Presentations this week
Monday, December 15, 2025
PhD Seminar • Artificial Intelligence | Machine Learning
LEO-MINI: An Efficient Multimodal Large Language Model using Conditional Token Reduction and Mixture of Multi-Modal Experts
Yimu Wang, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
10:30 a.m. • Hybrid: E7 5419 | Online PhD seminar
Supervisor: Professor Krzysztof Czarnecki
Wednesday, December 17, 2025
PhD Seminar • Software Engineering
Boosting Program Reduction with the Missing Piece of Syntax-Guided Transformations
Zhenyang Xu, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
11:00 a.m. • Online PhD seminar
Supervisor: Professor Chengnian Sun
PhD Seminar • Cryptography, Security, and Privacy (CrySP)
ZipPIR: High-throughput Single-server PIR without Client-side Storage
Rasoul Akhavan Mahdavi, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
1:00 p.m. • Online PhD seminar
Supervisor: Professor Florian Kerschbaum
Master’s Research Paper Presentation • Systems and Networking
Kernel-Level Threading, User-Level Speed: Optimizing Thread-per-Session I/O via Extensible Scheduler
Brian Song, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
4:00 p.m. • Online master’s research paper presentation
Supervisor: Professor Martin Karsten
Thursday, December 18, 2025
Master’s Thesis Presentation • Computer Graphics
Time Stepping Methods for Coupled Fluid-rigid Body Simulation
Rikin Gurditta, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
2:00 p.m. • Hybrid: DC 2314 | Online master’s thesis presentation
Supervisor: Professor Christopher Batty
Master’s Thesis Presentation • Software Engineering
Grounded or Guessing? An Empirical Evaluation of LLM Reasoning in Agentic Workflows for Root Cause Analysis in Cloud-Based Systems
Evelien Riddell, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
3:00 p.m. • Hybrid: E7 5419 | Online master’s thesis presentation
Supervisor: Professor Krzysztof Czarnecki
Friday, December 19, 2025
Master’s Thesis Presentation • Cryptography, Security, and Privacy (CrySP)
Path Reduction and Coverage Complexity for Fuzzing
Zekun Wang, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
2:00 p.m. • Online master’s thesis presentation
Supervisor: Professor Meng Xu
Master’s Thesis Presentation • Computer Graphics
A Staggered Grid-based Variational Approach for Modeling Elastic Deformation
Brooke Dolny, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
3:00 p.m. • Hybrid: DC 3317 | Online master’s thesis presentation
Supervisor: Professor Christopher Batty
Upcoming presentations
Wednesday, January 7, 2026
PhD Defence • Software Engineering
Pushing the Limit of Language-Agnostic Program Reduction
Zhenyang Xu, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
12:00 p.m. • Hybrid: DC 2314 | Online PhD defence
Supervisor: Professor Chengnian Sun
PhD Defence • Artificial Intelligence | Machine Learning
Contextual AI: Integrating Macro-Context with Transformer Architectures for Social Media Analysis, Federated Learning, and Recommender Systems
Liam Hebert, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
2:00 p.m. • Online PhD defence
Supervisors: Professors Robin Cohen, Lukasz Golab
Wednesday, January 14, 2026
PhD Defence • Artificial Intelligence
Autonomous Driving System Rule Learning Using Expert-Defined Causality
Frédéric Bouchard, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
9:00 a.m. • Online PhD defence
Supervisor: Professor Krzysztof Czarnecki
PhD Defence • Cryptography, Security, and Privacy (CrySP)
Practically Efficient Protocols for Private Computation using Homomorphic Encryption
Rasoul Akhavan Mahdavi, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
10:00 a.m. • Hybrid: DC 3317 | Online PhD defence
Supervisor: Professor Florian Kerschbaum
Friday, January 16, 2026
Master’s Thesis Presentation • Artificial Intelligence
Integrating Symbolic Reasoning into Large Language Models
Varun Dhanraj, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
10:30 a.m. • Hybrid: DC 2314 | Online master’s thesis presentation
Supervisor: Professor Chris Eliasmith
Friday, January 30, 2026
PhD Defence • Algorithms and Complexity | Quantum Computing
Lower Bounds on Average-Case and Non-Local Quantum Computation
Vahid Reza Asadi, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
2:00 p.m. • Hybrid: QNC 2101 | Online PhD defence
Supervisors: Professors Richard Cleve, Mohammad Hajiabadi