Join the Office of Educational Effectiveness' upcoming workshop on the transformative potential of AI tools to enhance program assessment. Learn how to leverage AI to create targeted learning objectives, detailed rubrics, and precise benchmarks that will elevate the quality and effectiveness of your program assessment process. Join in-person on Oct. 17 at 10:30 am or virtually on Oct. 21 at 12 pm.

Register in advance: https://calendar.stonybrook.edu/site/office-educational-effectiveness/event/leveraging-ai-in-assessment-zoom/
Abstract: Facial emotion understanding aims to recognize, represent, and interpret human affect from facial behavior, and it is important for affective computing, human-computer interaction, digital humans, and mental health assessment. Existing work has represented facial emotion through discrete emotion categories, continuous affective dimensions such as valence and arousal, facial landmarks or geometry, and more recently semantic or language-based emotion descriptors. With the development of deep learning, supervised facial expression recognition has achieved strong performance on benchmark datasets, while self-supervised learning, multimodal large language models, and controllable facial generation have introduced new ways to learn emotion-related facial representations from images, videos, text, audio, and speech. However, many current models still rely heavily on manually annotated emotion labels, third-party perception judgments, or multimodal contextual cues, making it difficult to determine how much emotional information is captured directly from facial behavior itself, especially in naturalistic and clinically meaningful settings. Because these limitations make it challenging to evaluate whether facial representations capture emotionally meaningful behavior in real-world interactions, we propose to study facial emotion understanding through the relationship between facial behavior and language-derived emotional expression in psychiatric interview videos. Using a large dataset of mental health interviews, we extract multiple types of facial representations, including Action Unit features from FaceReader and OpenFace, non-AU facial behavior features from OpenFace, and 3D facial representations from EMOCA and SMIRK. We train segment-aligned transformer regressors to predict language-derived emotional targets, including valence, arousal, and RoBERTa-derived semantic-affective features from transcript segments. The results show that all facial representations achieve meaningful predictive performance across MSE and Pearson correlation metrics in both within-participant and between-participant evaluation settings. This indicates that facial behavior encodes information related to linguistic emotion at multiple levels: moment-to-moment emotional variation within individuals and broader affective differences across individuals. These findings suggest that structured facial representations can support vision-based emotion understanding in naturalistic mental health interviews and motivate future work on self-supervised, personalized, and controllable facial emotion models.

Speaker: Shao-Yu Chang

Zoom: https://stonybrook.zoom.us/j/3679036240?omn=98419305450
CG Group member (and SBU faculty) Chao Chen will speak on Fri, March 12, about the use of topological data analysis in machine learning for image analysis.
Chao has shared some of his research with the CG Group previously, and this will be a great opportunity to learn more about this exciting research area related to computational geometry/topology!

Time: Friday, March 12, 2pm-3pm
Place: Zoom
https://stonybrook.zoom.us/my/profweizhu?pwd=RjVIVXg3YUhudzZZQ3pheHUydTJBUT09



Title: Learning with Topological Information - Image Analysis and Label Noise
Speaker: Prof. Chao Chen (SBU)

Abstract: Modern machine learning faces new challenges. We are
analyzing highly complex data with unknown noise. Topology provides
novel structural information to model such data and noise. In this
talk, we discuss two directions in which we are using topological
information in the learning context. In image analysis, we propose a
topological loss to segment and to generate images with not only
per-pixel accuracy, but also topological accuracy. This is necessary
in analysis of images of fine-scale biomedical structures such as
neurons, vessels, etc.  Extracting these structures with correct
topology is essential for the success of downstream
analysis. Meanwhile, we discuss how to use topological information to
train classifiers robust to label noise. This is important in practice
especially when we are using deep neural networks which tend to
overfit noise. These results have been published in NeurIPS, ECCV,
ICML and ICLR.
CSE 656 Seminars in Computer Vision - Wednesdays 11:30am-12:50pm, Room NCS 120

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 CSE656. 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.

You are cordially invited to attend the biweekly Brookhaven AI Mixer (BAM). BAM includes three short talks 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.

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.

Tuesday, January 7, 2025, 12:00 pm -- CDS, Bldg. 725, Training Room

Speakers

Jianda Chen, EBNN - Improving the stability and accuracy of PDE-ML hybrid AGCMs

Boyang Li, CDS - Accelerating Materials Discovery using Machine Learning

Jaehye on Do, NPP Isotopes - Using LLMs for Isotopes Research and Production

Join ZoomGov Meeting: https://bnl.zoomgov.com/j/1615289117?pwd=Hqkbj9itxWrFnkhZ8rQXHPInO2gxdF.1

Meeting ID: 161 528 9117
Passcode: 991382

The Vedanta Forum is devoted to one of humanity's oldest and most profound pursuits -- thinking. Thinking about who we truly are: the one that remains constant through childhood and old age, through waking, dream, and deep sleep. Thinking about the source and cause of creation, and its relationship to what inheres in us.

