Abstract:

Conventional approaches to scientific discovery often prioritize building larger sensors, gathering more data, and scaling up computational power. In this talk, I will present a complementary perspective: extracting insights hidden in the data we already have. The key lies in using AI not as a black-box predictor, but as a tool for interpreting data through its underlying physical process.

I will demonstrate how AI, when integrated with the physics of light propagation, can serve as a computational lens to overcome fundamental limitations in fields ranging from biomedicine to astrophysics. Specifically, I will showcase two compelling applications: non-invasive imaging through scattering biological tissues, and detecting faint exoplanets against the overwhelming brightness of their host stars.

These methods represent a departure from traditional learning-based approaches that rely on fitting models to training labels and hoping for generalization. Instead, with physics-informed strategies that decode how light propagates, we can transform raw measurements into scientifically meaningful insights--without requiring costly hardware upgrades or human-annotated datasets. Finally, I will outline future directions for combining AI with physical principles, enabling us to unlock more phenomena once considered hidden and accelerating discoveries in healthcare, astronomy, and beyond.

Short Bio:

Brandon Y. Feng is a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and a Visiting Scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. His research bridges artificial intelligence and physics to expand the limits of human and machine vision. He develops AI-driven methods that reveal hidden patterns in complex visual data, driving breakthroughs in areas such as exoplanet detection and imaging through scattering tissues. His work has been published in top venues, including Science Advances, CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, and NeurIPS, and has been featured in Science.org, New Scientist, and Phys.org. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, along with a B.A. in Computer Science and Statistics and an M.S. in Statistics from the University of Virginia.

Location: NCS 220
Abstract: Neurosymbolic AI, as the combination of deep learning and knowledge representation/reasoning methods, is currently receiving significant attention due to its promise to both overcome apparent limitations of pure deep learning systems, and to address the knowledge acquisition bottleneck. This presentation will focus on some recent reseach advances made at Kansas State University related to Semantic Web / knowledge graphs and neurosymbolic AI, with particular emphasis on the use of symbolic AI methods for understanding hidden neuron activations, and on using large language models for knowledge graph and ontology engineering.

Short bio: Pascal Hitzler is University Distinguished Professor and endowed Lloyd T. Smith Creativity in Engineering Chair at the Department of Computer Science at Kansas State University, one of the Directors of the Institute for Digital Agriculture and Advanced Analytics (ID3A), and Director of the Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science (CAIDS). His research record lists over 400 publications in such diverse areas as neurosymbolic artificial intelligence, semantic web, knowledge graphs, knowledge representation and reasoning, denotational semantics, and set-theoretic topology. He was founding Editor-in-chief of the Semantic Web journal, the leading journal in the field, and is founding Editor-in-chief of the new Neurosymbolic Artificial Intelligence journal. He is co-author of the W3C Recommendation OWL 2 Primer, and of the book Foundations of Semantic Web Technologies by CRC Press, 2010, which was named as one out of seven Outstanding Academic Titles 2010 in Information and Computer Science by the American Library Association's Choice Magazine, and has translations into German and Chinese. He is a founding steering committee member of the Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning Association that runs the annual International Conference on Neurosymbolic Learning and Reasoning (NeSy). For more information about him, see http://www.pascal-hitzler.de.

Location: NCS 120

Zoom: https://stonybrook.zoom.us/j/94657223635?pwd=FHtIvIupDAbQTCKzpDF3kTg6xRZOtj.1&jst=2

Abstract: Sea ice is crucial to Earth's climate, Arctic communities, and ecosystems, yet climate change is driving significant losses, threatening polar stability. Quantifying the long-term impacts of a declining sea ice cover requires tools which improve climate-timescale prediction and bring new understanding of climate interactions. In this talk, I discuss how meeting this challenge requires a multi-disciplinary approach. Climate models, while essential, suffer from systematic biases due to missing or inaccurate physics, leading to uncertainty in future projections. I show how data assimilation (DA) offers a statistical framework for integrating satellite observations with climate models to quantify systematic sea ice model errors. Using convolutional neural networks (CNNs), we can learn these errors based on the model's atmospheric, oceanic, and sea ice conditions--what I term a state-dependent representation of the error. This approach enables real-time corrections to subsequent model simulations, which systematically reduces global sea ice biases. I highlight key successes and challenges in developing this hybrid ML+climate modeling framework, including transfer learning to enhance online generalization of ML models, and new methods for integrating Python-based ML frameworks with Fortran climate model code. Finally, I introduce GPSat, a scalable Gaussian process-based tool for reconstructing complete sea ice fields from sparse satellite altimetry data. Together, the DA+ML framework and GPSat offer future opportunities for improving targeted model physics errors for more robust climate simulation.


