Title: Class visual similarity based noisy sample removal in generative Few Shot Learning
Time: Thursday, Feb 4, 11:30am - 1:00pm
Zoom:
https://stonybrook.zoom.us/j/8563646526?pwd=anJna1gzUStXNlNVSUIzdDRUSC9CUT09

Meeting ID: 856 364 6526
Passcode: 203791



Abstract:  

Over the past decade, larger datasets, hardware accelerations, and network architecture improvements have contributed to phenomenal achievements in many tasks of computer

vision. However, in the absence of large datasets, computer vision models struggle to learn

general representations which results in poor performance. Few-shot learning tries to address 

this problem by proposing models which learn from a few examples.


I first give an overall review of few-shot learning methods. I particularly focus on generative Few Shot Learning(FSL) methods, which augment the scarce categories in a dataset by generating samples for those rare categories. As the actual class distribution can be complex and lie very close to each other, the sample generated for one class can be noisy or lie close to another class.  However, none of the current FS generative methods perform any form of quality control of the generated samples.


In this work, I propose to identify and remove the generated samples that are less likely to be in the distribution of the few-shot class. Here I particularly deal with few-shot scenarios where the

prior information of the relationship between the classes based on visual  similarity is available. The main idea is to exploit these priors to better identify the unreliable generated samples.


Particularly, I have proposed two methods based on class relationship to detect noisy generated samples. In the first method, we assume that the embedding space of each class follows a Gaussian distribution.  From this assumption, I propose Gaussian Neighborhood (GN), a method to estimate how likely a generated sample is drawn from the estimated distribution of a few-shot class.  We evaluate this method on the Hematopoiesis dataset.  By simply eliminating samples based on thresholding our proposed GN scores, the few-shot  classification  performance  is  improved by 5% and 2% in five shot and one shot respectively, compared to the model trained on all generated images. 


The GN scores represent the similarity distances from the generated samples to their classes, based on the assumption that each class is a Gaussian distribution.  However, this assumption might be strict in many scenarios since the real distributions of data can be arbitrarily complex.  Thus in my second proposed method, I aim to learn such similarity distances directly from data via metric learning. I propose to train a deep-network to regress the similarity distance between a pair of samples.  This network is trained using both the class-level  visual  similarity  information  and  the  class  labels.   This method improves the 1-shot and 5-shot classification performances by 0.5% and 1% respectively, compared to GN.

Abstract: At XTX Markets, we view algorithmic trading as one of the most compelling real-world frontiers for deep learning and foundation models. Every day, our systems generate forecasts for tens of thousands of financial instruments and execute over $300B in global trading volume: fully automated, with no discretionary human intervention. This domain combines massive data scale with high noise, adversarial dynamics, and frequent regime shifts, making it both scientifically challenging and commercially impactful. For machine learning researchers, it serves as a rigorous proving ground where advances in time-series modeling, large-scale optimization, representation learning, and foundation models can translate directly into measurable real-world outcomes. This talk will provide a high-level overview of our research agenda, infrastructure, and key open challenges at the intersection of large-scale AI and quantitative finance.

Speaker: Dr. Zhangyang Atlas Wang is the Research Director at XTX Markets, one of the world's leading high-frequency trading firms. He founded and leads the firm's AI Lab in New York City, focused on developing large-scale foundation models for financial time series and market data, powered by XTX's proprietary AI infrastructure. He is currently on leave from his position as the Temple Foundation Endowed Associate Professor at The University of Texas at Austin. His academic research has received numerous awards, and he has mentored a broad network of Ph.D. students and postdoctoral researchers. Many of his alumni now hold tenure-track faculty positions (eight to date) or senior research roles in industry (nineteen and counting). For more information about his group and alumni, please visit: https://www.vita-group.space/team.

Location: NCS 120

Refreshments will be served after the seminar in the first-floor atrium.



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 over coffee and snacks for everyone to network and discuss all things AI. 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.

Abstract: Designing custom proteins could revolutionize medicine and materials, but it remains an immense scientific challenge. Our work uses large-scale AI foundation models to generate novel proteins tailored to bind specific small molecules. Each AI-generated design is passed through a rigorous, multi-stage validation pipeline to ensure it is biophysically realistic. A key innovation is fine-tuning our model with data from molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, exposing it to the conformational dynamics and energetics of protein-ligand binding. This physics-aware training results in novel protein designs with enhanced stability and more effective binding capabilities.

Bio: Xin Dai is an Assistant Computational Scientist in the Artificial Intelligence Department of the CDS. His work centers on AI for Science with a strong focus on computational biology. He earned his PhD in Physics from Tsinghua University.

Join us every other Tuesday at noon in CDSD's Training Room (building 725, 2nd floor) 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.

