Presentations this week
Monday, April 6, 2026
PhD Seminar • Human–Computer Interaction
To Slide or Not to Slide: Exploring Techniques for Comparing Immersive Videos
Xizi (Lucy) Wang, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
10:00 a.m. • DC 2314
Supervisor: Professor Jian Zhao
PhD Defence • Artificial Intelligence | Machine Learning
Efficient Inference-time Control and Alignment
Ahmad Rashid, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
10:30 a.m. • Hybrid: DC 2310 | Online PhD defence
Supervisor: Professor Pascal Poupart
Tuesday, April 7, 2026
PhD Seminar • Cryptography, Security, and Privacy (CrySP)
Unintended Interactions in Machine Learning
Vasisht Duddu, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
9:00 a.m. • Online PhD seminar
Supervisor: Professor N. Asokan
PhD Seminar • Software Engineering
Evaluating the Impact of Upfront Identification of D Requirements on Computer-based System Quality and Development Time in Agile Context
Belen Bonilla, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
9:30 a.m. • DC 2564
Supervisor: Professor Daniel Berry
PhD Seminar • Human-Computer Interaction
Retargeting Scale: Quantifying the Tolerance of Visual-Proprioceptive Mismatch in Tangible World-in-Miniature
Junhyeok Kim, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
11:30 a.m. • Online PhD seminar
Supervisors: Professors Mark Hancock, Daniel Vogel
Wednesday, April 8, 2026
PhD Seminar • Bioinformatics
Refining Autoregressive Sequence Prediction with Reinforcement-Learning-Style Training: A Case Study in Open de novo Peptide Sequencing
Zeping Mao, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
9:00 a.m. • Online PhD seminar
Supervisor: Professor Ming Li
Seminar • Systems and Networking
AI Efficiency Across the Computing Stack: Model Efficiency, Software Tooling, and Hardware Architecture
Mohamed Abdelfattah, Assistant Professor, Cornell Tech
Electrical and Computer Engineering, Cornell University
10:30 a.m. • DC 1304
Thursday, April 9, 2026
PhD Seminar • Cryptography, Security, and Privacy (CrySP)
Towards Verifiable Properties of Machine Learning Systems
Vasisht Duddu, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
9:00 a.m. • Online PhD seminar
Supervisor: Professor N. Asokan
PhD Defence • Algorithms and Complexity
How to Color Graphs, and How Not to Chase Pointers
Parth Mittal, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
10:00 a.m. • Hybrid: DC 2314 | Online PhD defence
Supervisor: Professor Sepehr Assadi
PhD Seminar • Artificial Intelligence | Human–Computer Interaction
Public Explanations in Human-AI Interaction
Marvin Pafla, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
10:00 a.m. • Online PhD seminar
Supervisors: Professors Mark Hancock, Kate Larson
Master’s Thesis Presentation • Human–Computer Interaction
Design Considerations for AI-Based Creativity Support Tools in Tabletop Role-Playing Games
Hanna Dodd, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
11:00 a.m. • Hybrid: DC 2310 | Online master’s thesis presentation
Supervisors: Professors Dan Brown, Ana Crisan
Friday, April 10, 2026
PhD Seminar • Systems and Networking
Root Cause Analysis in Networked Systems via Latent Cause Inference and Prior Knowledge
Soheil Johari, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
1:00 p.m. • DC 1302
Supervisor: Professor Raouf Boutaba
PhD Defence • Systems and Networking
Efficiently Training Deep Learning Models on Elastic and Heterogeneous Cloud Resources
Runsheng (Benson) Guo, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
2:00 p.m. • Online PhD defence
Supervisor: Professor Khuzaima Daudjee
Upcoming presentations
Monday, April 13, 2026
Master’s Thesis Presentation • Artificial Intelligence | Machine Learning
On the Statistical Query Complexity of Learning Semiautomata: A Random Walk Approach
George Giapitzakis Tzintanos, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