IACS Seminar Speaker: William Gregory, Princeton University

Location: IACS Seminar Room

You are cordially invited to attend the biweekly Brookhaven AI Mixer (BAM). BAM includes one short talk on AI research happening at BNL, followed by an open mixer. The first half hour will consist of presentations that will be available via ZOOM, and the second half hour will be for in person only networking.

We meet every other Tuesday at noon in CDSD's Training Room (building 725, room 2-124) to learn about interesting AI methods and applications, engage with potential collaborators, prepare for pending FASST funding calls, and build a community of AI for Science at BNL.

Abstract: Identifying model Hamiltonians is a vital step toward creating predictive models of materials. W​e combined Bayesian optimization with the EDRIXS numerical package to infer Hamiltonian parameters from resonant inelastic X-ray scattering (RIXS) spectra within the single atom approximation. To evaluate the efficacy of our method, we tested it on experimental RIXS spectra for several materials and demonstrated that it can reproduce results obtained from hand-fitted parameters to a precision similar to expert human analysis while providing a more systematic mapping of parameter space. Our work provides a key first step toward solving the inverse scattering problem to extract effective multi- orbital models from information-dense RIXS measurements, which can be applied to a host of quantum materials.

Biography: Marton Lajer is a postdoctoral researcher at the Condensed Matter Physics and Materials Science Department, Brookhaven National Laboratory. Marton​ obtained his PhD in theoretical physics at the Eotvos Lorand University, Hungary, in 2021. He was a​ junior research fellow at the Wigner Research Centre for Physics in Budapest before joining BNL in September 2022. His background spans various analytical and performance-critical numerical methods, mostly in the context of low- dimensional quantum field theories and quantum many-body systems. His research currently focuses on incorporating AI-enhanced methods to various problems in inelastic spectroscopy.

In addition to our speaker, we will have a number of CDS staff in attendance with expertise in AI methods and applications including image analysis, foundation models development, and inverse problem solving.

Location: CDS, Bldg. 725, Training Room

Join ZoomGov Meeting: https://bnl.zoomgov.com/j/1604383624?pwd=ffQ5cUPNxTI7nzClKQO6cnsNbhF9Vf.1

Meeting ID: 160 438 3624
Passcode: 558449

Please Note: Due to a funding shortfall, we are for the time being no longer able to provide pizza and sodas for these events. We will have coffee though, and all are of course welcome to bring their lunch.


Abstract:
Deep neural network (DNN) is a powerful tool for solving image processing and computer vision tasks such as image and video reconstructions, object recognition, and scene understanding, etc. However, DNN have been used for only the digital domain in the imaging pipeline, such as the feature extractor and classifier models after an image is captured and digitized. In this research, we propose a new framework called deep sensing. The proposed framework also models the analog layer to the neural network model and jointly optimizes the parameters in optics and sensor designs of a camera, as well as reconstruction and classification models by the same training strategy.

Bio:
Hajime Nagahara is a professor at D3 Center, Osaka University, since 2024. He received Ph.D. degree in system engineering from Osaka University in 2001. He was a research associate of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science from 2001 to 2003. He was an assistant professor at the Graduate School of Engineering Science, Osaka University, Japan from 2003 to 2010. He was an associate professor in Faculty of Information Science and Electrical Engineering at Kyushu University from 2010 to 2017. He was a professor at Institute for Datability Science, Osaka University, from 2017 to 2024. He was a visiting associate professor at CREA University of Picardie Jules Verns, France, in 2005. He was a visiting researcher at Columbia University in 2007-2008 and 2016-2017. Computational photography and computer vision are his research areas. He received IPSJ Nagao Special Researcher Award in 2012, ICCP2016 Best Paper Runners-up, and SSII Takagi Award in 2016. He is a program chair for ICCP2019, General Chair for upcoming ACCV2026 Osaka, Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Computational Imaging in 2019-2022, Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions of Pattern Recognisiton and Machine Intelligence, and Director of Information Processing Society of Japan in 2022-2024.

Zoom: https://stonybrook.zoom.us/j/4742917886?pwd=YiW3AL5lvPlEaWrd221YfLzYhlgsRK.1
Join us at AI Campus Connect for an exciting day filled with all things artificial intelligence. Whether you're an AI pro or just starting out, this event is perfect for anyone interested in AI and how it can boost your career. Come network, sign-up for IBM SkillsBuild, and learn about the latest trends in AI technology. Don't miss out on this opportunity to connect with IBM SkillsBuild experts and expand your knowledge in the world of AI. See you there!

