This is Stony Brook's quantum moment. Join us for a spotlight on the core achievements and research excellence of faculty across the Colleges of Arts and Sciences (CAS), and Engineering and Applied Sciences (CEAS) - and their collaborative advancements in quantum science and technology. Learn about the real world impact of their enduring work, their leadership in translating foundational science into entrepreneurial opportunities, and their impetus for making connections to next generation innovation.

Presented by: Catherine Chen, Ph.D., Research Development Associate

Welcome remarks: President Andrea Goldsmith

Panel moderators: Dean David Wrobel, CAS, and Dean Andrew Singer, CEAS

Presentations and panel featuring our faculty:

  • Jennifer Cano, CAS, Physics and Astronomy

  • P. Scott Carney, CEAS, Mechanical Engineering

  • Hyeongrak Chuck Choi, CEAS, Electrical and Computer Engineering

  • Eden Figueroa, CAS, Physics and Astronomy

  • Humanshu Gupta, CEAS, Computer Science

  • Angela Kelly, CAS, Physics and Astronomy

Location: Theatre at the Charles B. Wang Center, Stony Brook University

Reserve your tickets by March 26!

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 PhD program or (2) receive permission from the instructors.

Each seminar will consist of multiple short talks (around 10 minutes) by multiple people. Students can register for 1 credit for CSE 656. Registered students must attend and present a minimum of 2 or 3 talks. Everyone else is welcome to attend. Fill in https://forms.gle/pCVXovgfMfQwGqG38 to subscribe to our mailing list for further announcement.
The Provost's Lecture Series features talks by SUNY Distinguished Academy faculty members at Stony Brook University, showcasing the outstanding research and scholarship that is taking place at our institution.

Joe Mitchell

SUNY Distinguished Professor, Applied Mathematics and Statistics
Chair, Department of Applied Mathematics and Statistics, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences

A Case for Algorithms: A Computational Geometer's Perspective

Algorithms are all around us in every smart device and technology that has consumed our daily lives. As a computational geometer, I study algorithms to solve problems that involve a geometric perspective on data. I have observed that practically every technology and field of study has a need for effective algorithms involving geometric data. I reflect on some favorite algorithmic problems that are easy to visualize, but challenging to solve, and argue that the formal study of algorithms remains essential in the age of AI.

Reception to follow immediately after the talks.

Register here.
The Division of Educational & Institutional Effectiveness is excited to host International Love Data Week at SBU, February 9-13, 2026!
Join us for a mix of 30-minute virtual sessions, an in-person kickoff on Monday, and a student-focused event on Wednesday celebrating data and data-informed decision-making.
Wrap up the week at the Love Data Week Open House on Friday, 2/13 with light refreshments, data-themed swag, photos with Wolfie, and time to connect with presenters.
Learn more and register on https://www.stonybrook.edu/commcms/oee/recognition/Love%20Data%20Week%202026%20Save%20the%20Date%20Placeholder.php
Department of Ecology and Evolution Colloquium Arthur Porto is Assistant Curator of Al for Biodiversity at the Florida Museum of Natural History. His research sits at the intersection of evolutionary biology, computer vision, and machine learning, with a focus on developing open, scalable methods for extracting biological information from images and natural- history collection objects. Life Sciences Building, Room 038
Virtual Talk: Contextual Modeling for Natural Language Understanding, Generation and Grounding by Rui Zhang

Zoom link to come.

Abstract: Natural language is a fundamental form of information and communication. In both human-human and human-computer communication, people reason about the context of text and world state to understand language and produce language response. In this talk, I present 
several deep-neural-network-based systems that first understand the meaning of language grounded in various contexts where the language is used, and then generate effective language responses in different forms for information access and human-computer communication. First, 
I will introduce Speaker Interaction RNNs for addressee and response selection in multi-party conversations based on explicit representations for different discourse participants. Then, I will 
present a text summarization approach for generating email subject lines by optimizing quality scores in a reinforcement learning framework. Finally, I will show an editing-based multi-turn SQL query generation system towards intelligent natural language interfaces to databases. 

Bio: Rui Zhang is a final-year PhD student at Yale University advised by Professor Dragomir Radev. His research interest lies in various natural language processing problems in understanding, generation, and grounding. He has been working on (1) End-to-End Neural Modeling for Entities, Sentences, Documents and Multi-party Multi-turn Dialogues, (2) Text Summarization for Emails, News and Scientific Articles, (3) Cross-lingual Information Retrieval for Low-Resource Languages, (4) Context-Dependent Text-to-SQL Semantic Parsing in Human-Computer Interaction. Rui Zhang has published papers and served as Program Committee members at top-tier NLP and AI conferences including ACL, NAACL, EMNLP, AAAI and CoNLL. During his PhD, he has done research internships at IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, Grammarly Research and Google AI. He was a graduate student at the University of Michigan and got his Bachelor's degrees at both the University of Michigan and Shanghai Jiao Tong University from the UM-SJTU Joint Institute.

ChatGPT for Developing Interactional Competence: Affordances and Constraints
MIC Distinguished Lecture Series

Abstract: The advent of ChatGPT has redrawn the boundary of pedagogical discourse, where the dyadic configuration of teacher-student has, for many, become triadic -- one that includes AI as an relevant third party, not to be missed or dismissed. Within applied linguistics, AI-focused research has predominantly targeted the teaching and learning of writing (Fang & Han, 2025). The work on AI and speaking, on the other hand, has largely involved perception studies documenting its positive impact on learners' willingness to communicate (Goh & Aryadoust, 2025). In this talk, I explore the role of AI in the teaching and learning of speaking, and in particular, the development of interactional competence. Based on a corpus of learner-AI interactions, I demonstrate the ways in which ChatGPT excels and fails at acting as a useful conversation partner, with a view towards furthering our ongoing deliberation on the affordances and constraints of AI in language education.

Speaker: Hansun Zhang Waring is Professor of Linguistics and Education at Columbia University and founder The Language and Social Interaction Working Group (LANSI). As an applied linguist and a conversation analyst, Hansun is interested in all things interaction -- (second language) pedagogical interaction, communication with the public, parent-child interaction, and human-AI interaction (HAI). Her work has appeared in leading journals in applied linguistics and discourse analysis as well as numerous book volumes, some of which she (co-)authored or co-edited. She is on the editorial boards of Chinese Language and Discourse (CLD), Classroom Discourse (CD), and International Review of Applied Linguistics (IRAL).

Location: HUM 1006

Learn how to unlock the power of Image and visuals that will enhance your work by asking the experts questions in-person

No registration required - just stop by!

Location: Frank Melville Jr. Memorial Library Galleria (across from the Central Reading room)

Are you tired of drowning in a sea of resumes and losing top talent in the hiring whirlwind? Transform your hiring process through a different lens and learn about AI in the Workplace and the Applicant Tracking System (ATS). Whether you're a recent graduate seeking your first job or an undergraduate student looking to delve into more career-oriented opportunities, this workshop by SBU Career Center is designed to equip you with the knowledge and strategies needed to succeed.

Register here: https://stonybrook.joinhandshake.com/stu/events/1568133?