Over the past decade, researchers in neuroscience, psychology and artificial intelligence have come together to build advanced computer models that mimic how our brain processes what we see. These models are designed to closely copy the brain's visual system, all the way to a key area called the inferior temporal cortex, which plays an important role in recognizing objects.

Because these computer models can be fully observed, scientists can use them to make detailed predictions about how the brain works -- something older, more theoretical models could not do.

Dr. James DiCarlo's work explores whether these computer digital twin models of the brain could help guide safe, non- invasive ways to infl uence brain activity. In his talk, he explains how such a model could be used to design specific patterns of light. When this carefully designed light is added to what the eye naturally sees, it can precisely influence activity in groups of neurons in the inferior temporal cortex.

Since neural activity in this visual brain area may be connected to emotional states like anxiety, this research could eventually open the door to non-invasive approaches that may benefit mental well-being in the future.

Speaker: James J. DiCarlo, MD, PhD, Peter de Florez Professor, MIT Brain and Cognitive Sciences, and Director, MIT Siegel Family Quest for Intelligence

Location: Staller Center Main Stage

The event will be livestreamed at stonybrook.edu/live

The University's Main Commencement Ceremony will take place on Friday, May 23, 2025 at 11 am at Kenneth P. LaValle Stadium. Gates open at 10 am.

All guests need a valid ticket to enter LaValle Stadium - no exceptions. Children age 1 and older require a ticket. Seating is first-come, first-served.

Register here.

AI can help you write, you hear. AI can save you time, leverage your skills, enhance your productivity. . . . But you also hear: AI output is not reliable, not adequate for advanced tasks/learning, not ethical to use -- you could get in deep trouble for using AI tools without adequate mastery and caution. Which way is it?
Come join this hands-on workshop where you will explore AI tools and their affordances. Engage in writing tasks to learn how to use AI tools effectively and responsibly.
Sign up for a seat now: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd0iDTKkTYnkxFd4LkgqbtP97zQSS4FI_MiPVm7p6IY5SGwSg/viewform
Abstract: Modern decision-making increasingly relies on complex data, imperfect models, and limited domain expertise--yet decisions must still be made with confidence and accountability. This talk presents a research perspective on visual analytics as a bridge between data, models, and human judgment. Through three case studies spanning public-health risk analysis, multivariate scientific visualization, and causal model auditing with large language models, I will show how interactive visualization can reveal structure in high-dimensional data, support reasoning under uncertainty, and help humans critically assess both statistical and AI-generated explanations. Together, these examples illustrate how visual analytics enables users not only to explore data, but to form, challenge, and refine beliefs that underpin scientific and societal decisions.

Bio: Klaus Mueller received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from The Ohio State University in 1998. He is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Stony Brook University and a Senior Scientist at the Computational Science Initiative at Brookhaven National Laboratory. He currently serves as the Acting Chair of the Department of Technology and Society at Stony Brook. From 2012 to 2015, he was the Founding Chair of the Computer Science Department at SUNY Korea, where he also served as Vice President for Academic Affairs and Finance for two years.
His research interests span visual analytics, explainable AI, machine learning and data science, human-centered responsible AI, fairness, belief modeling and personalized communication, virtual and augmented reality, and computational and medical imaging. Dr. Mueller received the U.S. National Science Foundation Early Career Award in 2001, the SUNY Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activity in 2011, and the Meritorious Service Certificate and Golden Core Award of the IEEE Computer Society in 2016. In 2018, he was inducted into the U.S. National Academy of Inventors.
To date, he has authored more than 300 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers, which have been cited over 15,000 times. He is a frequent speaker at international conferences, has organized or participated in 18 tutorials, chaired the IEEE Visualization Conference in 2009, served as elected Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Visualization and Computer Graphics (VGTC) from 2012-2015, and was Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics from 2019-2022. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.