Across history, such thinking, both meditative and scientific, has been aimed at these questions. The ancient Upanishads proclaimed, Tat Tvam Asi -- Thou Art That -- revealing the non-dual identity of the individual and the ultimate reality. Centuries later, modern scientists such as Schrödinger and Bohr echoed similar intuitions about the unity of existence.

Over time, many philosophical approaches, traditions, and interpretive schools have arisen from such inquiry, each offering unique perspectives. The Forum will:

  • Focus on universal approaches and traditions and examine their teachings,

  • Foster comparative studies, and

  • Explore the practical benefits to society from such thinking,

through scholarly studies, dialogue, and debate also promoting accessibility to all qualified seekers. Additionally, the Forum will explore how these reflections can enrich life, education, and even technology.

Location: NCS 120 (New Computer Science), Engineering Dr, Stony Brook, NY 11794.

The program is available at: https://www.vedantaforum.org/events/program

The coach who led Team USA to four Math Olympiad gold medals shares his blueprint for staying irreplaceable in an AI-driven world.

As artificial intelligence transforms our world, what skills will remain uniquely human? How can we prepare for careers in an automated future?

Join Carnegie Mellon mathematics professor Po-Shen Loh for insights on navigating the AI revolution by embracing our humanity.

Dr. Loh brings a distinctive perspective shaped by his dual expertise: serving as national coach of the USA Mathematical Olympiad team (which has won four gold medals under his leadership) and developing innovative solutions for real-world challenges from pandemic response to educational technology.

Through his nationwide speaking tour that reached 250 audiences across 100 cities, he has refined a practical framework for thriving alongside AI.

In this presentation, Dr. Loh will explore how creative problem-solving, judgment, and communication become more valuable as automation grows -- and how students and professionals can build those strengths now.

The session includes real-world examples, guidance for education and careers, and a Q&A.

Speaker: Po-Shen Loh is a social entrepreneur and inventor, working across the spectrum of mathematics, education, and healthcare.

A math professor at Carnegie Mellon University, he also served a decade-long term as the national coach of the USA International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) team, taking the team to gold on numerous occasions.

He has pioneered numerous innovations and has been featured in or co-created YouTube videos with more than 25 million views.

Location: Wang Center Theater

The series is offered by Stony Brook University's Institute for Creative Problem Solving in collaboration with the National Museum of Mathematics (MoMath) and Brookhaven National Laboratory.

The event is free but space is limited. Please register to reserve your space.

Understand Prompting the crucial part to interface with models

Discover how to prompt effectively by exploring the details behind your AI interactions. This isn't just about basic prompting; it's about understanding how to articulate your ideas clearly. We'll showcase a few prompts and how they work. Discover how giving AI the right details can truly boost your productivity and help you reclaim valuable time in your day.

In this session, you will

  1. Utilize AI models effectively
  2. Understanding different prompts
  3. Find out tips that we use with AI

Register: https://stonybrookuniversity.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_dht1o3rNzlZhHka?source=event+manager&session=0805251000ai
Title: Building foundation models for scientific data Seminar

Speaker: Ruben Ohana, Ph.D. and Michael McCabe, Ph.D - Flatiron Institute, New York

Abstract: Foundation models are very large architectures trained on large-scale datasets and can be used to transfer knowledge from a domain to another. Scientific data, particularly numerical simulations of partial differential equations (PDEs), presents unique challenges due to its complexity and the need for domain expertise to assess prediction quality, complicating the building of the first foundation models in this field. In this talk, we will develop our approach of building foundation models for scientific data, highlighting the requirements and expectations for achieving meaningful results. We will also introduce The Well, a comprehensive collection of datasets encompassing multi-scale simulations of fluid dynamics, astrophysics, and biological systems. The Well serves as a foundation for developing models that generalize across diverse physical phenomena, aiming to accelerate scientific discovery through large-scale learning.

Join Zoom Meeting: https://bnl.zoomgov.com/j/1606898802?pwd=GbbPiLGHlEokDskxjeFheMFWfuboxO.1
Meeting ID: 160 689 8802
Passcode: 281575
Abstract: Large language models are prone to memorizing some of their training data. Memorized (and possibly sensitive) samples can then be extracted at generation time by adversarial or benign users. There is hope that model alignment---a standard training process that tunes a model to harmlessly follow user instructions---would mitigate the risk of extraction. However, we develop two novel attacks that undo a language model's alignment and recover thousands of training examples from popular proprietary aligned models such as OpenAI's ChatGPT. Our work highlights the limitations of existing safeguards to prevent training data leakage in production language models.

Speaker: Pegah Alipoormolabashi

Location: CS2311