Presentations this week
Monday, March 2, 2026
Seminar • Bioinformatics
Scalable Representation Learning for Multi-View, Multi-Condition Single-Cell Data
Ziqi Zhang, PhD
School of Computational Science and Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology
10:30 a.m. • Online seminar
Master’s Thesis Presentation • Cryptography, Security, and Privacy (CrySP)
Scaling Two-Party Differentially Private Selection
Haoyan Ni, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
4:00 p.m. • Online master’s thesis presentation
Supervisor: Professor Florian Kerschbaum
Wednesday, March 4, 2026
PhD Seminar • Algorithms and Complexity
Query-Efficient Locally Private Hypothesis Selection via the Scheffe Graph
Matthew Regehr, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
12:00 p.m. • Hybrid: DC 1304 | Online PhD seminar
Supervisor: Professor Gautam Kamath
Thursday, March 5, 2026
Seminar • Artificial Intelligence
Building Robotics Foundation Models with Reasoning in the Loop
Jiafei Duan, PhD candidate
Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, University of Washington
10:30 a.m. • DC 1304
Seminar • Software Engineering
The True Cost of AI Assistance to Programming of Software
Daniel M. Berry, Professor
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
11:00 a.m. • DC 3317
NB: Same seminar also offered on March 6 at 10:00 a.m. in DC 3317
Friday, March 6, 2026
Seminar • Software Engineering
The True Cost of AI Assistance to Programming of Software
Daniel M. Berry, Professor
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
10:00 a.m. • DC 3317
NB: Same seminar also offered on March 5 at 11:00 a.m. in DC 3317
PhD Seminar • Systems and Networking
Few-Shot Domain Adaptation for Effective Data Drift Mitigation in Network Management
Soheil Johari, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
1:00 p.m. • DC 1302
Supervisor: Professor Raouf Boutaba
PhD Seminar • Algorithms and Complexity
Persistent HyTM via Fast Path Fine-Grained Locking
Gaetano Coccimiglio, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
3:00 p.m. • Online PhD seminar
Supervisors: Professors Trevor Brown, Peter Buhr
Upcoming presentations
Monday, March 9, 2026
Master’s Thesis Presentation • Computer Graphics
Physically-Based Simulation and Visualization of Optical Phenomena Elicited by Negative Refraction
Scott Steinfield, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
3:00 p.m. • DC 3317
Supervisor: Professor Gladimir Baranoski
PhD Seminar • Algorithms and Complexity
Classes of Graphs with Sub-linear Twin-width
Taite LaGrange, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
3:00 p.m. • MC 5479
Supervisors: Professors Therese Biedl, Sophie Spirkl
Tuesday, March 10, 2026
PhD Seminar • 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
2:00 p.m. • Online PhD seminar
Supervisor: Professor Jian Zhao
Wednesday, March 11, 2026
Master’s Thesis Presentation • Artificial Intelligence | Machine Learning
On the Effect of Hyperparameters in Language Modelling for Linguistics
Ruoxi Ning, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
8:00 a.m. • Online master’s thesis presentation
Supervisor: Professor Freda Shi
PhD Seminar • Software Engineering
Discovering Missed Peephole Optimizations with Large Language
Hongxu Xu, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
10:30 a.m. • Hybrid: DC 2310 | Online PhD seminar
Supervisor: Professor Chengnian Sun
Seminar • Software Engineering
Why Large Language Models Appear to Be Intelligent and Creative: Because They Generate Bullshit!
Daniel M. Berry, Professor
Cheriton School of Computer Science
12:00 p.m. • DC 2564
Thursday, March 12, 2026
PhD Seminar • Human–Computer Interaction
Exploring Above-neck Unimanual Swipe Gestures for Off-Device Earable Interaction
Shaikh Shawon Arefin Shimon, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
1:00 p.m. • Online PhD seminar
Supervisor: Professor Jian Zhao
Friday, March 13, 2026
Master’s Thesis Presentation • Cryptography, Security, and Privacy (CrySP)
Decentralized Traffic Correlation Using Programmable Switches
Gurjot Singh, Master’s candidate
David. R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
2:00 p.m. • Online master’s thesis presentation
Supervisor: Professor Diogo Barradas
PhD Seminar • Quantum Computing
A Curious Problem in Quantum Channel Capacity
Amolak Ratan Kalra, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
2:00 p.m. • QNC 3206
Supervisor: Professor Michele Mosca
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
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
10:30 a.m. • DC 3301 | DSG Lab
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. • DC 1304
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
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
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 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
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
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