Location: NCS 120
Predicting Subjective Attributes in Visual Data - Zijun Wei

ABSTRACT: Recent progress in deep neural networks has revolutionized many computer vision tasks such as image classification, detection and segmentation. However, in addition to excelling in tasks that predict well-defined objective information, human-centered artificial intelligence systems should also be able to model subjective attributes, as defined by human perceptual behavior, that goes beyond the pure physical content of visual data. Example subjective tasks are the prediction of spatial or temporal regions that are interesting to humans (e.g., attract attention or are visually pleasing) and the recognition of subjective attributes (e.g., visually elicited sentiments). Better models for these tasks will improve the human-computer interaction experience in various applications. This thesis investigates several approaches to address the challenges in predicting those subjective attributes in visual data over a diverse set of tasks. I first present a novel framework for real-time automatic photo composition. The framework consists of a cost-effective data collection workflow, an efficient model training pipeline and a lightweight module to account for personalized preferences. Then I develop a novel and general algorithm to detect interesting segments in sequential data, which can be naturally applied to video summarization tasks. Furthermore, I propose methods that learn to represent sentiments elicited by images, in an unsupervised manner, using linguistic features extracted from large scale Web data. To conclude this thesis, I introduce a human-vision-inspired image classification algorithm that also predicts spatial visual attention even though no attention data was used for training it.  

Learn how to summarize docs with AI, output a PowerPoint from AI, & Create professional visuals

Unlock greater efficiency and impact in your university role with AI productivity tools. This workshop is your introduction to a few ways that I have found to make our daily tasks more efficient. Discover how easily you can create presentations (that outputs to a PowerPoint format), summarize content using AI, and get information from images. These AI tool tips are invaluable resources designed to streamline your work processes. Start working smarter today!

In this session, you will

  1. Summarize docs with AI
  2. Output a PowerPoint from AI
  3. Gather information from visuals

Register here.
Hieu Le presents Incorporating Physical Illumination Constraints into Deep Learning Shadow Detection and Removal (PhD Proposal)

Shadows provide useful cues to analyze the scene but also hamper many computer vision algorithms such as image segmentation, object detection or tracking. For those reasons, shadow detection and shadow removal have been well studied topics in computer vision. Early approaches for shadow detection and removal focus on physical illumination models of shadows. These methods can express, identify, and remove shadows in a physically plausible manner. However, these models are often hard to optimize and slow in inference due to reliance on hand-designed image features. On the other hand, recent deep-learning approaches have achieved breakthroughs in performances for both shadow detection and removal. They learn to extract useful features automatically through training while being extremely efficient in computation. However, these models are data-dependent, opaque and ignore the physical aspects of shadows.

We propose to incorporate physical illumination constraints into deep-learning frameworks. Thus the mapping learned by the deep-network closely follows the physics of shadows, enabling the network to systematically and realistically modify shadows in images. For shadow detection, we present a novel GAN framework in which the generator can generate realistic images with attenuated shadows that can be used to train a shadow detector. For shadow removal, we propose a method that uses deep-networks to estimate the unknown parameters for a shadow image formation model that removes shadows. The system outputs shadow-free images in high-quality with no image artifacts and achieves state-of-the-art shadow removal performance. Lastly, we propose a system trained without the need for any shadow-free images in which physical constraints play pivotal roles that enable training the networks.

For Zoom information, please email events@cs.stonybrook.edu.

The Department of AI and Society (AIS) at the University at Buffalo is hosting a two-day AI and Society Workshop focused on building AI systems by society, for society. This workshop brings together researchers and community organizers to explore how AI systems can be developed through meaningful collaboration across disciplines.

Topics include:

  • Labor and AI
  • Public services and AI
  • Community-centered AI systems
  • Intersections of humanities, social sciences, arts, and computing

The vision of UB's Department of AI and Society is to create a future where AI systems are built by society, for society. AIS centers community engagement at every stage of AI development through collaboration across disciplines and sectors. AIS was established with a $5 million grant from SUNY, and this workshop is made possible through that support.

Who Should Attend?

  • Researchers
  • Students
  • Community organizers
  • Practitioners interested in AI's societal impact

More about the event

Register here

As AI drives rapid change across professional fields, how do you bring these developments into your classroom? The CELT AI Panel Discussion will gather academic thought leaders to explore how generative AI is reshaping teaching, learning, and the knowledge students need for today's world. Our panelists will share practical strategies for integrating AI-related advancements into course content, highlight both opportunities and challenges, and discuss how educators can help students build critical thinking, ethical awareness, and hands-on experience with emerging AI technologies. Join us to examine how teaching can evolve alongside an AI-transformed society.

Register here.