Location: CDS, Bldg. 725, Training Room

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

Meeting ID: 160 438 3624
Passcode: 558449

Hidden Biases. Ethical Issues in NLP, and What to Do about Them presented by Dirk Hovy of Bocconi University

ABSTRACT: Through language, we fundamentally express who we are as humans. This property makes text a fantastic resource for research into the complexity of the human mind, from social sciences to humanities. However, it is exactly that property that also creates some ethical problems. Texts reflect the authors' biases, which get magnified by statistical models. This has unintended consequences for our analysis: If our data is not reflective of the population as a whole, if we do not pay attention to the biases contained, we can easily draw the wrong conclusions, and create disadvantages for our users.

In this talk, I will discuss several types of biases that affect NLP models, their sources, and potential counter measures: (1) Bias stemming from data, i.e., selection bias (if our texts do not adequately reflect the population we want to study), label bias (if the labels we use are skewed) and semantic bias (the latent stereotypes encoded in embeddings); (2) Biases deriving from the models themselves, i.e., their tendency to amplify any imbalances that are present in the data; (3) Design bias, i.e., the biases arising from our (the researchers) decisions which topics to analyze, which data sets to use, and what to do with them. For each bias, I will provide examples and discuss the possible ramifications for a wide range of applications, and various ways to address and counteract these biases, ranging from simple labeling considerations to new types of models.

BIO: Dirk Hovey is an associate professor of Computer Science in the department of marketing at Bocconi University. He received his PhD from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where he worked as a research assistant at the Information Sciences Institute. 

He works in Natural Language Processing (NLP), a subfield of artificial intelligence. His research focuses on computational social science. His interests include integrating sociolinguistic knowledge into NLP models, using large-scale statistics to model the interaction between people's socio-demographic profile and their language use, and ethics for data science and algorithmic fairness.

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.



Dates: 

Wednesday, March 3, 2021 - 6:00pm to 7:30pm

Location: 

Zoom - contact events@cs.stonybrook.edu for Zoom info.

Event Description: 

Women in Computer Science (WiCS), the Society of Women Engineers (SWE), and the Stony Brook Robotics Team (SBRT) are collaborating to host an event called Inspiring Women in STEM Academia: A Community Dialogue to address the lack of female representation in STEM academia. 
 

All are invited to attend so they may gain a better understanding of the challenges faced by their female colleagues and hear perspectives on how they can offer support in the workplace. Given the shockingly disproportionate number of female professionals in STEM academia, we feel that this event would be extremely beneficial for male faculty to listen to and amplify their voices.

It will begin with a discussion panel consisting of Stony Brook professors and faculty who will provide valuable insight into the issue. From there, we will split into smaller discussion groups where student and faculty attendees will be able to voice their opinions, hear about the thoughts/experiences of others, and participate in an engaging discussion with panelists.

The event will be held on March 3rd from 6:00 - 7:30 PM on Zoom.
 

The following Stony Brook faculty will be panelists:

Dr. Aruna Balasubramanian - Computer Science Professor, WiCS Advisor, WPhD Advisor

Dr. Xinwei Mao - Civil Engineering Assistant Professor

Urszula Zalewski - Director of Experiential Learning, Career Center Advisor (Healthcare)

Dr. Heather Lynch - Ecology and Evolution Professor, Lynch Lab for Quantitative Ecology

Karen Kernan - URECA Director, Simons Summer Research Program Director

Dr. Eszter Boros - Chemistry Assistant Professor, Boros Lab

Dr. Maria Nagan - Chemistry Lecturer, Nagan Research Lab

Abstract : Humans reason about everyday situations by making commonsense-based inferences, derived both from explicitly stated information and implicit, unstated knowledge. In this thesis, I investigate whether NLP models have different aspects of causal knowledge about events and how to improve their understanding of narratives and plans.
Answering questions about why people perform actions in a narrative can test whether NLP systems contain and can effectively apply causal knowledge about events. I introduce TellMeWhy, a dataset concerning why characters in short narratives perform the actions described. An evaluation of then SOTA finetuned models show that they are far worse than humans. To improve models, it is important to understand what aspects of causal knowledge they need and how to best use external sources to inject this knowledge. In KnowWhy, I analyze different ways of injecting knowledge into models, which is difficult since we do not know apriori what type of knowledge will be needed to answer a question, hence requiring a ranking model to pick the most important inference. Results show that this retrieved knowledge helps models of all sizes, thereby improving their understanding of narratives.
Next, I study whether models can reason about causal aspects of plans. I focus on testing whether they understand the underlying causal dependencies reflected in the temporal order of a plan's steps. I introduce CAT-Bench, and find that SOTA models are underwhelming, and that model answers are not consistent across questions about the same step pairs. In their current state, these models cannot yet reliably be used for complex user-facing tasks. I then measure contemporary models' ability to perform user-facing and user-centric plan customization. I introduce the use of semi-symbolic edits in large language model (LLM) based agents and test several multi-LLM-agent architectures for plan customization. While LLMs still lack the ability to understand complex customization hints, my results suggest that LLM-based architectures may be worth exploring further for other customization applications. Finally, I distill complex reasoning capabilities into small language models (SLMs) using synthetic data that reflects a decomposition-then-editing process for plan customization. I demonstrate that explicitly teaching this latent causal reasoning significantly improves the quality of SLM-generated customizations. Overall, my work has improved how well NLP models understand complex reasoning associated with events in different contexts.