10:00 a.m. • Online master’s thesis presentation
Supervisor: Professor Kimon Fountoulakis
Master’s Thesis Presentation • Artificial Intelligence | Machine Learning
Post-Training Large Language Models as Software Engineering Agents
Zhiheng Lyu, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
4:00 p.m. • Online master’s thesis presentation
Supervisor: Professor Wenhu Chen
Tuesday, April 14, 2026
PhD Seminar • Cryptography, Security, and Privacy (CrySP)
Colluding Adversaries in Machine Learning Pipelines
Vasisht Duddu, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
9:00 a.m. • Online PhD seminar
Supervisor: Professor N. Asokan
PhD Defence • Systems and Networking
Mitigating Risks to Dependability from Vibe-Coding C for Embedded Systems
Murray Dunne, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
12:00 p.m. • Online PhD defence
Supervisor: Professor Sebastian Fischmeister
Wednesday, April 15, 2026
Master’s Thesis Presentation • Data Systems
SQLyzr: A Comprehensive Benchmark and Framework for Evaluating Text-to-SQL Systems
Sepideh Abedini, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
12:00 p.m. • DC 3301 | DSG Lab
Supervisor: Professor Tamer Özsu
Thursday, April 16, 2026
Master’s Thesis Presentation • Software Engineering
Understanding the Impact of Inputs on LLM-Based Automated Test Generation
Saarang Agarwal, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
10:00 a.m. • Hybrid: DC 2310 | Online master’s thesis presentation
Supervisors: Professors Pengyu Nie, Mei Nagappan
Master’s Thesis Presentation • Software Engineering
Facilitating Game Development From Requirements to Code with LLMs
Ahmed El Shatshat, Master’s candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
1:00 p.m. • DC 2310
Supervisors: Professors Derek Rayside, Daniel Berry
Monday, April 20, 2026
Seminar • Systems and Networking | Quantum Computing
Quantum Computing Systems: Toward Scalable and Efficient Quantum Computation
Hezi Zhang, PhD candidate
Computer Science and Engineering Department, University of California, San Diego
10:30 a.m. • DC 1304
Wednesday, April 22, 2026
PhD Seminar • Data Systems
GPM: The Gaussian Pancake Mechanism for Planting Undetectable Backdoors in Differential Privacy
Haochen Sun, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
12:00 p.m. • DC 3301 | DSG Lab
Supervisor: Professor Xi He
Wednesday, May 6, 2026
PhD Defence • Formal Methods
Synthesizing Parameterized Protocols from Local Temporal Specifications
Ruoxi Zhang, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
9:30 a.m. • DC 2310
Supervisor: Professor Richard Trefler
PhD Defence • Algorithms and Complexity
Low Communication, Large Graphs and Limited Rounds
Janani Sundaresan, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
10:30 a.m. • DC 2314
Supervisor: Professor Sepehr Assadi
Friday, May 8, 2026
PhD Defence • Systems and Networking
Improving Reliability for Networked Systems and Software Execution
Haoyu Gu, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
11:00 a.m. • DC 2310
Supervisor: Professor Ali Mashtizadeh
PhD Defence • Artificial Intelligence | Machine Learning
Improving OOD Detection, Classification, and Reasoning via Multi-modal Feature Alignment
Yimu Wang, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
1:00 p.m. • Online PhD defence
Supervisor: Professor Krzysztof Czarnecki
Wednesday, May 13, 2026
PhD Defence • Systems and Networking
Redesigning Datacenter Systems to Leverage Hardware-Acceleration
Sreeharsha Udayashankar, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
12:00 p.m. • Hybrid: DC 3317 | Online PhD defence
Supervisor: Professor Samer Al-Kiswany
Friday, May 15, 2026
PhD Defence • Software Engineering
Slice-Based Fuzzing for Validating Static Analysis Warnings and Code Changes
Aniruddhan Murali, PhD candidate
David R. Cheriton School of Computer Science
8:30 a.m. • Online PhD defence
Supervisor: Professor Mei Nagappan