We are delighted to welcome new faculty member Erik Sudderth to the Center. Erik recently joined the Department of Computer Science at UCI as an Associate Professor. He is well-known for his research in machine learning, with interests in topics such as graphical models and Bayesian nonparametric methods. Erik’s research group is also active in the application of these ideas to artificial intelligence, vision, and the natural and social sciences. More information about Erik and his research group is available at Erik’s Webpage.

Center member Prof. Sameer Singh will discuss his research on “Explaining Black-Box Machine Learning Predictions,” which addresses the important and challenging problem of enabling people to understand, predict and trust the behavior of machine learning models and algorithms. More information and online registration is available on the Orange County ACM Chapter Meetup Event page.

The Computer Science department at UC Irvine is seeking applicants for PhD research fellowships in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and their related applications, including topics such as deep learning, statistical learning, graphical models, information extraction, computer vision, high-dimensional data analysis, and more.

Please see this flier for more information.

MidCareer Faculty Positions at UC Irvine

Application deadline: Dec 9th 2016 (Applications received by November 9, 2016 will receive fullest consideration.)

Apply online at: https://recruit.ap.uci.edu/apply/JPF03719

The University of California, Irvine (UCI) is engaged in a multi-year campuswide strategic expansion and seeks to hire midcareer faculty (advanced assistant, tenured associate, to early full professors) in the area of information and computer sciences who have distinguished publication records and upward trajectories in their research profiles.

Qualified applicants with interests in artificial intelligence, computer vision, machine learning, natural language processing, bioinformatics and related topics are encouraged to apply for these positions. UCI has a very active group of faculty in these areas including Anima Anandkumar, Pierre Baldi, Rina Dechter, Charless Fowlkes, Alex Ihler, Rick Lathrop, Eric Mjolsness, Sameer Singh, Padhraic Smyth, Erik Sudderth, and Xiaohui Xie – primarily in the computer science department, with strong interdisciplinary connections to departments such as cognitive science, informatics, and statistics.

Recently celebrating its 50th anniversary, UCI is part of the premier public university system in the world. It was recently named by U.S. News & World Report as a top ten public university and by the New York Times as No. 1 among U.S. universities that do the most for low-income students. UCI is located in one of the world’s safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County’s second-largest employer, contributing $4.8 billion annually to the local economy.

The University of California, Irvine is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer advancing inclusive excellence. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, disability, age, protected veteran status, or other protected categories covered by the UC nondiscrimination policy.

Center affiliate Prof. Jeff Krichmar is co-organizing a workshop on “Interacting with Robots Through Touch” at UC Irvine on September 13, 2016:

Workshop On Interacting with Robots Through Touch at UC Irvine
September 13, 2016
9AM – 6PM
1517 Social and Behavioral Sciences Gateway, University of California, Irvine.

Register at: http://www.socsci.uci.edu/~jkrichma/haptics_workshop.html

Description:
Robots and autonomous systems are increasingly becoming a part of our everyday life. In particular co-Robots, in which robots have a symbiotic relationship with people, have the potential to increase social well-being and open up new socioeconomic opportunities. For example, Human-Robot Interaction (HRI), co-Robotics, and Socially Assistive Robots (SARs) are increasingly being used for entertainment, education, telepresence, rehabilitation and therapy. SARs have the potential to help children with developmental disorders, such as autism or attention deficit disorders. Social robots can act as digital ethnographers by: automatically detecting what robot-generated activities children enjoy most, monitoring development of social structure within the classroom. To date, most of these co-robots focus on eye contact (e.g., shared attention, shared gaze, etc.) and auditory cues (e.g., catch phrases and music), but tend to neglect other sensory systems important for social behavior,!
such as tactile interaction.

The purpose of this workshop is to explore the use of tactile sensing in HRI and SARs. The day will include talks by invited speakers and a poster session. If you are interested in presenting a poster on this topic, send your abstract to: jkrichma@uci.edu

Confirmed Speakers:

• Andrea Chiba, University of California, San Diego
• Deborah Forster, University of California, San Diego
• William Harwin, University of Reading
• Guy Hoffman, Cornell University
• Jeffrey L. Krichmar, University of California, Irvine
• Francis McGlone, Liverpool JM University
• David J. Reinkensmeyer, University of California, Irvine
• Veronica J. Santos, University of California, Los Angeles
• Michael Tolley, University of California, San Diego

Center member Anima Anandkumar was awarded a Google Research award grant for Fall 2015. Google Research Awards are an “annual open call for proposals on computer science and related topics including machine learning, speech recognition, natural language processing, and computational neuroscience.” Awards are highly competitive, with 151 projects funded of 950 proposals. Grants include funding for a graduate student, and provide opportunities for students and faculty to collaborate directly with researchers at Google. For more information, see the Google Research Blog.