Presentations this week
Monday, April 13, 2026
Master’s Thesis Presentation • Artificial Intelligence | Machine Learning
On the Statistical Query Complexity of Learning Semiautomata: A Random Walk Approach
George Giapitzakis Tzintanos, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
10:00 a.m. • Online master’s thesis presentation
Supervisor: Professor Kimon Fountoulakis
Master’s Thesis Presentation • Artificial Intelligence | Machine Learning
Post-Training Large Language Models as Software Engineering Agents
Zhiheng Lyu, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
4:00 p.m. • Online master’s thesis presentation
Supervisor: Professor Wenhu Chen
Tuesday, April 14, 2026
Master’s Thesis Presentation • Artificial Intelligence | Machine Learning
NeuralOS: Towards Simulating Operating Systems via Neural Generative Models
Luke Rivard, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
11:00 a.m. • Online master’s thesis presentation
Supervisor: Professor Yuntian Deng
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
Master’s Thesis Presentation • Artificial Intelligence | Machine Learning
Understanding The Impact of Training and Inference Components in Semantic Segmentation
Matina Mahdizadeh Sani, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
3:00 p.m. • Hybrid: DC 2310 | Online master’s thesis presentation
Supervisor: Professor Olga Veksler
Wednesday, April 15, 2026
Master’s Thesis Presentation • Data Systems
SQLyzr: A Comprehensive Benchmark and Framework for Evaluating Text-to-SQL Systems
Sepideh Abedini, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
12:00 p.m. • DC 3301 | DSG Lab
Supervisor: Professor Tamer Özsu
Seminar • Algorithms and Complexity
Adaptive Robustness of Hypergrid Johnson-Lindenstrauss
Andrej Bogdanov, Professor
School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Ottawa
12:00 p.m. • Hybrid: DC 1304 | Online seminar
Thursday, April 16, 2026
Master’s Thesis Presentation • Software Engineering
Understanding the Impact of Inputs on LLM-Based Automated Test Generation
Saarang Agarwal, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
10:00 a.m. • Hybrid: DC 2310 | Online master’s thesis presentation
Supervisors: Professors Pengyu Nie, Mei Nagappan
Master’s Thesis Presentation • Software Engineering
Facilitating Game Development From Requirements to Code with LLMs
Ahmed El Shatshat, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
1:00 p.m. • DC 2310
Supervisors: Professors Derek Rayside, Daniel Berry
Friday, April 17, 2026
Master’s Thesis Presentation • Algorithms and Complexity
State Complexity of Linear Relations and Linear Subsequences of Automatic Sequences
Delaram Moradi, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
9:00 a.m. • Hybrid: DC 2310 | Online master’s thesis presentation
Supervisor: Professor Jeffrey Shallit
PhD Seminar • Human–Computer Interaction
Revealing a Concealed Eye Disorder in Children: Designing a Solution Grounded in HCI Principles
Alessandra Luz, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
11:00 a.m. • Online PhD seminar
Supervisor: Professor Daniel Vogel
Upcoming presentations
Monday, April 20, 2026
Master’s Thesis Presentation • Cryptography, Security, and Privacy (CrySP)
POET: Power Oracle for Embedded Testing — Detection of State Changes in Automotive Embedded Systems
Alexander Caton, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
10:00 a.m. • E5 4047
Supervisor: Professor Sebastian Fischmeister
Seminar • Systems and Networking | Quantum Computing
Quantum Computing Systems: Toward Scalable and Efficient Quantum Computation
Hezi Zhang, PhD candidate
Computer Science and Engineering Department, University of California, San Diego
10:30 a.m. • DC 1304
Tuesday, April 21, 2026
PhD Seminar • Cryptography, Security, and Privacy (CrySP)
The Spectre of Surveillance and Censorship in Future Internet Architectures
Michael Wrana, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
9:00 a.m. • Online PhD seminar
Supervisor: Professor Diogo Barradas
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 | DSG Lab
Supervisor: Professor Xi He
Thursday, April 23, 2026
PhD Seminar • Artificial Intelligence | Machine Learning
Behaviorally Grounded User Profiles from the Wild for Personalized Alignment and Multi-Perspective Reasoning
Yuxuan Li, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
2:00 p.m. • Hybrid: DC 1304 | Online PhD seminar
Supervisor: Professor Victor Zhong
Master’s Thesis Presentation • Computer Graphics
A Biophysically-Based Framework for the Simulation and Visualization of Chlorophyll Fluorescence Under Different Illumination Conditions
Frank Fan, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
3:00 p.m. • DC 3317
Supervisor: Professor Gladimir Baranoski
Tuesday, April 28, 2026
PhD Seminar • Cryptography, Security, and Privacy (CrySP)
Exploring the Effectiveness of Time Series Analysis for Website Fingerprinting
Michael Wrana, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
9:00 a.m. • Online PhD seminar
Supervisor: Professor Diogo Barradas
Wednesday, April 29, 2026
PhD Seminar • Cryptography, Security, and Privacy (CrySP)
Investigating Membership Inference Attacks under Data Dependencies
Thomas Humphries, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
10:00 a.m. • Hybrid: DC 2314 | Online PhD seminar
Supervisor: Professor Florian Kerschbaum
Friday, May 1, 2026
Data Systems Seminar Series
AgenticData: An Agentic Data Analytics System
Guoliang Li, Professor
Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University
10:30 a.m. • DC 1304
Wednesday, May 6, 2026
PhD Defence • Formal Methods
Synthesizing Parameterized Protocols from Local Temporal Specifications
Ruoxi Zhang, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
9:30 a.m. • DC 2310
Supervisor: Professor Richard Trefler
PhD Defence • Algorithms and Complexity
Low Communication, Large Graphs and Limited Rounds
Janani Sundaresan, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
10:30 a.m. • DC 2314
Supervisor: Professor Sepehr Assadi
Friday, May 8, 2026
PhD Defence • Systems and Networking
Improving Reliability for Networked Systems and Software Execution
Haoyu Gu, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
11:00 a.m. • DC 2310
Supervisor: Professor Ali Mashtizadeh
Wednesday, May 13, 2026
PhD Seminar • Cryptography, Security, and Privacy (CrySP)
Selective MPC: Distributed Computation of Differentially Private Key-Value Statistics
Thomas Humphries, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
10:00 a.m. • Hybrid: DC 2314 | Online PhD seminar
Supervisor: Professor Florian Kerschbaum
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
Friday, May 15, 2026
PhD Defence • Software Engineering
Slice-Based Fuzzing for Validating Static Analysis Warnings and Code Changes
Aniruddhan Murali, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
8:30 a.m. • Online PhD defence
Supervisor: Professor Mei Nagappan
Wednesday, May 20, 2026
PhD Defence • Artificial Intelligence | Machine Learning
Improving OOD Detection, Classification, and Reasoning via Multi-modal Feature Alignment
Yimu Wang, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
1:00 p.m. • Online PhD defence
Supervisor: Professor Krzysztof Czarnecki
Monday, May 25, 2026
PhD Seminar • Cryptography, Security, and Privacy (CrySP)
Colluding Adversaries in Machine Learning Pipelines
Vasisht Duddu, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
10:00 a.m. • Online PhD seminar
Supervisor: Professor N. Asokan