Co-hosted With AI Community and SWE

Location: W0550 Frank Melville, Jr. Memorial Library

Register to attend.
Join Stony Brook University's Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT) for a bootcamp on how to use AI to enhance your teaching and courses. This event will demonstrate how ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and other generative AI platforms can support you in crafting learning objectives, writing exam questions, composing rubrics, and designing course content such as lesson plans, in-class activities, instructional videos, and more.

Register here.
CSE 600 Seminar Series | Fall 2025



Abstract:

We often talk about AI as if it begins with a dataset and ends with an application. But behind every model lie two sets of actors who are rarely acknowledged in technical documentation: the workers who train AI systems and the researchers who try to make sense of them. This talk brings both groups into view.
Dr. Ben Zhang will offer an on-the-ground examination of the prevailing values and invisible labor that underpin commercial AI production and data production. Drawing on ethnographic research inside AI data annotation centers in China, he introduces the concept of precision labor to unpack the labor dimension of constructing, managing, and performing technical accuracy. This concept highlights the hidden and excessive labor required to reconcile the ambiguity and uncertainty involved in AI training. A precision labor lens challenges the legitimacy and sustainability of the relentless pursuit of technical accuracy, raising new questions about its consequences and implications.
On the other end of the pipeline, as LLMs become embedded in society, social scientists like Dr. Jieshu Wang is scrutinizing their potential biases while employing them as research tools. She will present her recent work auditing LLM responses across different contexts, revealing that LLMs exhibit varying levels of environmental awareness and disproportionately reward institutional prestige in peer-review simulations. She also demonstrates how LLMs can serve as useful tools in social-science pipelines, e.g., extracting location information, inferring demographics, parsing citations, mapping social networks, and analyzing occupational data.
By placing these two worlds side by side - the labor of training AI and the scholarly efforts to study it - we show why responsible AI should go beyond the deployment phase - emphasizing fairness audits, and model explainability. It requires reimaging the values, labor regimes, and social science practices that shape AI systems from annotation to analysis.


Bios:

Dr. Jieshu Wang is an interdisciplinary researcher studying the human and social dimensions of artificial intelligence (AI) and how people can thrive in an AI-integrated future. She combines computational methods with qualitative insights to trace technology trends and understand their broader societal impact. She earned her Ph.D. in Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology from Arizona State University, after earlier degrees in Civil Engineering, Economics, and Science and Technology Studies. She has also worked as a patent examiner, an editor at a popular science magazine, and co-founded Synced (机器之心), an AI-focused media company in China. Her research looks both backward and forward. Backward-looking, she examines how AI are created, who creates them, and who is missing from the process. Forward-looking, she studies how AI is transforming the way we live, connect, invent, work, and adapt, as well as how AI might help address challenges such as climate change and workforce transitions.
Dr. Ben Zhang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Technology. His research explores the production and sociotechnical impacts of AI systems in critical areas such as work, health, and sustainability. Drawing from his background in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI), Human-Centered AI, and Science and Technology Studies (STS), he employs a life-cycle-centered approach to holistically examine the promises and harms of these systems and to inform the design of responsible AI infrastructures across their development, deployment, and governance. Ben received his Ph.D. in Information Science from the University of Michigan. Ben's work has been supported by competitive awards and fellowships, including the University of Michigan Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship and the Weizenbaum Fellowship. His research has appeared in premier computing venues, including ACM CHI, ACM CSCW, and AAAI ICWSM.

Location: NCS 120
The Institute for AI-Driven Discovery and Innovation hosts Dr. Mary
Simoni for a talk on her music and its intersection with AI, as part
of the Music and AI Seminars series.

The event will be held on Thursday, December 10, 2020, at 3:00 PM.

Abstract: Mary Simoni, Dean of Humanities, Arts & Social Sciences at
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute will discuss her research in the use
of computer algorithms and technology in the composition and
performance of music. The talk will feature compositions inspired by
Augmented Transition Networks (ATNs), employ motion tracking to
control synthesis parameters, and a work in progress that employs
machine learning using training data that juxtaposes classical music
with COVID-19. During this talk, participants will be introduced to
several technologies that support music information retrieval, machine
learning, and algorithmic composition such as jSymbolic, Weka, and
Common Music.

Zoom details below:
https://stonybrook.zoom.us/j/98236706900?pwd=bDFEZFZtaHBWU0cyL0wxK3UrdUpIdz09
Meeting ID: 982 3670 6900
Passcode: 133945