednesday, April 22, 2026
PhD Seminar • Data Systems
GPM: The Gaussian Pancake Mechanism for Planting Undetectable Backdoors in Differential Privacy
Haochen Sun, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
12:00 p.m. • DC 3301
Supervisor: Professor Xi He
Wednesday, May 13, 2026
PhD Defence • Systems and Networking
Redesigning Datacenter Systems to Leverage Hardware-Acceleration
Sreeharsha Udayashankar, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
12:00 p.m. • Hybrid: DC 3317 | Online PhD defence
Supervisor: Professor Samer Al-Kiswany