Speaker: Yash Kumar Lal

Location: NCS 220 or Zoom https://stonybrook.zoom.us/j/95849648243?pwd=dgPpZtDpgwQrK9z1SaPpNbBifaorzk.1
Fall 2025, Mondays 2 to 3:20 pm, NCS 220 and Zoom link to be announced soon.

The seminar will be jointly taught by Prof. Dimitris Samaras samaras@cs.stonybrook.edu.

The overall purpose of this seminar is to bring together people with interests in Computer Vision theory and techniques and to examine current research issues. This course will be appropriate for people who already took a Computer Vision graduate course or already had research experience in Computer Vision.

To enroll in this course, you must either: (1) be in the Ph.D. program or (2) receive permission from the instructors.

Each seminar will consist of multiple short talks (around 15 minutes) by multiple students. Students can register for 1 credit for CSE656. Registered students must attend and present a minimum of 2 talks. Registered students must attend in person. Up to 3 absences will be excused. Everyone else is welcome to attend.

This workshop is intended for researchers, practitioners, students, and industry professionals in AI, robotics, machine learning, human-robot interaction, and related fields.

Workshop Overview:

Instead of learning from data alone, an embodied AI system learns through its movements, sensors, and interactions with the environment. This form of active, experience-based learning, informed by ongoing self-evaluation of its own abilities, enables embodied AI systems to adapt on the fly, understand context rather than just commands, and collaborate with humans in more natural and trustworthy ways.

Workshop Goals:

  1. Foster interdisciplinary dialogue across AI, robotics, and cognitive science.
  2. Identify key challenges and future research directions in embodied intelligence.
  3. Examine the role of embodiment in advancing toward AGI.

This workshop is Invitation-only. Please email Dr. IV Ramakrishnan (ram@cs.stonybrook.edu) to attend.

Read the announcement: https://mcusercontent.com/237207911c0fd4c1f78dd8524/files/070dec2e-a2f5-143e-0fe2-c4ebecdb5193/Embodied_AI_Workshop_Invitation_.pdf

Abstract: Millions of individuals living in disadvantaged communities are burdened by poverty, illegal drug activities, health concerns, and the lack of reliable and affordable access to facilities (e.g., schools, hospitals, and transit stations). To address these societal problems efficiently with broad support, initiatives have called to engage agents (e.g., residents, community leaders, or stakeholders) and consider their preferences on community improvement decisions to make collective community decisions. In this talk, we will focus on our ongoing AI-empowered collective decision-making approaches to improve the accessibility of individuals to facilities by (a) locating facilities to provide essential services and (b) strengthening existing infrastructures via structural modifications (e.g., constructing new roads, bridges, multi-use paths, or shuttle services) subject to individuals' preferences on the locations of the facilities and which communities to improve access, respectively. In particular, we will discuss our (theoretical and algorithmic) studies on modeling these approaches under several settings (e.g., accounting for fairness and agent preferences) and designing fair, transparent, strategy proof, and (approximately) optimal mechanisms to elicit (true) individual preferences and determine collective community decisions in order to improve facility accessibility. Finally, we will discuss other ongoing and future collective decision-making efforts in urban planning and public health (i.e., our recent studies on substance use research) to improve communities.

Bio: Hau Chan is an assistant professor in the School of Computing at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stony Brook University in 2015 and completed three years of Postdoctoral Fellowships, including at the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard University in 2018. His main research lies in multi-agent aspects of AI for Society and Social Good, focusing on developing modeling and algorithmic foundations for tackling societal problems involving agents and predicting agent behavior in societal contexts, leveraging AI, game theory, mechanism design, and machine learning to better inform policymaking and (collective) decision-making. His team has been addressing societal challenges and fairness issues in various domains, including security (e.g., reducing vulnerability), public health (e.g., reducing substance use and homelessness), and urban planning (e.g., improving accessibility to public facilities), collaborating with domain experts. His research has been supported by NSF, NIH, and USCYBERCOM. He has received several Best Paper Awards at SDM and AAMAS and distinguished/outstanding SPC/PC member recognitions at IJCAI and WSDM. He has given tutorials and talks on computational game theory and mechanism design at venues such as AAMAS and IJCAI, including an Early Career Spotlight at IJCAI 2022. He has served as co-chairs for the AI and Social Good Track, Demonstration Track, Student Activities, Doctoral Consortium, Job Fair, Scholarships, Finance, and Diversity & Inclusion Activities at AAAI, AAMAS, and IJCAI.

Location: Old Computer Science, room 1310